CH/13/1

CH/13/1

File

Contracts Register, 1608-1636

Lease Book

1608 - 1636

1 volume

A searchable calender of this volume has been created by Andrew Thomson and is available from the Cathedral Archives. The following overview is also by Andrew Thomson: This is a large book of ecclesiastical business – 468 pages and 238 items – covering nearly 30 years of the seventeenth century. It spans most of the reign of James I and the first ten or eleven years of Charles I. The book has an index which works well in the main and sometimes clarifies points to do with a lease; but there are several mismatches between the index and the pages themselves (see my note at the end of the calendaring). The items are mainly leases – cathedral and episcopal – but there are other items relating to leases, e.g. surrender documents, and yet others dealing with matters quite separate from leasing such as the appointment of a vicar (to a parish), a warden (for the gaol), and a receiver (of rents). The vast majority, however, are leases and these mainly concern the Dean and Chapter’s properties but there are, as well, a substantial number of bishops’ leases. They all provide, together with the documents about other business, a host of names – not just parties to a lease but also former tenants, neighbours, attorneys, witnesses – which are likely to be treasure trove for family historians. The calendar is on ‘word’ and researchers should use the ‘search option’ to trawl for names. They will, of course, have to be imaginative about such matters a spelling. The leases are of critical importance to historians of the Church and, in particular, ecclesiastical management of their resources in a time of enormous religious and political turbulence. They show whether the dean and chapter – or the bishop for that matter – were obeying royal and archiepiscopal (Laudian) orders about leasing. This in turn raises questions about the relative merits of leasing for ‘lives’ or for a term of years. Equally important, at a time of high inflation, is the question of the response of the ecclesiastics and their officials to the problem. Many leases appear not to have run their full term and a case can be made that both cathedral and episcopal authorities were recalling leases before expiry and then reissuing them, usually to the same lessee, which meant a charge – or ‘fine’ – in order to increase ecclesiastical income. Whether not the practice was fair or just, it would seem to be businesslike. As for rents, there is evidence, on the one hand, of neglect – properties still being leased in the 1630s at rents of the 1560s – but also, on the other hand, of attempts to increase rents to meet the exigencies of inflation as this became more pressing in the years immediately before the ‘cyclonic shattering’ of the 1640s. It must be stressed that these are only preliminary findings and proper analysis and comparison of Salisbury with other dioceses will be necessary before more definite conclusions can be drawn about the exploitation by the ecclesiastical authorities of their resources at this momentous time. Andrew Thomson 9 7 2023

English

Material: parchment, paper Binding: cloth Binding: Notes: victorian era binding [?]