THE SMITH AND THE CROWN.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LV, Issue 303, 20 November 1935, Page 14

THE SMITH AND THE CROWN.

A CIVIC QUIT-RENT. SEVEN CENTURIES OF HORSESHOES. Aticliaelmas this year marked the 709th anniversary of the payment by horseshoes, long since made to the Exchequer by the City of London, for a site whiQi in an article in the London Times, the Deputy Keeper of the Public Records identifies with that, of Australia House The article reads:—For just 7(79 years this September a man has come year by year to the Exchequer shortly after Michaelmas and has delivered there six horseshoes with their appropriate nails, For some centuries this man lias represented the City Fathers of London in paying the rent of what was once a smithy situated at an unidentified spot somewhere outside Temple Bar, for which the smith centuries ago paid this quit-rent to the Crown. It was believed that this yearly service originated in the thirteenth century but otherwise its origin and history have been more or less matters of conjecture. The records of the Exchequer and Chancery, however, throw considerable light on the subject, and indeed enable us to locate almost exactly the site of the smithy and to say why the City authorities now do the service. CHURCH AND CROSS. The history of the rent starts from an entry for 1235 in tlio Great Roll of tho Exchequer, the Pipe Roll, of a payment of six horseshoes by one Walter le Brun, le Alareshal or farrier, for a plot for a smithy in the parish of St. Clement Danes. In 1261 King Henry 111. gave to AA’alter, the smith of the time, some extra laud for the enlargement of liis smithy. The letters patent conferring this land, enrolled on the Patent Roll of the King’s fortyfifth year, give the position of the smithy and the additional land with some exactitude. The smithy is said to be in the Gore of St. Clement between the Church of the Danes and the Stone Cross, on the north side of the road to Westminster. The Cross was put up by William Rufus out of devotion to the Holy Cross and for tho health of the souls of himself and his mother, Queen Alaud, whose body rested there while being’ carried to Westminster Abbey for burial. Its position was at one time in doubt, but there is good evidence to show that it was replaced by tne Strand Maypole, which in turn made room for a new St. Mary’s Church after the original church of that name had been pulled down for Protector Somerset to build Somerset House Qii its site. The delimitation of the smithy I extension is quite in accordance with i this.

AA’e must suppose, then, a gore or triangle of land with its base along the north side of the old Strand between St. Clement Danes Church and the site of St. Alary’s, and somewhere in its base tlie frontage of the smithy. In fact, the smithy must have stood partly on the site of Australia House, or perhaps altogether on what is now the roadway in front.ALDAVICH IN 1398.

It seems to have been the first building in this part of the Strand, but the records show that other houses were put up from time to time on plots having a depth of about 40ft, which we may take to have been the equivalent of the smithy’s 12 ells. Eventually, at this distance from the main road, a lane was formed which in 1398 was called “Holwey Lane,” the more modern Holywell Street. The part of the triangle cut off by this lane was hounded on its north-east side by what was already in 1398 known as Aldwich. Its apex was acquired, a little before, by a family named Lyon, who gave their name to Lyon’s Inn, which was standing until quite modern times. The last male Marshal died in 1343, leaving two daughters, both named Joan. One of these married Thomas of Waltham Cross, and Thomas and Joan sold the smithy to one William of Evesham. He died in 1351. holding, according to the record, of the King in chief a messuage formerly having a forge before the door but long since demolished. The smithy was a smithy no longer but still owed to the Crown the annual rent of six horseshoes and the nails. There is no evidence that the property ever passed into the possession of the City, bub in course of time it became convenient for the’City autliolities to collect numerous small Crown rents' and pay them in a lump sum into the Exchequer, instead of leaving the task to the individual tenants. The Exchequer records show that this was what happened in the case of the horseshoes. But by the end of the fourteenth century the performance had already become merely a gesture and an antique survival, the same horseshoes and nails being used over and over again, so that it was unnecessary to collect them from the actual tenant. The result was that lie became practically a freeholder and the details of the rent were forgotten. But the horseshoes continued to pass backwards and forwards between the Crown and tlie City as they do to this day.