REASONS Humbly offered, why the Sale of the LANDS, and ESTATES, belonging to the late Bishop of DURHAM, should not be confirmed.  
1. BY long usage and course of time, the Tenants of those Lands and their Ancestors, have enjoyed the same in Nature of a Customary Inheritance.  
1. By Tenant-Right. Afterwards by taking Leases, never exceeding three years Fine, doing Border-service, &c.  
2. When a Tenants Lease did expire, it was usual for the said Tenant to sell his Interest in the Premises for seven years' purchase and sometimes more.  
3. When the Parliament in the year 1647. did pass an Ordinance for the sale of Bishops Lands, they did provide in the said Ordinance,  
1. That all matter of Right, both in Law and Equity, should be saved to the said Tenants.  
2. That the said Ordinance should be sent to the respective Sheriffs in every County to be published in every Market-Town, whereby all such Persons who claimed any Right in those Estates, might have the knowledge, to put in their Claims to the Surveyors. But the Sheriff of that County, never had the Ordinance sent unto him, or if he had, yet was the same never published in any of the Market-Towns in that County, whereby the Tenants might have timely and due notice to make out their Respective Claims before the Surveyors.  
Whereupon not any one Tenant that held by Lease of the said Bishop and did usually renew their Leases, as aforesaid, did make known to the Surveyors their Usual and Equitable Right.  
4. This Ordinance was the first Ordinance for sale, that ever came forth in this Nature. And the said Tenants living eleven score miles off London, were kept the more in ignorance, by reason they never had any Member of Parliament to serve for them, as all the rest of the Counties in England had, to give them notice what they had to do to preserve their Rights.  
5. That this concerns the being and subsistence of many hundred Families, who with their Ancestors for many hundreds of years enjoyed their Respective Estates, never paying to the Bishops above 50 s. per. An. Rent for the best Farm.  
All whose Estates are now purchased by five, or six Persons at most, some of whom, have turned the Tenants out of Doors, their Wives and Children going a Begging, without regard to their Ancient and Equitable Right: and others kept in Prison after possession of their Farms were obtained by the purchasers.