copyholder

A copyholder without legal remedy may seem little better than a tenant in mere villenage, except in name.

For it is the destruction of the inheritance and against the nature of a copyholder for life.

In 1581 it interferes to protect a copyholder who has been kept out of his holding by the Dean and Chapter of Peterborough.

A tenant at a quit rent is, to all intents and purposes, a proprietor; a copyholder is not less so than a freeholder.

So after a while instead of "villein" he became a "copyholder."