PECULIAR ANCIENT LEASES

Gisborne Times, Volume LXIII, Issue 10140, 28 October 1925, Page 7

PECULIAR ANCIENT LEASES

-SOME STRANGE CONDITIONS.

OBLIGATIONS TO TENANTS.

We live in an age ol high rents. They were happier in the old daysthough some of the .couditbns of ancient leases in Britain mu§t have been difficult to fulfil. The' law-books contain many an instance ;; of strange conditions upon which estates used to be held, or even still lyre lield. . For instance, ono—Sblomojr Attfield held 1 lands at liep’and 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 he have the misfortune to be sen.-sick! -

Many nobles held manors in return for the service of carving for the King 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 stirrup when he mounted his horse in Carlisle Castle. The Lord of Sh’refield had the duty of looking after His Majesty’s laundresses in addit'on to measuring the ga'loirs in the royal household, and dismembering condemned criminals.

j To carry a hawk for the King; 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, lanee, or simple , how and arrows, whenever their sor- . vices were required, were the duties j imposed upon other manor lords. { The services of cornage, or hornj blowing, was very common, especially !in the Border counties, subject as i they were to frequent Scottish raids, j The owner of Kingston Russell, Dori set, had the very peaceable task of j counting the royal chessmen, and i putting them back in a bag when the j King had finished his game. - There is a large estate in Yorkshire [ which is held on cond ton tliat the tenant pays a yearly rental of ‘‘a snowball at midsummer and a red : rose at Christmas.” A queer, oldJ fashioned condition was' attached to the ho’dine of the manor of Leaston. This was that the tenant “should find our lord the king two arrows and one j leaf of oat bread when the sovereign should hunt in the forest of JCast- * moor.” Geoffrey From,brand and his heirs hold sixty acres of land in Suffolk as long as they pay the sovereign a yearly rental of two white doves, j. . One of the safest holdings is that of a certain Scottish duke, who roll nquishes his estate only if the wea-j-ther should ever become warm enough i to melt the snow on the highest peak of the highest mountain in Scotland, j For over seven hundred' years the ; Corporation of London lias annually i discharged two quaint ceremonies—i the cutting of one fagot _ with a hatchet ana another with a billhook — |as quit-rents to the sovereign for ; certain lands still supposed to be held by them in Shropshire and Middlesex. ; Though nobody now knows where the properties stand,- the ceremonies have never been forgotten.