Who has not been a landlord or a tenant? It is one of the most common legal relationships between people, and has been since the medieval period. But there is very little academic interest in the law of landlord and tenant. Nobody before has attempted to write its history. This book shows how the rules on each point of importance have developed. Sometimes it demonstrates how a wrong turn has been taken, or an important principle forgotten. But its practical use is to provide the material for understanding the old cases, and to put those cases in their proper context; for it is hard for any lawyer, advising on a doubtful point, to say where exactly we are now, without a thorough understanding of what the law once was and how and when it might have changed.