RENT TO KING.

Hawera Star, Volume XLVIII, 13 December 1924, Page 5

RENT TO KING.

700-YEAR-OLD RITUAL. LONDON, Oct. 23. With a blow from a hatchet, the City Solicitor cut a. bundle of faggots into a hundred pieces in the Law Courts yesterday. The fragments were eagerly gatherer, by the few people present as souvenirs of one of the most interesting ceremonies which has survived the change of years. Although the annual rendering o! Quit Rent Services to the Crown b. the Corporation of the City of London was performed in Court A, which ihoused in "a temporary wooden structure, the ceremony in essence is a? picturesque as it was 700 years ago. The King's Remembrancer, Sir T. Willes Chitty, explained to those present the meaning of the ancient rent service, recalling how hundreds of years ago rent was paid in services or kind. . Even more interesting was the second service in respect of a tenement called “The Forge.” The original grant of the forge was made to Walter le Brun, a farrier in the Strand, whowa* to have a piece of ground in +lm parish of St. Clement Danes on which to carry out his work, giving in pay ment six horseshoes. The horseshoes, which were placed with great solemnity on the table of Court, A yesterday, are believed to be thosei used for the big Flemish horse 1 employed in England 700 years ago. The City Solicitor gravely counter the shoes, and then proceeded to couni the 01 nails belonging to them. “Whv the City pays rent no knows,” the King’s Remcmhraneer observed.