Trustees for Crown Lands and Fee Farm Rents: Books

SP 26

1650-1660

Records of the Trustees for Crown Lands and Fee Farm Rents, including books of contracts for the purchase of fee farm rents (permanent ground-rents payable annually), books of certificates of rates (purchase certificates, stating exact prices paid), an order book generated by the fee farm trustees, and parchment original indentures relating to the conveyance of fee farms and manorial rents to corporations or individuals. Most of the records concern the sale of fee farm rents.

The contract books state the purchaser's name in the margin and contain his signature at the foot of the contract, which locates the fee-farm and states the number of years' purchase agreed. The date of purchase usually appears in the margin of the contract.

The series was formerly known as 'Interregnum K'.

Some notes by Mrs M A E Green for a proposed calendar are in ZBOX 1/71 For certain other documents relating to the Parliamentary sale of Crown lands see also:

additional finding aid ZBOX 1/71/2 E 307 E 308 E 317 E 318 E 320 E 304

Public Record(s)

English

10 parchment membranes and volumes

Acts of Parliament created trustees for the sale of crown lands on 16 July 1649, exempting fee farm rents, and trustees for the sale of fee farm rents on 11 March 1650. 13 trustees were named for the sale of crown lands, and 25 (including the earlier 13) for the sale of fee farm rents. The later Act was modified by further legislation, 1650-1653. The lands were mostly sold by January 1656, but sales continued throughout the Interregnum. The trustees, meeting at Worcester House, London, operated as a committee and were commonly known as the Committee for the Sale of Crown Lands.