> This sounds like an aspect of a typical lease for three lives, which are found in many parts of the country. Often the tenant would renew his lease when a life or two had dropped, paying the landlord a fine (premium) for adding one life. Leases were often actually for 99 years if (the three lives) so long survived. Such a lease would be a chattel and pass under the tenant's will or intestacy.
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> Sometimes the lives chosen would be close family, such as tenant, wife and child, but they could be strangers, chosen because they were thought to have a good life expectancy making the lease a long one. The case referred to in the poem perhaps refers to a lease for the life of another person, where only one life was left.
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> There are probably a lot of potential variations on this. For example, I know of a manor locally where the copyhold tenure was four lives, one in possession and three in reversion. Successive bishop renewed this tenure, taking fines when a renewal was sought until the late 19th century, when the Ecclesiastical Commissioners seem to have decided to let existing tenures run their course and then to sell the freehold. Elsewhere, leases seem gradually to have been replaced by years for years at rack rents.
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> Peter King
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> > On 14 March 2019 at 15:48 Lynne Mayers < [log in to unmask]> wrote:
> >
> >
> > I have just discovered that Edward Manlove mentions in his poem of 1653 that a widow could inherit her husband’s lease for ‘one life’.
> >
> > Does anyone have a actual reference to this in the Derbyshire Liberties and Customs – and if so, did this persist over time?
> >
> > Many thanks.
> >
> > Lynne
> >
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