my last reply was written in a rush before I went out. Did I gather that
this involved leases from the Bishop of Durham; if so, I think you will be
able to trace the history of the property back using lease (or grant) books,
sometimes called notitia, which should be among the episcopal archives in
the Archives department of Durham University. It is conceivable that
Clavering was named because one of the family had once owned the property,
but sold it off.
As so often the answer to the question is probably to be found by digging
deeper.
I alluded to copyholds for lives. I cannot remember what the tenure was for
the Bishop of Durham's copyholds. However several of the Bishop of
Worcester's manors had one life in possession and three in reversion.
However the property was often in practice held in trust for a specified
person (who might also be or have been one of the lives, or might not). It
was possible to substitute lives, but that involved a payment to the bishop,
so that people seem to have been content to go on with a tenure for the
lives subsisting when they bought the property, adding themselves or their
children on the end as earlier lives dropped.
By the 19th century, these life tenures were old-fashioned, and were still
only being renewed by certain owners, such as bishops and cathedral
chapters, who were more interested in extracting what they could while they
had the property than in improving it for posterity. However the old rents
and the renewal fines actually paid seem to have been out of line with
market conditions, so that the lease and copyholders were often underletting
at a profit. It does all get very confusing!
Peter King
49, Stourbridge Road,
Hagley,
Stourbridge
West Midlands
DY9 0QS
01562-720368
[log in to unmask]
-----Original Message-----
From: From: Local-History list [mailto:[log in to unmask]]On
Behalf Of Mike Syer
Sent: 01 November 2008 11:23
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Leases for three lives
Frances, Peter, Dave
Thanks very much for your comments. Extremely useful.
I take it, then, that Sir T.J. may not even have known about the
lease. (I wonder if anyone considered the market potential of
compiling a national register of potential long-livers!)
I was misled, I think, by the fact that the lessee, in the 1830s, of
the adjacent farm (Rev. Robert Hopper Williamson) was the son and heir
of the first life (or perhaps the preceding life, in the light of what
you have now told me). His father (Robert Hopper Williamson snr) had
also leased other lands in the area and the son also inherited them.
Perhaps RHW snr had "backed himself" as a long-liver! If so, he
didn't make a bad choice, as he was nearing 80 when he died.
Thanks again.
Mike
|