1) Considered to be a form of coppice or copse, that is a small wood or thicket cut at regular intervals as a source of underwood.
The cycle varied from region to region. Coppice is of French origin and could be either singular or plural, so ‘copy’ evolved as a singular. It is on record in Yorkshire earlier than examples quoted in the OED: 1499 my sprynges and my copies to be kept and saved, Hazlewood
1524 make a copye and hagge of the said woddes and spryngies, Thorpe Underwood
1572-3 woodes, springes, copies, moores, waistes, Honley
1704 walking in Mr Kirk’s copy where was two stone horses, West Riding. The practice was much older than that: in 1307 the Westwood of Crigglestone was sold for 25 marks to four local tenants and they were instructed ‘to cut the wood as close to the ground as possible, and to clear the place of twigs, so as not to impede the fresh growth of the wood’.