disproving the hereditary character of the copyhold, or by changing copyholds of inheritance into copyholds for lives or leases for lives or years.  He and his successors could then refuse to renew at the termination of lives or years except on payment of a practically prohibitory fine.  In short, though there was not much violation of legal right there was much injustice, and enclosure, though its effects were exaggerated at this period, certainly tended to displace the small landholder.  It does not appear, however, that the moderate-sized proprietors were seriously affected.  Many of the larger freeholders and copyholders on manors enclosed on their own account, and perhaps increased at the expense of the very large and the very small.  Indeed, the decrease of small landowners was chiefly due to political and social causes.  The old self-sufficing, agricultural economy of England, which we have seen beginning to break up in the fourteenth century, was becoming thoroughly disintegrated.  The capitalist class was increasing; the successful merchant and lawyer were acquiring land and becoming squires; there was an intense land hunger.  Simon Degge, wilting of Staffordshire in 1669, says that in the previous sixty years half the lands had changed owners, not so much as of old they were wont to do, by marriage, but by purchase; and he notices how many lawyers and tradesmen have supplanted the gentry.[278]

In fact, there was a much freer disposal of lands from the end of the fifteenth century, when the famous Taltarum’s case enabled entailed estates to be barred, until the Restoration, than there has been before or since.  For these two hundred years the courts of law and parliament resisted every effort to re-establish the system of entails; the owners of land constantly multiplied, and this tendency must have counteracted the displacement of the small holder by enclosure.  Sir Thomas Smith, writing towards the end of the sixteenth century, says that it was the yeomen who bought the lands of ‘unthrifty gentlemen;’ and Moryson tells us that ’the buyers (excepting lawyers) are for the most part citizens and vulgar men’.[279] It became one of the boasts of England that she had a large number of yeomen farming their own land.  During the Civil War, however, it became important to landowners to protect their properties in the interest of children and descendants from forfeiture for treason.  The judges lent their aid, and the system of strict family settlements was devised, under which the great bulk of the estates in England are now held.  This system favoured the accumulation of lands in a few hands and the aggregation of great estates, and was largely responsible for the disappearance of the small freeholder.