Note 523 — Chapter III · THE QUESTION OF TENANT RIGHT

Ibid., vol. iii., p. 198, case 8, Hill, 5 Car., Rot. 125: “The question was whether a lord of a mannor may assess two years and a half value of copyhold land according to racked rent for a fine upon surrender and admittance, and for non-payment enter for forfeiture. And all the Court conceived that one year and a half of rent improved is high enough; and the defendant assessing two years and a half it is unreasonable, and therefore the plaintiff might well refuse the payment thereof." Ibid., vol. i. p. 779, case 13, takes the rule that unreasonable fines need not be paid back to 1600 ("It was holden per curiam that if the lord demands an unreasonable fine of his coppyholder where the fine is uncertain, if he denies it, it is not any forfeiture of his copyhold"), but his judgment does not say how many years' rent is a reasonable fine. The Calendar of Chancery Proceedings, temp. Eliz., is full of petitions from tenants asking the court to declare fines excessive. The rule that a fine must not exceed two years' rent does not appear to have been accepted as binding till 1781 (Grant v. Ashe, Douglas Reports, 722–723). But it is plain from the cases cited above that by 1600 it was recognised that some fines were unreasonable, and by 1630 that a reasonable fine should not exceed one and a half years' rent. The fact that the Chancery intervened to protect the equitable interests of copyholders earlier than the Common Law Courts leads one to suspect that there must be earlier cases than these of the Courts declaring fines unreasonable. But I have not found them.