QUEER QUIT RENTS

Dominion, Volume 21, Issue 83, 6 January 1928, Page 6

QUEER QUIT RENTS

SURVIVAL OF FEUDAL TIMES On September 29, a New Forest rent collector set out to collect the annual rents due to Winchester Cottage for properties in various parts of the Forest. These “quit rents’’ vary from a half-penny to 3s. 6<l (writes Victor Raymond in the “Daily News”). The number o( properties still held for “quit rents” is as surprising as the character of many of the rents themselves. Braehead, in Midlothian, for instance, is held on condition that water is provided for the King to wash his hands whenever his Majesty visits the neighbourhood. The Duke of Athol must furnish the King with a white rose in respect of Blair i\thol on the occasion of every Royal visit. From the Duke of Wellington the King receives each year a small banner on the anniversary of the Battle of Waterloo. This banner is the rent for Strathfieldsaye, the estate voted to the Duke’s famous ancestor by Parliament. The Duke of Marlborough holds his estate by the presentation to the King of a tiny silken banner on the anniversary of the Battle of Blenheim. Amongst the most famous ‘‘quit rents” due to the monarch is that rendered annually towards the end of October in respect of “The Moors” in Shropshire. The rent consists of two bundles of faggots, a bill-hook and a hatchet. The City of London holds the tenure, and the City Solicitor, in response to the proclamation “Tenants and Occupiers of a piece of waste ground called ‘The Moors’ in the County of Salop, come forth and do vour service,” duly “comes forth” and chops up the faggots in the presence of the King’s Remembrancer. When this has been done, the King’s Remembrancer closes the ceremony by saying: “Good service.” That these old feudal customs die hard is shown bv the fact that this ceremonv has been enacted annually for the past 700 years. This, too, despite the fact that nobody now knows where “The Moors” are situated. For the Foulis estates in Scotland the tenant has to pay a bucketful of snow. Whenever the King visits Kidwelly he is entitled to receive the services of a knight clad in armour, these being the' terms on which Kidwellv Castle is held by its owner.