SALE OF FEE-FARM RENTS

Comprises two small sub-series of enrolment books relating to the Crown's continuing attempts to sell the fee-farm rents that had become attached to many Crown grants from the 1530's to the early seventeenth century. Includes enrolment books of the indentures of the Trustees for the Sale of Fee-Farm Rents appointed under acts of 1670 and 1671 (22 Charles II, c 6 and 22 & 23 Charles II, c 24).

While many fee-farm rents were thus sold many were left, which consisted (in the words of the commissioners set up to look into the Crown lands in 1786) 'chiefly of very small rents, the collection and payment whereof is a great and constant charge to the Crown and troublesome and vexatious to the subject' (26 George III, c 87, section 9). The Act setting up the commission, therefore, also empowered them to sell the remaining fee-farm rents, as well as other small rents. The Act, extended and amended by 30 George III, c 50, also laid out the sale process and the form of the certificates of contract for sale. Initially these certificates of contract are in the name of the commissioners but from 1794 to 1810 they are in the name of the Surveyor General of the Crown Lands and from 1810 in the name of the Commissioners of Woods, Forests and Land Revenues (see also the acts of 34 George III, c 75, 50 George III, c 65 and for out-letters relating to the sales see CRES 24/1-3).