United States or Eswatini ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
The governing corporation consisted of the mayor, the recorder, the town-clerk, six aldermen, and six assistants. All the land not taken up by individual owners was granted as public land to the corporation, which in return paid into the British exchequer one beaver-skin yearly. This was a survival of the old quit-rent or firma burgi.
This yer parish be a very big un, and a be preserved very high, and I can do three times as much in he as in the next un, as ain't much preserved. So I sticks to this un. 'Of course they tried to drive I out of un, and wanted the cottage; but granny had all the receipts for the quit-rent, and my lard and all the lawyers couldn't shove us out, and there we means to bide.
The house they dwelt in came to them from their yeoman ancestors of long ago; it was held on a lease of one thousand years from near the end of the sixteenth century, "at a quit-rent of one shilling," and certain pieces of furniture still in use were contemporary with the beginning of the tenure.
In some localities a toll or a quit-rent was the sole cession, and again a toll or a prerogative was almost the only residue remaining to the ostensible overlord, while all his former property or transferable birthright privileges were lodged in various hands on divers tenures.
It was proclaimed that all private titles to land were to be ransacked, and that whoever wished to have his title confirmed must pay a heavy quit-rent, which under the circumstances amounted to blackmail. The General Court was abolished. The power of taxation was taken from the town-meetings and lodged with the governor.
Appin, accordingly, settled as tenants there, at an easy quit-rent, the MacLarens, a family dependent on the Stewarts, and from whose character for strength and bravery, it was expected that they would make their right good if annoyed by the MacGregors.
I was specially fond of conversing with the night cabmen, poor peasants of the suburbs, who have come to town with their ochre-tinted little sledges and miserable little nags in the hope of supporting themselves and collecting enough money to pay their quit-rent to their owners.
They complained that the land-holders in Georgia were prohibited from selling or leasing their possessions; that a tract containing fifty acres of the best lands was too small an allowance for the maintenance of a family, and much more so when they were refused the freedom to chuse it; that a much higher quit-rent was exacted from them than was paid for the best lands in America; that the importation of negroes was prohibited, and white people were utterly unequal to the labours requisite; that the public money granted yearly by parliament, for the relief of settlers and the improvement of the province, was misapplied, and therefore the wise purposes for which it was granted were by no means answered.
The tenant was guaranteed from increase of rent and from eviction the alienation of the property by the state being held thenceforth to affect the quit-rent only and finally he obtained full power to dispose of the land, which nevertheless remained subject to the quit-rent in whatever hands it might be.
In Dale's time had begun the making over of land in fee simple; in Yeardley's time every "ancient" colonist that is every man who had come to Virginia before 1616 was given a goodly number of acres subject to a quit-rent. Men of means and influence obtained great holdings; ownership, rental, sale, and purchase of the land began in Virginia much as in older times it had begun in England.
Word Of The Day