Note 149 — Chapter V
Reading edition
Smyth, Lives of the Berkeleys, ii. 5. There is no doubt the lease system was growing in the thirteenth century. About 1240 the writ Quare ejecit infra terminum protected the person of a tenant for a term of years, who formerly had been regarded as having no more than a personal right enforceable by an action of covenant. Vinogradoff, Villeinage in England, p. 330; but leases for lives and not for years seem the rule at that date.