United States or Chile ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Rent was said to have risen 70 per cent. since 1792; but the landlords were often embarrassed, because their lands had too often been burdened with jointures, settlements, and mortgages during the war. It was in their interest that the act of 1815, which aimed at maintaining war prices, had been passed.
Many important questions had to be decided. It was known that mortgages, jointures, legacies, and debts of all kinds had reduced the Marquis's income to a minimum, and that he stood in urgent need of a little ready money. It was known that his relations looked to an heiress to rehabilitate the family fortune. Mrs.
But from 1633 onward it became the anchor of the Jenkin family in Kent; and though passed on from brother to brother, held in shares between uncle and nephew, burthened by debts and jointures, and at least once sold and bought in again, it remains to this day in the hands of the direct line. It is not my design, nor have I the necessary knowledge, to give a history of this obscure family.
"Oh, an uncle of mine paid for that," said Jim. "I got seedy after my father's death. There was a lot of worry, and and I was fond of the old man. The doctors told me to go off. I'm all right now. As for the rest well, there are such things as jointures and dowries. No, I couldn't marry, giving my wife and my mother and sister everything they ought to have, before another year.
Courtship, love, presents, jointures, settlements have no place in their thoughts, or terms whereby to express them in their language. The young couple meet, and are joined, merely because it is the determination of their parents and friends; it is what they see done every day, and they look upon it as one of the necessary actions of a reasonable being.
Thus love is uniform, but courtship is perpetually varying: the different arts of gallantry, which beauty has inspired, would of themselves be sufficient to fill a volume; sometimes balls and serenades, sometimes tournaments and adventures, have been employed to melt the hearts of ladies, who in another century have been sensible of scarce any other merit than that of riches, and listened only to jointures and pin-money.
It was owing to this equipage, and the gaiety of his personal deportment, that common fame, which is always a common liar, represented him as a young gentleman who had just succeeded to an estate of five thousand pounds per annum, by the death of an uncle; that he was entitled to an equal fortune at the decease of his own father, exclusive of two considerable jointures, which would devolve upon him at the demise of his mother and aunt.
Among a people so primitive and simple in their habits this could quickly be done, as no long months were required to arrange jointures or marriage settlements, or a prying into the state of the bank accounts of either of the parties concerned. But all these things have been attended to, and the long journey begun.
What can be more deserving of our best efforts for relief than a country gentleman like yourself, we'll say, of a nominal L5,000 a-year, compelled to keep up an establishment, pay for his fox- hounds, support the whole population by contributions to the poor-rates, support the whole church by tithes; all justice, jails, and prosecutions of the county-rates; all thoroughfares by the highway-rates; ground down by mortgages, Jews, or jointures; having to provide for younger children; enormous expenses for cutting his woods, manuring his model farm, and fattening huge oxen till every pound of flesh costs him five pounds sterling in oil-cake; and then the lawsuits necessary to protect his rights, plundered on all hands by poachers, sheep-stealers, dog- stealers, churchwardens, overseers, gardeners, gamekeepers, and that necessary rascal, his steward.
I had not a farthing of my own he would serve me for nothing nay, work for me. "Sure," he said, taking off my coat and bringing me my gown, "Sure, your honour was not made to work." To cheer me he went on with some foolish footman's gossip that there lacked not ladies with jointures who would marry me, and be thankful. I smiled sadly. "That was when I was Mr. Carvel's heir, Banks."
Word Of The Day