FOR SERVICES RENDERED

Evening Star, Issue 19019, 14 August 1925, Page 3

FOR SERVICES RENDERED

SOAIE STRANGE CONDITIONS OF LAND TENURE IN THE PAST.

Wo live in an age of high rents. They were happier in the old days, though some of the conditions of ancient leases must have been difficult enough to fulfil. The law books contain many an instance of strange conditions upon which estates used to bo held, or even still are held. Some of •these make most entertaining reading. For instance, one Solomon Attfleld held lands at Replant! and Atterton, in Kent, upon condition that, as often as the King should cross the sea, the said Solomon should accompany him and “hold his head,” should ho have, the misfortune to be sea-sick! j Many noble lords held manors in return for the service of carving for His Majesty at annual feasts, or serving him, or guarding his person. The lord of the manor of Houghton, Cumberland, was obliged to hold the King’s j stirrup when ho mounted his horse in ! Carlisle Castle. The lord of Shirefield , —luckless wight!—had the duty of i looking after the King’s laundresses, I in addition to measuring the gallons in the Royal household, and dismembering condemned criminals.

COUNTING THE ROYAL CHESSMEN.

To carry a hawk for His Majesty; to present him with a grey hood or cap or a white ensign whenever he warred in Scotland; to attend with proper arms, a horse, sword, lance, or simple bow and arrows, whenever their services were required, were the duties imposed upon other manor lords. The service of cornagc, or horn-blowdng, was very common, especially in the Border counties, subject as they were to frequent Scottish raids. The owner of Kingston Russell, Dorset, had the very peaceable task of counting the Royal chessmen and putting them hack In a bag when His Majesty had finished his game. There is a’large estate in Yorkshire which is held on condition that the tenant pays a yearly rental of “a snowball at midsummer and a red rose at Christmas.” The latter sounds comparatively easy, but the former appears, at first glance, a literal impossibility. Actually, though, it is considerably the easier of the two, because in that neighborhood ft guelder rose is coinmonlv known as a snowball.

A queer old-fashioned condition was attached to the holding of the manor of Leaston. This was that the_ tenant “should find for our lord the King two arrows and one loaf of oat bread when the Sovereign should hunt in the forest of Eastmoor.” Geoffrey Frumhrand and his heirs hold sixty acres m land in Suffolk as long as they pay the Sovereign a yearly rental of two white doves. A LONDON CUSTOM. One of the safest holdings is that of a certain Scottish duke, who relinquishes his right to his estate only.it the weather (in Scotland, too!) should ever become warm enough to melt the snow on the highest peak of the highest mountain in Scotland. For over 700 years the Corporation of London has annually discharged two quaint ceremonies—the cutting of one laggot with a hatchet and another with a. billhook—as quit-rents to the Sovereign for certain lands slid supposed to be held by them in Shropshire and Middlesex. Though nobody now knows where the properties stand, the ceremonies have never been forgotten.—‘John o’ London’s Weekly.’