A ‘feoffment,’ or grant, was the oldest and simplest form of document; but in later times it was followed by a deed ‘of Uses,’ which required many other deeds to follow in its wake before a permanent and satisfactory sale was effected. It is all these legal formalities which make the reading of old deeds so unnecessarily confusing; their intricacies can only be mastered by careful study of books on legal matters, and a comparison of the several kinds of deeds above enumerated. A mortgage deed differs from the sales or leases in several particulars: firstly, the term of years granted is usually absurdly long--nine hundred or a thousand years, perhaps; while in lieu of money the nominal rent of one peppercorn yearly, or some equally insignificant equivalent, was demanded. In place of the rent in an ordinary lease the real reason of the mortgage is given in full, with the date and appointed place where and when the borrowed money is to be repaid. Often the vicarage, or the parson’s house, was chosen--perhaps considered as an additional guard against fraud, and that the clergyman as a witness, being a disinterested party, would see justice done on both sides. No mortgage deeds are old; the older ones, if they existed, were probably destroyed as soon as the transaction was finished. Most of those found among family papers are of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and refer to small pieces of land or cottages, showing that even then the small owners became involved in debts and difficulties, being obliged to raise money upon their holdings, until finally the land itself had to be sold to satisfy the demands of the creditors, the purchaser usually being the nearest large landed proprietor, who paid a better price for what would join on to and complete the area of his estate. These small holdings had probably been accumulated bit by bit out of the waste. First, perhaps, the settler rigged up a primitive dwelling, or hut, the old tradition being that if a roofed dwelling with a chimney could be erected in one night a claim to the land was thereby established. If undisturbed, the squatter would gradually extend his boundaries; but a small rent was generally demanded by the lord of the manor as an acknowledgment of the encroachment; these little holdings are called ‘key-holdings,’ and are to be found in all parts of England. At present there is a growing desire to increase the number of small proprietors; ‘fashion,’ it is said, ‘repeats itself periodically.’ Former experience showed the result of small holders to be a failure; no land, however small in acreage, can be worked without capital; a succession of bad seasons causes immediate loss and continuous outlay without a compensating return; debts once begun are apt to accumulate; all trades are worked cheaper on a wholesale scale. Bit by bit, as failure comes, the small pieces of land will roll up into large properties again, like balls of quicksilver separated only for awhile.