with the legal effects of the eviction of James II. All patents
were covenants between the king and his heirs, and the patentees
and their heirs. The expulsion of the sovereign virtually destroyed
the title; and an elected king, who did not succeed as heir, was
not bound by the patents of his predecessors, nor was William
asked, by the Bill of Rights, to recognize any of the existing
titles. This anomalous state of things was met in degree by the
statute of prescriptions, but even this did not entirely cure the
defect in the titles to the principal estates in the Kingdom. The
English tenants in decapitating one landlord and expelling another,
appear to have destroyed their titles, and then endeavored to renew
them by prescriptive right; but I shall not pursue this topic
further, though it may have a very definite bearing upon the
question of landholding.

It may not be uninteresting to allude rather briefly to the state
of England at the close of the seventeenth century. Geoffrey King,
who wrote in 1696, gives the first reliable statistics about the
state of the country. He estimated the number of houses at
1,300,000, and the average at four to each house, making the
population 5,318,000. He says there was but seven acres of land for
each person, but that England was six times better peopled than the
known world, and twice better than Europe. He calculated the total
income at L43,500,000, of which the yearly rent of land was
L10,000,000. The income was equal to L7, 18s. 0d. per head, and the
expense L7, 11s. 4d.; the yearly increase, 6s. 8d. per head, or
L1,800,000 per annum. He estimated the annual income of 160
temporal peers at L2800 per annum, 26 spiritual peers at L1300, of
800 baronets at L800, and of 600 knights at L650.