[244] _Northumberland County History_, vol. iii., Pt. V., pp. 86-?104, Survey of Hexham (1608): "Their fines they pretend to be certain, viz. one year's rent at everye change of tenant, but not herritable. They have there, for certaine, very ancient evidences and Court Rolls, but they woulde not show them unto us, nor any of their coppies." See also Appendix I. No. IV.
[245] _Hist. MSS. Com._, Part VII., pp. 49?-50 (1596): Some information concerning those intending the rebellion in Oxford.... "And Steer said that there was once a rising at Enscombe Hill by the commons, and they were persuaded to go down and were after hanged like dogs. 'But,' said he, 'we will never yield, but will go through with it!'"
[247] Warburton's _Rupert_, iii., 118 (quoted Gooch, _English Democratic Ideas in the Seventeenth Century_, p. 112).
If, however, the peasantry are on the whole uninterested in the larger problems of government to which the world has agreed to confine the word politics, this is not because they are incapable of self-help, or destitute of any conception of public expediency. It is because the framework of their lives has for ages been different from that of the freeholders, because the centre round which their social interests revolve is even more localised than it is to the freeholders, because what matters to them most is not the law of the land but the custom of the manor. We shall have hereafter[248] to discuss the vexed question of the legal position occupied by the copyholders in the sixteenth century. But we may pause for a moment to point out here the decisive part which custom had played, and still played in our period, in moulding the lives of the mass of the peasantry, because unless this is firmly grasped we cannot understand their mental horizon. It is the custom of the manor which gives them their social environment and their conception of public order. The commonest name for all those who hold neither freely nor by lease is "customary tenants," men whose title is rooted in custom. When the courts begin to interfere to protect copyholders, they introduce that sweeping innovation under the guise of enforcing customary conditions. They do not say "copyholders can be evicted." Nor do they say "copyholders cannot be evicted." They say, "Tell us what the custom of your manor is, and if it is one which does not seem to a plain man too unreasonable, we will enforce it." When tenants and landlords fall out, it is always to custom that the tenants appeal. When the peasants ask the Government for assistance, they do so by demanding the observance of their "old customs."
