Office of Auditors of Land Revenue and successors: Fee Farm Rents Retained for Payment...

CRES 27

1689-20th century

This series contains later copies of the Pension Deed of 1678, by which certain fee farm rents were withheld from the general sale of such rents by the Trustees for the Sale of Fee Farm Rents, in order to leave an adequate local income for the payment of those pensions, stipends and annuities charged on the rents of the particular county. Included are 19th century overviews of the pensions payable from these rents, with the last active document dating from 1857. The early twentieth century documents are name and place indexes to the Pension Deed of 1678. Other documents include various accounts of the county receivers-general, of rents and taxes received, 1689-1709.

LRRO 8

Public Record(s)

English

9 volume(s)

Topics

Taxation

Pay and pensions

Farming

Most of these pensions, stipends, annuities and corrodies were originally paid by the monasteries, or by the chantries: when these institutions were dissolved by the Crown in the mid sixteenth century, the obligation to pay for a curate, or a schoolmaster, or for alms to the poor, passed to the Crown. Other charges were established by the Crown itself, to pay for godly preachers for example. The payment of these charges was met in each county by the county receivers of Crown land income, often from the fee farm rents for that county.

Fee farm rents provided the Crown with a fixed annual income from land which it had in fact sold. These fee farm rents were fixed annual charges, payable in perpetuity to the Crown by the owners of freehold land as had at some time been sold by the Crown with such an obligation attached to the sale. Some, but not all, of the fee farm rents were specifically related to the need to pay a stipend or pension or to fulfil a particular charitable obligation.

Between 1670 and 1673, the Crown sought to capitalize this fixed annual income by selling off the fee farm rents. However, the successful sale of many fee farm rents jeopardized the local payment of pensions, stipends, etc (see the Calendar of Treasury Books for the 1670s). As a result, the trustees for the sale of fee farm rents and the Exchequer agreed in the Pension Deed of 1678 to withhold particular fee farm rents from sale, in order to provide an adequate county income to meet the payment of the specified pensions etc.