In 1410 there is a lease of the demesne lands at Hawsted by which the landlord kept the manor house and its appurtenances in his own hands, the tenant apparently having the farm buildings, which he was to keep in repair.  He was to receive at the beginning of the term 20 cows and one bull, worth 9s. each; 4 stotts, worth 10s. each; and 4 oxen, worth 13s. 4d. each; which, or their value in money, were to be delivered up at the end of the term.  The tenant was also to leave at the end of the lease as many acres well ploughed, sown, and manured as he found at the beginning.  Otherwise the landlord was not to interfere with the cultivation.  If the rent or any part thereof was in arrear for a fortnight after the two fixed days for payment, the landlord might distrain; and if for a month, he might re-enter:  and both parties bound themselves to forfeit the then huge sum of L100 upon the violation of any clause of the lease.[153] There is a lease[154] of a subsequent date (the twentieth year of Henry VIII), but one which well illustrates the custom now so prevalent, granted by the Prior of the Monastery of Lathe in Somerset to William Pole of Combe, Edith his wife, and Thomas his son, for their lives.  With the land went 360 wethers.  For the land they paid 16 quarters of best wheat, ‘purelye thressyd and wynowed,’ 22 quarters of best barley, and were to carry 4 loads of wood and fatten one ox for the prior yearly; the ox to be fattened in stall with the best hay, the only way then known of fattening oxen.  For the flock of wethers they paid L6 yearly.  The tenants were bound to keep hedges, ditches, and gates in repair.  Also they were bound by a ‘writing obligatory’ in the sum of L100 to deliver up the wether flock whole and sound, ’not rotten, banyd,[155] nor otherwise diseased.’  The consequence of the spread of leases was that the portion of the demesne lands which the lords farmed themselves dwindled greatly, or it was turned from arable into grass.  Stock and land leases survived in some parts till the beginning of the eighteenth century, when it was still the custom for the landlord to stock the land and receive half the crop for rent.[156] According to the Domesday of S. Paul, in the thirteenth century, a survey of eighteen manors containing 24,000 acres showed three-eighths of the land in demesne, the rest in the hands of the tenants.  In 1359 the lord of the principal manor at Hawsted held in his own hand 572 acres of arable land, worth 4d. to 6d. an acre rent, and 50 acres of meadow, worth 2s. an acre.[157] He had also pasture for 24 cows, which was considered worth 36s. a year, and for 12 horses and 12 oxen worth 48s. a year, with 40 acres of wood, estimated at 1s. an acre.  In 1387, however, the arable land had decreased to 320 acres, but the stock had increased, and now numbered 4 cart horses, 6 stotts or smaller horses, 10 oxen, 1 bull, 26 cows, 6 heifers, 6 calves, 92 wethers, 20 hoggerells or two-year-old sheep, 1 gander, 4 geese, 30 capons, 26 hens, and only one cock.  The dairy of 26 cows was let out, according to the custom of the time, for L8 a year; and we are told that the oxen were fed on oats, and shod in the winter only.