to bind the
issue in tail. But they received a more violent blow the same session
of Parliament by the construction put upon the statute of fines by the
statute 32 Henry VIII., cap. 36, which declares a fine duly levied by
tenant in tail to be a complete bar to him and his heirs and all other
persons claiming under such entail. This was evidently agreeable to the
intention of Henry VII., whose policy was (before common recovery had
obtained their full strength and authority) to lay the road as open as
possible to the alienation of landed property, in order to weaken the
overgrown power of his nobles. But as they, from the opposite reasons,
were not easily brought to consent to such a provision, it was therefore
couched in his act under covert and obscure expressions; and the judges,
though willing to construe that statute as favorably as possible for
the defeating of entailed estates, yet hesitated at giving fines so
extensive a power by mere implication when the statute DE DONIS had
expressly declared that they should not be a bar to estates-tail. But
the statute of Henry VIII., when the doctrine of alienation was better
received, and the will of the prince more implicitly obeyed than before,
avowed and established that intention."

Fitzherbert, one of the judges of the Common Pleas in the reign of Henry
VIII., wrote a work on surveying and husbandry. It contains directions
for draining, clearing, and inclosing a farm, and for enriching the soil
and reducing it to tillage. Fallowing before wheat was practised, and
when a field was exhausted by grain it was allowed to rest. Hollingshed
estimated the usual return as 16 to 20 bushels of wheat per acre; prices
varied very greatly, and famine was of frequent recurrence. Leases began
to be granted, but they were not effectual to protect the tenant
from the entry of purchasers nor against the operation of fictitious
recoveries.

In the succeeding reigns the efforts to encourage tillage and prevent
the clearing of the farms were renewed, and among the enactments passed
were the following:

5 Edward VI., cap. 5, for the better maintenance of tillage and increase
of corn within the realm, enacts:

"That there should be, in the year 1553, as much land, or more, put
wholly in tillage as had been at any time since the 1st Henry VIII.,
under a penalty of 5s. per acre to the king; and in order to secure
this, it appoints commissioners, who were bound to ascertain by inquests
wh