Land and Property at St Helena, 1673-1782

Tenure, Inheritance and the Settler Estate under the East India Company

A thematic study drawn from the transcribed St Helena records

Based on 8,558 recorded matters from 92 manuscript volumes

with comparisons from England, Bermuda, Barbados, the Cape and Company India

Contents ↑

A Note on the References

Introduction

Part One: How Land Was Held

1. The First Allotments, 1673-1700

2. Freehold and the Settlement of 1711-1717

3. Company Leases

4. Rents and the Rent Roll

5. Policy from London and the Law of Tenure

Part Two: The Land Itself

6. Boundaries, Surveys and Disputes

7. The Commons, Waste and Grazing

8. Water, Ways and Shared Resources

9. Wood and Timber

10. The Company's Plantation and Land

Part Three: Passing Property On

11. Sale, Conveyance and the Land Market

12. Mortgages, Bonds and Credit

13. Wills and Testamentary Practice

14. Widows and the Widow's Share

15. Orphans, Guardians and Absentees

16. Marriage Settlements and Women's Property

17. Inventories and the Value of Estates

Part Four: Slaves as Property

18. Company Slaves and Private Slaves

19. Slaves Bequeathed, Sold, Hired and Valued

20. Freedom, Land and Status

Part Five: Stock, Buildings and Taxes

21. Livestock as Property

22. Buildings, Town Houses and Improvement

23. Taxes, Head Money and Church Rates

Part Six: The People and the Record

24. The Landholding Class

25. The Registers: Record, Error and Fraud

26. St Helena Compared

27. Change over the Century

Conclusion

Key to the Manuscript Volumes

Glossary

Bibliography

Notes

A Note on the References ↑

Every statement drawn from the manuscripts carries a footnote. Each footnote gives the volume number, then the image number or range of images, then the year. A typical reference reads "067/50-52. 1756." and points to images 50 to 52 of volume 067. Those images hold the rent roll paid in October 1756. A range of images means that one document or one episode runs across several consecutive images. The image numbers are those of the digitised photographs. They are not the page or folio numbers of the bound volumes.

The volume numbers follow the transcriber's Records List of the East India Company's St Helena records. The numbers therefore do not run in date order. Volume 001 holds letters from England of 1673-1683, while volume 007 is the first register of leases and deeds, begun in 1682. The Key to the Manuscript Volumes at the end gives each volume's title and dates. It also gives each volume's reference in the British Library Endangered Archives Programme project EAP1364, under which the St Helena National Trust digitised the records.

A few images were renumbered after the earlier edition was written. Where a reference in that edition was carried forward and its image could not be matched to the new numbering, the earlier reference is kept as it stood.

The account runs to 1782. Matters after that year are cited only as later context and are labelled as such.

Quotations keep the spelling of the transcription, including its spellings of personal names and places. The same planter may therefore appear as Easthope and Eastop, or as Sich and Sech.

Introduction ↑

St Helena was a small island held by a trading company, and its land and property were shaped by that fact from the first. The Company owned the soil, granted it out, let it on lease, taxed it and registered every change of hands. The settlers bought, sold, mortgaged and bequeathed what they held under those rules. Their property was never land alone. Cattle, houses, yams, household goods and slaves were bought, valued and left by will alongside it.

The Island and the Company ↑

The English East India Company first settled St Helena in 1659 as a station for its ships on the long voyage home from Asia.¹ The Dutch took the island early in 1673, and an English force retook it in May of that year. A royal charter of 16 December 1673 then granted the island to the Company with all its soil, lands, fields, woods and rivers.² The letters patent made the Company the true and absolute lords and proprietors of the island, with full powers of government and justice.³ The same charter forbade any harm to the settlers "against any part of their goods, merchandise or estates" and made everyone born on the island a natural subject of England.⁴ A second charter of August 1685 confirmed the Company's sovereign right over its forts and plantations.⁵

The island existed to serve shipping. Its first purpose was refreshment: water, fresh meat, yams and fruit for the Company's homeward fleets and their sick crews. In 1678 the Company ordered its slaves to plant fruit trees and seeds so as to keep up a steady supply of refreshments for its ships.⁶ Private ships paid anchorage and tonnage before they might trade or take refreshment, and slave ships from Madagascar could buy the same liberty on the governor's terms.⁷ The planters' cattle and yams found their market in the garrison and the ships, and land was valued for what it could feed.

The island is small, about 10 miles long and 6 miles wide. Much of it is steep rock and barren cliff. The usable land lay in the valleys and on the higher ground of the interior. The climate there is temperate and moist, and the planters grew yams, potatoes and fruit and grazed cattle, sheep and goats. The early holdings were lots of 10 or 20 acres. A jury of 1682 accounted for 1,090 acres of private land in all.⁸ By 1772 the rent roll charged rent on 2,205½ acres of freehold and 2,311½ acres of Company leasehold.⁹

The people fell into distinct groups, and each stood in a different relation to property. Free planters held land by grant from the Company and alone could vote for island and parish officers.¹⁰ Company servants, officers and soldiers drew pay and rations, and many of them also took land on lease or bought it. Leaseholders were set apart from freeholders in law from the 1680s.¹¹ Slaves were property themselves. The Company bought slaves for its own plantation and sold others to the planters, at £12 to £14 a head in 1684.¹² From 1683 every free planter paid a yearly levy for each slave he held, because more slaves meant a larger garrison.¹³

The Company kept tight hold of the land it granted. By orders of March 1677 no land was to be alienated without the Council's consent.¹⁴ In 1679 London declared that no planter held his plantation in fee simple and that no sale might take place without the governor's licence.¹⁵ Land left waste and uncultivated was to be forfeited and granted again.¹⁶ A register of all grants, sales and transfers was ordered in 1678 to prevent fraudulent conveyances.¹⁷ These rules framed every later dealing in land on the island.

The Evidence ↑

The account rests on the records the Company kept on the island and the letters that passed between St Helena and London. The consultations of the Governor and Council recorded petitions, grants, leases, leave to sell, disputes, probate and the yearly rent day. The letters from London set the rules of tenure and answered the Council's questions. The Council's replies explained how those rules fared in practice.

Alongside these ran the registers. The registers of leases and deeds cover 1682 to 1790 in six volumes: 007, 033, 039, 042, 058 and 080. They hold the jury return of 1682, the confirmed freeholds and 21-year leases of 1711-1717, private sales and mortgages, the general re-letting of 1738 and the Company leases of the 1760s.¹⁸ Two registers of wills, volumes 008 and 054, run from 1681 to the 1790s.¹⁹ Volume 051 holds the inventories and appraisals of estates from 1744 to 1760.²⁰ The notices register, volume 060, carries the public orders from 1750, such as the call to every planter to "submit an account of their family and livestock before 20 September".²¹ The quarterly court's register, volume 072, covers 1761 to 1782.²² The vestry book, volume 087, records parish money, loans on bond and the compensation paid to owners of executed slaves.²³ The rules of the Widows and Orphans Fund of 1766, volume 081, required "every married Company servant who chose to join" to pay £5 a year.²⁴

From these sources 8,558 records have been taken out of 92 manuscript volumes. The earlier edition of this account rested on skims of 61 volumes. The fuller reading changes the picture in several places, and it corrects some figures that the earlier edition repeated from the rolls.

The yearly rent rolls of 1742 to 1772 are the backbone of the figures for rent and acreage. They list each holder with his free and lease acres and the rent he paid. The rolls are not always right, and their totals must be checked against their entries. In 1771 the total reads £825, but the entries and the cash account of September 1771 both give £625 0s 3d.²⁵ In 1772 the clerk wrote the leased acres under free land and the free acres under leased land; the rents, at 1s and 5s an acre, show the error.²⁶ In 1759 the lease total of 834 acres was only the figure carried forward from the first page.²⁷ Deeds can err in the same way. The conveyance of the late Governor Goodwin's land to Governor Powell in February 1742/3 reads £8,035 in one register, but two other copies give £835.²⁸

Coverage ↑

The evidence is not even across the period. It is strongest for the years 1740 to 1772. For those years the consultations, the rent rolls, the inventories and the wills survive together and can be read against each other.

The registers give a strong base for the earlier years. The jury return of 1682, the deeds of the 1680s and 1690s, the resurvey of 1711-1717 and the leases of 1738 survive in full in volumes 007, 033 and 042.²⁹ The wills begin in 1681.³⁰ The consultations of 1673 to 1742 rest on a lighter reading, and some matters of those years are known only from the letters and the standing orders.

The consultations end in 1773 and the letters in 1779. The quarterly court's register and the parish books run on to 1782 and beyond. Matters after 1782 appear only as later context and are labelled as such.

Arrangement ↑

The account is arranged in six Parts and a Conclusion.

Part One, How Land Was Held, covers sections 1 to 5. It deals with the Company as proprietor, the grant of freeholds, the lease and its rent, the rent roll and the rules that bound tenants. Part Two, The Land Itself, covers sections 6 to 10. It treats boundaries and surveys, the commons and grazing, ways and water, timber and the Company's own plantation.

Part Three, Passing Property On, covers sections 11 to 17. It follows sale and conveyance, mortgage and credit, wills, inventories, the estates of orphans and widows, marriage settlements and women's property. Part Four, Slaves as Property, covers sections 18 to 20. It deals with the Company's slaves and the planters' slaves, the descent of slaves by inheritance, and the line between slavery and freedom.

Part Five, Stock, Buildings and Taxes, covers sections 21 to 23. It treats livestock and household goods and houses and their improvement. It also covers the taxes, duties and church rates laid on property. Part Six, The People and the Record, covers sections 24 to 27. It turns to the landholding families, the settler economy, the registers themselves and the fraud and error found in them. The Conclusion draws these threads together.

Main Findings ↑

The first finding concerns the Company's place as proprietor. It granted freehold and let leasehold, and it kept control of both by limiting the right to sell. Freeholds were confirmed to the holders and their heirs for ever, on condition of allegiance and obedience.³¹ Every Company lease barred any disposal of the land without consent.³² Through the 1740s and 1750s planters came to the Council for leave before each sale or assignment, even of three-quarters of an acre.³³ The Company could also sell land to recover a debt owed to it, as it did with Governor Goodwin's estate in 1742.³⁴

The second finding is that the settlement of 1711-1717 and the 21-year lease at 5s an acre formed the backbone of tenure for the rest of the century. In April 1711 London found that "many people's titles were become precarious" for want of registered grants and landmarks.³⁵ The Council ordered all fenced land measured, and holders who failed to fence were "to forfeit the lands to the Lords Proprietors".³⁶ Each freehold was confirmed after notice by beat of drum, with a plan annexed.³⁷ Land held beyond the grant was let back on 21-year leases from 25 March 1711 at 4s an acre and 1s duty, 5s in all.³⁸ The general re-letting of 30 September 1738 renewed the same term and rent.³⁹ The Company still let country land for 21 years at 5s an acre in 1755 and 1766.⁴⁰

The third finding concerns the rent the Company drew from this land. Between 1742 and 1752 the rent day brought in about £320 to £370 a year.⁴¹ During those years lease rents were abated for a time to 2s 6d an acre. In December 1749 the planters were told to return to the former rents when the Court's indulgence ran out.⁴² From 1753 the roll stood at about £560 to £630 a year.⁴³ The quit-rent of 1s an acre on freehold was far higher than quit-rents elsewhere.⁴⁴ On the former French lands of St Kitts the Crown asked 6d sterling an acre in 1717.⁴⁵ Quit-rents in Jamaica, South Carolina and Pennsylvania ran at ½d to 1d an acre.⁴⁶⁴⁷ The cash taken in 1762 and the roll of 1765 fell below that range, at £509 9s 9d and £536 16s 2d.⁴⁸ The freehold charged on the roll held steady at about 2,200 acres from 1748 to 1772, while the lease acres grew from about 1,810 to over 2,300.⁴⁹

The fourth finding is a rising market in land. Early sales were cheap. In 1683 Samuel Jeffrey sold 10 acres in Fryer Valley for £5, and in 1686 Philip Savage sold 10 acres with its plantation for £8 2s 6d.⁵⁰ Across the 1680s and 1690s land sold for about £1 an acre. By 1740-1759 the usual price was about £12 an acre. In 1745 Samuel Doveton sold 11 acres in Powells Valley for £243.⁵¹ In 1747 James Powell sold Francis Wrangham 72 acres in three parcels with houses for £3,075.⁵² Appraisers in 1755 valued freehold at £6 to £9 an acre and leasehold at £7.⁵³ By mid-century improved land on the island sold at about English prices. An estimate derived from Clark's series puts English farmland at about £14 11s an acre in 1750-54.⁵⁴⁵⁵ Island land sold far above land in the mainland colonies and most of the Caribbean. Land near Charleston was worth about 9s 4d sterling an acre in 1755-59.⁵⁶

The fifth finding concerns widows. By island custom from 1680 a widow took half her husband's freehold for life.⁵⁷ A wife's release of 1748 recited that "by the law of the island a widow was entitled to half of the freehold or real estate for her lifetime".⁵⁸ The English third of the personal estate ran alongside this custom, and wills of the 1740s often gave both.⁵⁹ Some widows gave up the customary half for a child's share.⁶⁰ The Harper case of 1753 tested how leasehold stood. In April 1754 the Council accepted London's counsel that "leasehold lands were by the law of England deemed personal estate".⁶¹ The widow, through her new husband, took a third of the leasehold.⁶² Some later wills gave the widow a third of everything, slaves included.⁶³ Others still gave her half the freehold and leasehold for life, with a third of the personal estate apart from the leasehold.⁶⁴

The sixth finding concerns slaves. After cattle, slaves were the commonest movable property in the planters' estates, and often the most valuable. Richard Goddard's 20 slaves were appraised at £282 10s in 1747, beside 58 cattle at £191 10s.⁶⁵ Samuel Doveton's 21 slaves came to £335 in 1749, from £30 for a grown man down to £4.⁶⁶ Each slave could pass to a named heir, as with "Stephen to David Doveton, Frank to Samuel Doveton, and Great Jack to Rebecca Doveton".⁶⁷ Freedom too lay under Company and parish rules. The Council banned manumission in 1723 and London confirmed the ban in 1725.⁶⁸ Later wills freed slaves only if the Governor and Council allowed it.⁶⁹ In May 1759 the widow Elizabeth Davis left her slave Molly to her executor, and "as to her slave Eleanor, she gave her her freedom after her death".⁷⁰ The parish paid owners for slaves executed by law, £15 for a man named Lewis in 1765.⁷¹

Part One: How Land Was Held ↑

Every acre on St Helena began as the East India Company's property and passed to settlers only by its grant. Part One follows how that grant was made, registered and conditioned before much of it turned into leasehold. The Company's terms shaped the island's freeholds, rents and boundaries down to 1782.

1. The First Allotments, 1673-1700 ↑

The Company as proprietor ↑

The Company's title to St Helena rested on a run of royal grants. A charter of 3 April 1664 first granted the island to the Company after an earlier recovery from the Dutch and let it make laws not repugnant to those of England.⁷² After the retaking of May 1673, letters patent of 10 December 1673 made the Company "the true and absolute lords and proprietors" of the island, with full powers of government and judicature.⁷³ A further charter of 16 December 1673 itemised what passed with the grant: all the soil, lands, fields, woods and rivers.⁷⁴ A charter under the Great Seal of 31 December 1673 confirmed the grant and the Company's power to make and repeal laws for the island.⁷⁵ The Crown regranted the forts, mines, quarries and fishing rights as well, since everything found at the recapture had belonged to the Crown alone.⁷⁶

The legal form of this proprietorship was English and manorial. The Company held the island as of the manor of East Greenwich in Kent, in free and common socage, the Crown reserving only faith, allegiance and sovereignty over the inhabitants.⁷⁷ The abridged charter forbade any harm to the settlers "against any part of their goods, merchandise or estates" and declared everyone born on the island a natural subject of England.⁷⁸ Later charters of 1685 and 1686 kept sovereign right over all forts, places and plantations with the Company and renewed its power to make laws.⁷⁹

The Company therefore stood to the settlers as lord to tenant. Purchasers in the 1690s still took land "to be held of the chief lords of the fee by the services formerly done", the language of an English manor.⁸⁰ The Company in 1683 claimed all the deer on the island "as a royalty of the manor" and treated unbranded cattle on its waste as strays forfeit to the lord.⁸¹ The volume of laws kept at the fort opened with these charters, and most of what followed in it was standing law rather than individual transactions.⁸²

The first commission and instructions of 1673 ↑

The first commission after the retaking set the terms on which settlers would take land. Each planter was to have his share granted "to hold for himself, his heirs and assigns for ever under the company's common seal", so long as he performed the services required.⁸³ Each deed was to bar sale or transfer until the land had been settled by cultivation for four years.⁸⁴ A parallel copy of the instructions set the bar at one year of building and improvement, and another at seven years, so the term was not fixed in the earliest drafts.⁸⁵

The Company also stocked and fed its new planters. Each was to have a parcel set out and 2 cattle delivered free, and each family drew nine months' provisions from the Company's magazines unless its own crop sufficed sooner.⁸⁶ The old planters found on the island at the retaking recovered their houses and plantations on their former terms, their possession confirmed as it stood when the ships arrived.⁸⁷ After the nine months further provisions or cattle were charged at the 1673 rates, though bread and beef had grown dearer in London.⁸⁸

Land was bound from the start to defence. Planters were to be exercised in arms at least once in two months and to go to their posts on any alarm.⁸⁹ The commission named this as a term of the grant. "This was one of the conditions on which the company had granted the planters their lands and other accommodations."⁹⁰ House ground in the valleys could be had on request "for a fair payment", provided houses were built in order to suit the defence and after the fortifications.⁹¹

The same instructions began the island's record of title. A register was to record every grant, transfer and sale of a house or plantation "to guard against every kind of fraudulent conveyance".⁹² A second register was to record births, marriages and burials.⁹³ The governor was to send London each man's name, his land and a description of its butts and bounds.⁹⁴ The Company would then draw deeds under the common seal and return them.⁹⁵

Rules for settling land, 1677-1681 ↑

The orders sent by the Johanna in February 1677 restated these terms more firmly. All planters were to be listed under commanders and trained in arms, and the margin marked the duty "as the conditions of holding their lands".⁹⁶ The condition of service was now to be written into each deed, and no planter could sell or transfer until he or his heirs had cultivated the land for four years.⁹⁷ Ground for houses in the valleys was to be allotted by the governor and council.⁹⁸ The order added that "No houses were to be built between the forts and the sea."⁹⁹ Orders of March 1677 forbade any alienation without the council's consent and directed that no one hold more land than he could improve.¹⁰⁰

A letter of 20 February 1678 fixed the size of a full grant. Each planter taking up residence was to have 200 acres surveyed and allotted under the common seal, with timber to build houses sited for defence above the plantations.¹⁰¹ A proviso in each deed barred sale until four years of residence and improvement, a rule meant to discourage absentee holding and speculative resale.¹⁰² Within weeks the Company capped a family's allowance on the windward side at 40 acres of rough and plain ground, with plantations laid close together for mutual defence.¹⁰³ The Company also promised to buy any surplus sugar, indigo or cotton at the usual rates for the first seven years.¹⁰⁴

The rules for settling land of 26 March 1679 gathered these orders into a code. They recited the king's grant of the soil to the Company and the grants already made on condition of service, about which "doubts had arisen" over holding, enjoyment and transfer.¹⁰⁵ Everyone already holding land was to register it within six months, "recording the quantity of acres, the exact boundaries and the name of the person holding or enjoying them".¹⁰⁶ The governor was then to issue a certificate without fee.¹⁰⁷ Later grants, and every change by sale, transfer or inheritance, were to be entered in the same book within one month.¹⁰⁸

The 1679 rules also set the price of alienation and the point at which a holding became the planter's own. On every transfer "one penny an acre and no more" was payable to the Company "as chief lords of the soil", with a further fee to the register.¹⁰⁹ A planter who had held and cultivated his land for four years from first entry was reckoned to have settled it.¹¹⁰ He then held it freely to himself and his heirs and could sell or dispose of it as he pleased.¹¹¹ A married planter's widow took half his land for life, and the rest descended by will or to the next heir.¹¹²

A shorter abstract of the same month put the Company's overlordship more starkly. All lands were to be entered in a register kept by the governor or his deputy, and deserted, uncultivated land was forfeit for the Company's use.¹¹³ No planter was to hold his plantation in fee simple, and no sale was to take place without the governor's licence.¹¹⁴ The two texts sat side by side, one promising free disposal after four years and the other denying full ownership.

The laws of 10 March 1681 added a protection that ran in the settlers' favour. No one was to be deprived of his houses, goods or lands without a fair trial and the verdict of a jury of 12 men, unless a Company law provided otherwise.¹¹⁵ In 1683 the Company confirmed that where a punishment took "life, limb or land" the governor and council must proceed by jury.¹¹⁶ The same code punished anyone who forged deeds or "by any device cheated another of any lands, goods or money" with double satisfaction and the pillory.¹¹⁷ Striking the governor or mutiny forfeited all lands, tenements, goods and estate to the Company.¹¹⁸

Allotments of 10 and 20 acres ↑

The 200-acre standard of 1678 described an entitlement that the island could never have met. The grants the council actually made were of 10 and 20 acres. In January 1679 Henry Coales held 20 acres as a family holding, while John Hemmings held 10 acres as a single man and added 10 more at Woody Ridge on marriage.¹¹⁹ Two single men, Henry Francis and Daniel Collins, each held 10 acres allotted as single men and exchanged them with the council's consent in October 1678.¹²⁰ At Tompstone Wood in August 1678 the council divided 20 acres between Smoult and Williams at 10 acres each, pending others settling nearby.¹²¹

Marriage and residence earned a man his allotment. John Duffield had lived four years on the island without land or cattle, and on marrying in December 1678 he received 10 acres and a cow as a freeman.¹²² William Doveton, nearly five years resident, asked the same month for the privileges of a freeman on his marriage.¹²³ The Company formalised this in March 1680. A single man marrying on the island was to receive 10 acres more and a cow.¹²⁴ A free planter's son marrying an Englishwoman took 20 acres and a cow, or 10 acres if his father had died.¹²⁵

Freedom from service could also lead to land. James Dyce, a former servant who had gained his freedom, was granted 50 acres in June 1682 rent-free with a cow, on condition that he cleared his arrears with Frith.¹²⁶ The lot of "Black Oliver" in Fishers Valley appeared as a neighbouring holding in 1682 and was still recited as his lot land in 1713.¹²⁷ John Young, admitted a free planter, asked for 10 acres in Sandy Bay by Brockley land, and the council granted it where he desired.¹²⁸ John Downing, finding his 10 acres too little, asked for 10 more beside the children of James Castle.¹²⁹

The council kept control of where land went. In October 1680 Adulph Eden had been buying 20 acres from Thomas Smout, but the council instead granted him 20 acres on the Horse Pasture plains.¹³⁰ In March 1680 the Company ordered all plantable land not yet allotted to be surveyed, half reserved for the Company and half kept for grants.¹³¹ For every 20 acres held a planter was to maintain a man able to bear arms for the guard.¹³²

Land granted on these terms could be taken back. William Field, found guilty of repeated blasphemy, was given 30 days' notice that his 10 acres and cattle would revert to the Company.¹³³ When John Fox junior's 20 acres were disputed on his wife's son arriving from England, the council split the land and kept the timber at the Company's disposal.¹³⁴ Persons executed for robbery in 1688 forfeited their houses and land to the Company.¹³⁵

Open granting ended in March 1682. From the arrival of the Company's letter no further land was to be granted to anyone, and the governor was to collect the rents for the Company.¹³⁶ The same letter offered a single man or woman intending to settle 20 acres for 66 years at a yearly rent paid at Michaelmas.¹³⁷ By April 1684 Peter Williams, who had sold his former 20 acres, took 20 more in Sandy Bay on a 60-year lease "at the usual rents".¹³⁸ By April 1701 the council had stopped granting "because one half or more of the island was already let out".¹³⁹ The freeholds of the first decade thus formed a closed stock, and later chapters follow the leaseholds that grew up beside them.

The jury account of 26 September 1682 ↑

The fullest view of the first allotments is the account given to a jury impanelled on 26 September 1682 "of how land had been allotted and sold to the inhabitants".¹⁴⁰ Each holding was described by valley, by its abuttals on neighbours and landmarks, and by the chain of sale or exchange from the first allottee.¹⁴¹ The clerk carried a running total through 450 and 940 acres to a close of "In all: 1,090 acres".¹⁴² Some 43 entries survive for about 45 holders, though several at the head of the account are damaged.¹⁴³

Holdings whose acreage is lost or unstated (Captain Johnson, James Pickerd, John Draper, Mary Barrington, James Easthope, Sutton Isaack, William Hayre, Thomas Francombe, Benjamin Seale and Thomas Pledger) are omitted. The clerk's closing total of 1,090 acres covers them all.

The account shows how quickly the allotments had begun to move. Most lots were of 10 or 20 acres, and no holder kept more than 90. Captain Beale had built his 90 acres at the head of Waterfall Valley from four lots, 40 acres of his own allotment and 50 acres gathered by purchase and exchange.¹⁴⁴ Edmond Hooker held 50 acres in Chapel Valley from his own lot, John Boston's adjoining lot and 10 acres that had passed by gift and two sales.¹⁴⁵

Chains of title were already long. Edward Crosbey's 10 acres in Sandy Bay had passed by exchange to Robert Orcharel, by sale to John Cleverlee and by exchange to William Price.¹⁴⁶ Half of Richard Harding's lot in Fryer Valley went by sale from Harding to Thomas Goodale, Henry Webley, Francis Steward and Thomas Bolton.¹⁴⁷ The other half passed by exchange and two sales to Henry Webley.¹⁴⁸ John Cleverlee both bought and sold within Sandy Bay, keeping 30 acres and selling 10 to Francis Steward.¹⁴⁹ Mr John Wynn appears three times as a middleman, buying or exchanging lots and selling them on to Josiah Charlesworth and John Cole.¹⁵⁰

Land also moved through marriage. Henry Francis held 10 acres of Francis Wrangham's lot "by his marrying with the widow".¹⁵¹ Richard Leach held part of his allotment in Deep Valley "which he had for his wife", bounded by the Company's land.¹⁵² Henry Coales took his two 10-acre parcels in Pleasant Valley from John Duffield and John Hemmons, each of whom had held the land in right of his wife.¹⁵³ Mary, widow of Nathaniel Barrington, remained in possession of land in Saine Valley that had passed through three hands before her husband.¹⁵⁴ Sarah Harding held 30 acres her late husband had assembled from Edward Amos's lot and part of Henry Webley's.¹⁵⁵

The Company's own ground framed the private holdings. Robert Tomps's 20 acres in Sarahs Valley were bounded on the south by the Company's land.¹⁵⁶ The account named Black Slewer as the allottee of 20 acres at the head of Sharks Valley, beside Owen Ockwin's lot.¹⁵⁷ The 1682 account was in effect the first general register of private land the island possessed, compiled by a jury rather than drawn from the governor's book.

Registration and the printed deed ↑

Registration was ordered repeatedly in these years, and each order added detail. The orders of February 1677 declared that "no sale or conveyance was to be treated as valid unless it was registered, with a duplicate kept safely".¹⁵⁸ The council registered exchanges between planters from 1678, upholding the Harding and Steward exchange because Steward had built and fenced.¹⁵⁹ The six-month and one-month limits of 1679 followed.¹⁶⁰

The Company's letter of August 1683 tied registration to a printed deed. Once a planter had paid his full debt the governor was to give him "a deed in print from the company for the tenure of his lands".¹⁶¹ The deed was signed by governor and council and attested by the register with the folio of entry, and the planter paid the register 2s 6d.¹⁶² The Company sent printed blank forms for freehold deeds and leases under the common seal, the register noting the page where each was entered.¹⁶³

The same letter hardened the penalty for failing to register. Any sale, transfer, gift or division was void "as against the purchaser, inheritor or assign" unless registered within a month.¹⁶⁴ The due on registering rose to "twelve pence an acre for registering to the company as lords proprietors of the island", against 1d an acre in 1679.¹⁶⁵ Sales of houses or land were to be entered in the toll book as well, on pain of 10s.¹⁶⁶ Clandestine sales forfeited treble toll and double registration fees.¹⁶⁷

The printed deeds survive in the register of 1684. On 19 August 1684 the Company granted Owen Bevan 20 acres by John Cole's land and Lemon Valley Ridge, to him and his heirs for ever.¹⁶⁸ The grant ran "on condition that he and his successors maintain true faith and allegiance" to the king and the Company and obey the island's laws.¹⁶⁹ It was registered at folio 27 by J. Blackmore the younger, register.¹⁷⁰ Andrew Wilson, free planter, received 20 acres in Sandy Bay on the same terms three days earlier.¹⁷¹ The same formula was still being sealed in 1743.¹⁷²

Not every early grant reached a deed. James Eastings never received formal deeds, but his grant was entered in April and July 1685 in "the Grand Council Book, the only book of record then kept".¹⁷³ When he sold the land in 1694 that entry served as the "first right of title".¹⁷⁴ William Coales in 1707 had held Black Oliver's 20-acre lot quietly for 14 years, his father having bought it from the executors, the money going to Oliver's orphan.¹⁷⁵

By 1700 the register was again in question. Disputes over possession and prescription led the Company in November 1704 to order a register at the fort, signed by buyer and seller and attested by governor and council.¹⁷⁶ Every inhabitant was to declare the land he claimed.¹⁷⁷ A claim unchallenged within about six months was "to be taken as certain evidence of the property, not to be disputed in future".¹⁷⁸ The registers were to lie open for inspection without fee.¹⁷⁹ In December 1705 the council reported all alienations and mortgages entered by the clerk in the registry books.¹⁸⁰

Residence, absentees and service ↑

Residence on the island was a condition of holding land and of inheriting it. The rules of 1679 required anyone off the island who took land by transfer or inheritance to come within two years of the death and reside.¹⁸¹ Otherwise he must have the land cared for "so that every twenty acres carried at least two people and two cows".¹⁸² Failing that, the governor and council could seize it for the Company notwithstanding any earlier grant.¹⁸³ The margin called this "the resumption of lands".¹⁸⁴ An order of April 1680 made absent sons return within two years and crop 20 acres a year, or forfeit.¹⁸⁵

The same rules limited inheritance of goods to kin on the island. Intestate moveables went one third to the widow "and the other two thirds among his children on the island in equal shares".¹⁸⁶ Where no kin was resident the estate was to be kept for anyone in England admitted to administer it.¹⁸⁷ Wills of the 1680s show testators keeping within these terms. Robert Swallow in 1688 left his Chapel Valley plantation to his grandson Robert King, "to be delivered on his arrival at the island".¹⁸⁸ Richard Alexander in 1683 gave his 20 acres to his two sons at 21, with remainder to his brother in St Giles, London.¹⁸⁹

Wives often acted for absent husbands. Elizabeth Rhodes acted as wife and attorney of the absent William Rhodes.¹⁹⁰ In October 1687 she let his 10 acres at the head of Sharks Valley to John Cotgrave for 99 years at a peppercorn.¹⁹¹ Prudence Sherwin, attorney for her absent husband Thomas, sold a town house in 1694 and empowered Thomas Goodwin to sell his 10 acres for £20.¹⁹²

Service in arms remained the other condition of tenure. The 1680 letter charged a man able to bear arms on every 20 acres.¹⁹³ In August 1683 the Company found that watch every sixth night fell on each planter of 20 acres for two months a year.¹⁹⁴ It commuted the duty to a yearly rent of 40s on every 20 acres of freehold, paid to the governor.¹⁹⁵ Planters able to bear arms were still mustered and bound to attend alarms.¹⁹⁶ A register of 1711 recorded the same rate as "forty shillings for every twenty acres, which was two shillings an acre".¹⁹⁷

Land also defined political standing. Only free planters settled in their lands and inheritances could vote for island or parish officers, and lessees and officers were excluded.¹⁹⁸ However much land a man came to hold, he kept one vote only.¹⁹⁹

Early sales and prices, 1683-1705 ↑

The register of deeds begun in 1683 records the first private sales with prices. Land changed hands at low and uneven prices before 1700. Samuel Jeffrey sold about 10 acres in Fryer Valley to Henry Kersey for £5 in November 1683, forfeiting 20s if he cut any of the wood.²⁰⁰ Jasper Jaye sold his 10 acres for £8 in money and £8 in goods.²⁰¹ He reserved yams to keep himself and his wife and the right to keep 5 dozen fowls at their door.²⁰²

Sales with slaves, stock or a named mansion house included, and leases, are left out. Several prices include the crops standing on the land or a dwelling house.

Before 1700 most 10-acre lots sold for between £4 10s and £12, or roughly 10s to £1 4s an acre. The lowest price was £1 10s for 10 acres in Peak Gut in 1694, land for which the seller had never received a deed.²⁰³ At the other end, John Young's 8 acres fetched £3 in 1693 while the remaining 2 acres of the same lot fetched £6 two years later.²⁰⁴ Prices rose after 1700. James Grandy took £40 in Spanish dollars at 6s for 10 acres in November 1701, land described as "a bounty and free gift of the Right Honourable English East India Company".²⁰⁵

Land often sold with its stock, slaves and crops. Joseph Trapp sold John Goodwin 10 acres at the head of Lemon Valley, a male slave called Asher and 8 hogs for £35 in 1690.²⁰⁶ Gabriel Powell sold 20 acres in Sandy Bay with "a male slave named Oliver and a half-share in a still" for £86 in March 1703.²⁰⁷ Thomas Cole sold a mansion house and 17 acres at the head of Deep Valley for £104 in June 1705.²⁰⁸

Payment took whatever form the island had. Thomas Fewsdale sold 10 acres in Sandy Bay in 1686 for £24 sterling, 40 Spanish dollars and £14 in cattle valued by two appraisers.²⁰⁹ James Casthope sold 10 acres and a house in 1694 for £30 in island money and £20 "in store pay", by instalments.²¹⁰ John Greentree sold 20 acres in Lemon Valley for £20, "the sum being present credit in the stores".²¹¹ Arthur Bradley sold his 10-acre plantation in 1705 for 100 Spanish dollars and 2 cows with calves, keeping possession for two years.²¹²

One buyer stands out. Thomas Goodwin, gunner's mate and later deputy storekeeper, bought at least seven parcels of land between 1691 and 1703.²¹³ He also paid £130 sterling for a large house in Chapel Valley Town in 1700.²¹⁴ Thomas Harper resold 20 acres to him within about three months of buying, at a profit of £10.²¹⁵ The Goodwin family's later large holdings began in these small purchases of 10 and 20 acres.

The roll of 1703 ↑

A second roll of holdings, headed 20 February 1702/3, describes land two decades on from the jury account. Its holders were now styled corporal, soldier or free planter.²¹⁶ John Hemon, corporal, held a house and 20 acres at the head of Fishers Valley.²¹⁷ The land was the allotment of William Bishop and his wife, exchanged to Richard Leach and sold by him to Hemon.²¹⁸ Jonathan Higham, soldier, held 10 acres of Robert Orchard's lot in Sharks Valley, and "The buildings stood on the Right Honourable Company's waste lands".²¹⁹

The roll also exposed the strains of the first allotments. Land in Sharks Valley that Edward Gardener had given to William Marsh "for the use of his son Robert" had been sold by the father to two soldiers.²²⁰ On coming of age in August 1705 Robert Marsh confirmed both sales, and his father settled 10 acres, a cow, 2 heifers and a year's yams on him in return.²²¹ The roll thus carried the titles of the 1670s forward into a settled island where the original allottees had mostly died or sold.

Interpretations ↑

The early law held two ideas of tenure at once. The rules of March 1679 promised that a planter who had cultivated his land for four years held it freely and could sell it as he pleased. The abstract of the same month denied any holding in fee simple and required the governor's licence for every sale. The evidence suggested that the first described what settlers expected and the second what the Company reserved to itself. In practice the Company let land move freely among planters while keeping the register, the transfer due and the power of resumption in its own hands.

The 200-acre standard was probably never meant as a measure of what planters would hold. It read as an inducement written in London, and the council on the island allotted 10 and 20 acres from the start. The jury account of 1682 gave about 1,090 acres to some 45 holders, an average near 25 acres. That figure was far closer to the 20-acre family allotment than to the promised 200.

The speed of exchange in the jury account was striking. Within a decade of settlement most lots had changed hands at least once, by sale, exchange, marriage or gift. The four-year bar on sale appears to have been loosely kept, and the council itself registered exchanges between new allottees. The pattern probably reflected a small and shifting population. Soldiers, servants and sailors took land, married, sold up and left.

Registration served the Company as much as the planters. Each order that strengthened it also raised the due payable to the Company or tied the deed to payment of the planter's debt. The printed deed of 1683 was given only once a planter had cleared what he owed. The register was thus an instrument of revenue and control as well as a guard against fraud.

Comparisons ↑

Bermuda offered the closest model of a company colony parcelled into small shares. The Somers Isles Company had the islands surveyed by Richard Norwood in 1616-1617 and divided into eight tribes named after leading adventurers, each cut into shares of about 25 acres.²²² Bermudian shareholders were often absentees in England whose tenants farmed the land. St Helena's rules ran the other way, forcing absentee heirs to reside or stock their land on pain of resumption.

Barbados showed what happened when grants were left to the market. Early grants there were small, but by the 1650s sugar had concentrated land into large estates and squeezed out the small freeholders.²²³ The Company knew the Barbados example and cited its 50,000 slaves under 6,000 whites when lifting its ban on planters keeping slaves in 1683.²²⁴ Its rules on improvement, one man in arms to 20 acres and consent to every alienation were attempts to keep St Helena a colony of small resident holders.

The Cape began on terms close to St Helena's. In 1657 the Dutch East India Company released nine of its servants as free burghers and granted them land along the Liesbeek River. They were bound to farm it and to sell their produce to the Company.²²⁵ Like the St Helena planters, the burghers held land from a trading company that also controlled the market for what they grew. The Cape, however, soon had open land beyond the first settlement. St Helena had no such frontier, and the Company stopped granting within a decade and turned to leases.²²⁶

English manorial tenure supplied the language and some of the practice. The Company held the island in free and common socage as of the manor of East Greenwich and spoke of itself as lord of the fee. Entry of a sale in the governor's register, with a due to the lord, resembled the surrender and admission of copyholders recorded in an English manor court roll.²²⁷ English freeholders, however, faced no residence test and no bar on sale. The St Helena freehold therefore stood somewhere between English socage freehold and copyhold, owned in name but subject to the lord's register, consent and power of resumption.²²⁸ The Company's role as sovereign proprietor rather than mere landlord reflected its wider character as a company-state.²²⁹

2. Freehold and the Settlement of 1711-1717 ↑

What a Company freehold was ↑

The Company held St Helena of the Crown as of the manor of East Greenwich, in free and common socage.²³⁰ Every private acre on the island descended from that tenure. The royal grant conveyed the island to the Company with all its soil, lands, fields, woods and rivers.²³¹ The Company in turn granted out parcels to settlers. No settler held land except by such a grant, by purchase from a grantee or by descent from one.

The founding orders of December 1673 fixed the form of the grant. Each planter was to have his share of land "to hold for himself, his heirs and assigns for ever under the company's common seal".²³² The grant was conditional from the start. Planters were to be exercised in arms and to go to their posts on any alarm.²³³ This service was declared one of the conditions of their grants.²³⁴ The orders of February 1677 repeated both the grant to heirs and assigns and the condition of service, which was to be written into each deed.²³⁵

The right to sell was restricted. A deed barred sale or transfer until the land had been settled by cultivation for four years.²³⁶ The bar was briefly set at seven years, and the code later spoke of five.²³⁷ Under the rules of March 1679 a man who had held and cultivated his land for four years was reckoned to have settled it. "Such a person held the land freely, to himself and his heirs, and could sell, transfer or dispose of it as he pleased."²³⁸ The same year the Company declared that no planter held his plantation in fee simple with full ownership, and that no sale could pass without the Governor's licence.²³⁹

The island freehold was thus a grant to heirs and assigns for ever, yet hedged with duties. An absent heir had to come and reside within two years of the death, or keep "at least two people and two cows" on every 20 acres, or lose the land.²⁴⁰ In 1683 the night watch owed by freeholders was commuted to 40s a year on every 20 acres of freehold.²⁴¹ The same letter reminded the island that all lands granted remained subject to the Governor's discretion and might be resumed.²⁴² The Company sent printed deeds of tenure, signed by the governor and council and noted with the folio of entry in the register.²⁴³

The deeds of the 1680s show the form in use. In August 1684 the Company granted Owen Bevan 20 acres by Lemon Valley Ridge to him and his heirs for ever.²⁴⁴ The grant was made "on condition that he and his successors maintain true faith and allegiance".²⁴⁵ Andrew Wilson, free planter, took 20 acres in Sandy Bay on the same terms that month.²⁴⁶ Land bought from a grantee was held "of the chief lords of the fee by the services formerly done".²⁴⁷ A deed of 1701 still described a 10-acre lot as "a bounty and free gift of the Right Honourable English East India Company".²⁴⁸ Freehold also carried political weight: only free planters settled on their lands and inheritances could vote for island officers.²⁴⁹

An unsettled tenure before 1711 ↑

By 1700 the island's titles rested on a tangle of allotments, sales and exchanges. A jury impanelled on 26 September 1682 traced each holding from its first allottee through every sale, exchange and gift.²⁵⁰ Its account closed at "In all: 1,090 acres".²⁵¹ Many lots had already changed hands two or three times. Captain Beale's 90 acres, for example, were assembled from four lots by purchase and exchange.²⁵²

Formal deeds often never issued. In 1694 James Eastings sold 10 acres in Peak Gut for £1 10s, though he had never received a deed. His grant stood only in "the Grand Council Book, the only book of record then kept".²⁵³ In November 1704 the council ordered every inhabitant to declare the land he claimed in a book. A claim left unchallenged for about six months was to be taken "as certain evidence of the property, not to be disputed in future".²⁵⁴ The rule entered the consolidated laws of about 1707.²⁵⁵

These measures did not settle the matter. In November 1709 the council found register entries that seemed recent but bore old dates.²⁵⁶ It also found many lands held, bought and sold without registration, among them the Church lands and the land of John Lufkin.²⁵⁷ The Company's letter of 5 April 1711 summed up the position. Grants had not been registered, so "many people's titles were become precarious".²⁵⁸ For want of landmarks, holders had also crept beyond the acres granted to them.²⁵⁹

The consultation of 6 April 1711 and the Company's terms ↑

The council on the island acted on its own account in April 1711. Its consultation of 6 April found that since the retaking from the Dutch the inhabitants had never been fixed in their estates. The lands lay unfenced and without landmarks.²⁶⁰ It recited the order of 1703 for a new register of every parcel with its lease or deed. It also revived the old law that lands not fenced between 25 March 1709 and 25 March 1712 were forfeit: "they were to forfeit the lands to the Lords Proprietors".²⁶¹ Matthew Bazett had already measured land under the council's warrants. A separate book of plans and deeds was to be kept, with this consultation as its preamble.²⁶²

The Company's letter of 5 April 1711 set out the same programme from London. All fenced land was to be measured. A holder who proved his acres by grant, descent or purchase would receive a new grant with a plan of his buildings and bounds.²⁶³ Any surplus within his fences was to be paid for at a moderate price.²⁶⁴ Leases were to be granted with a plan of the survey and entered in the register, and the Company remitted its own duty on this occasion.²⁶⁵ Holders were to be compelled to fence and to secure their bounds, with more time for those short of slaves but no dispensation.²⁶⁶

The Company also limited the term of any lease of its own ground. It held long leases against its interest, and new leases were to run for only 21 years.²⁶⁷ The same passage described the leases as an escheatment of the inhabitants' property, though the fundamental laws of tenure were not yet to be vacated.²⁶⁸ The laws of 1679 to 1693 were to be published afresh, since many inhabitants had never heard them.²⁶⁹ A year later the Company described its letter as a settlement of "the property of the several inhabitants in particular". It had receded from its just demands and offered a general amnesty for past breaches of the laws.²⁷⁰

Confirmation by beat of drum, 1711-1714 ↑

The confirmations followed a fixed procedure. A holder's title was examined in consultation. "Notice had been given by beat of drum for any person to make a claim".²⁷¹ When no claimant came forward, the Company confirmed the land to the holder and his heirs for ever on condition of allegiance and obedience. A plan was annexed to the deed and a copy entered in the register book.²⁷² The first sealed deed, of 17 April 1711, confirmed to Jonathan Doveton 50¼ acres in three parcels, with plans drawn to a scale of 10 chains.²⁷³

The confirmations of 1711 number 14 and cover about 420 acres. Gabriel Powell took 50½ acres of cabbage tree land formerly held by John Lufkin.²⁷⁴ Henry Francis took 40 acres in three parcels of gumwood and cabbage tree land.²⁷⁵ Grace Coulson, widow, was confirmed in 30 acres and a further 10 in her own name.²⁷⁶ Matthew Bazett, the surveyor and fifth in council, witnessed his own grant of 25 acres.²⁷⁷ The deeds were not always exact. James Reder's grant stated 41 acres, but its parcels came to 33.²⁷⁸

The bulk of the work came at a single sitting. On 4 August 1713 nearly 50 deeds of confirmation were sealed at the Castle, most witnessed by Thomas Cason, Henry Francis and John Alexander.²⁷⁹ Between them they confirmed about 1,400 acres. Many of the consultations they cite are dated January to March 1714, after the sealing date, which must be a slip in the copy.²⁸⁰ A few engrossments were never completed, with consultation, sealing date and witnesses left blank.²⁸¹ The Company approved the consultations of July and August 1713 "on settling the property and titles of lands, freehold or leasehold".²⁸²

Acres are those stated in each deed. Where the parcels do not add to the stated figure, the description says so.

The confirmations recognised every kind of title. James Greentree's three parcels rested on his own purchases from John Goodwin and Edward Mashborne.²⁸³ Ripin Wills held 20 acres described as the lot land of Black Oliver, probably a freed black man who had received an allotment.²⁸⁴ William Coales's father had bought that lot from Oliver's executors, the money going to Oliver's orphan.²⁸⁵ One title rested on a trial rather than a consultation. "Powell's title rested on a trial at a court of judicature held for that purpose on Thursday 11 October 1711".²⁸⁶ He held the land in right of his wife, the widow of Jonathan Beale.²⁸⁷

Widows, orphans and absent heirs were confirmed in their own names. Elizabeth Johnson, widow, took 50 acres in Broad Bottom for herself and her late husband's heirs.²⁸⁸ The four children of James Desfountain, sons and daughters, held 40 acres jointly.²⁸⁹ The orphans of Samuel Maxwell and of Samuel Wrangham were confirmed though they were not named.²⁹⁰ John Bryan, eldest son of Edward Bryan, was confirmed in 30 acres although "John Bryan was absent from the island".²⁹¹ His 30 acres were also confirmed to Elizabeth Bowman, so the same ground was granted twice.²⁹² John Crosby's 10 acres were confirmed to take effect only on the death of his remarried mother.²⁹³

The procedure outlived the settlement. John Alexander had 10 acres in Sandy Bay with two houses confirmed in fee simple in June 1719.²⁹⁴ Samuel Jefsey's 20 acres were confirmed in 1726 on an instrument of 1718 entered at folio 22.²⁹⁵ In October 1740 Isaac Leech's 10 acres were confirmed after "Notice was given by beat of drum for any person to make a claim".²⁹⁶

Freehold paired with leasehold ↑

The settlement did not confirm all occupied ground as freehold. Land a holder could not prove by grant, descent or purchase became Company leasehold for 21 years. The first such leases were sealed on 20 July 1711. Thomas Gargen took 20 acres of gumwood land in Sandy Bay, bounded in part by his own freehold, from 25 March 1711.²⁹⁷ He paid 4s an acre and 1s duty at Lady Day, on condition of allegiance and obedience.²⁹⁸ Thomas Perkins senior took 30 acres on the same terms. His plan marked the 30 leased acres, 20 acres of free land and the land of Paul Charles's children.²⁹⁹

On 4 August 1713 the council sealed a lease beside many of the confirmations. Each ran for 21 years from 25 March 1712 or 1713, at 4s an acre and 1s duty in island money.³⁰⁰ The fences were declared the landmarks of the annexed plan and were not to be altered. No lease was to be disposed of without the consent of the governor and council.³⁰¹ One lease expressly gave the rent as 5s an acre, which settled the reading of the formula.³⁰² Robert Girling's lease of 6 acres in Peak Gut carried a "loading duty" of 5s a year instead.³⁰³

Leases at 4s an acre and 1s duty for 21 years; Girling's at 4s an acre and 5s a year duty.

The pairing could leave a small freehold inside a large leasehold. Thomas Allis was confirmed in 3 acres in Deep Valley and leased 30 adjoining acres.³⁰⁴ Orlando Bagley held 23 acres free and 40 on lease in Powell's Valley.³⁰⁵ The confirmation deeds already used the word "hired" for such Company ground. Richard Swallow's freehold was bounded by 13 acres "of Company land hired by Swallow".³⁰⁶ Gargen's own freehold lay beside "land Gurgen himself hired from the Company".³⁰⁷

Some holders lost purchased land in the resurvey. In September 1711 Thomas Allis recited that the Company had taken back 10 acres he had bought from John Hemwood. It had granted him 10 acres of gumwood ground instead.³⁰⁸ The Company also allowed a lease of cleared waste to carry a right of renewal. Governor John Roberts had such a right on one acre in James Valley, "for the encouragement of others to undertake similar improvement of the island".³⁰⁹

The two kinds of land then travelled together through the registers. In November 1723 Walter Morris assigned both his 1713 freehold of 10 acres and his 1713 lease of 1½ acres to Captain Goodwin.³¹⁰ In 1725 John Bagley junior sold 16 acres of free land and a leasehold "held by assignment of a Company lease of 4 August 1713".³¹¹ Charles Steward's will of December 1714 left "the freehold and leased land" to his executors to sell or divide.³¹² Francis Steward in 1718 left "five acres of land hired from the East India Company" beside 10 acres of free land given by his father.³¹³

The Company as buyer and seller of freehold ↑

The Company bought freehold back when it suited. In 1683 it told the council to buy in Mr Knowles's plantation next to its own land, or to give him other land in exchange.³¹⁴ In June 1707 John Lufkin, free planter, sold the Company a house and 30 acres next to its main pasture for £350 in English money.³¹⁵ Walter Belward sold his 10 acres in Sandy Bay "to the Lords Proprietors".³¹⁶ The Company bought 30 acres from Leonard Hunt and 60 from William Marsh, then sold all 90 to Jonathan Doveton.³¹⁷

London disliked these purchases. In May 1712 it complained that the Governor had bought so many plantations that families had left the island. A lord of the manor did not buy his tenants' lands. The Governor was to buy no more and to sell those he had bought, since private men husbanded farms better.³¹⁸ In March 1713 it forbade the council to buy land or plantations by bills.³¹⁹ It also complained that the purchase of Mr Bazett's land was entered without the price for every acre.³²⁰

The council therefore resold. On 1 August 1712 it sold Belward's former 10 acres to Robert Bell, mason, for 200 dollars, "on the same conditions as all other freehold land was held".³²¹ Yet buying in did not stop. On 22 December 1714 George Carne assigned back to the Company, for £150, the 30 acres of gumwood confirmed to him 16 months before.³²² The land bordered the Company's great plantation.³²³ In 1716 the Company bought half of Captain Beale's town ground with a house beside its storehouse for £31 10s.³²⁴ A town lot granted in fee to Governor Roberts in 1711 was later bought back from him in London for £15.³²⁵

Outright sales of Company freehold followed orders from London of 30 December 1723. In August 1724 the council sold Ensign William Slaughter 10 acres called Griff's Land for £65. He paid £30 down and gave bond for £35.³²⁶ In April 1726 John Coulson bought 40 acres called the Hutts in the East Division for £190.³²⁷ In October 1727 Richard Goodwin bought the land called Carne's Gut for £65.³²⁸ The Company reserved the right to draw water there at all times, "sufficient to supply the Honourable Company's cattle".³²⁹ In November 1727 John Alexander, second in council, bought Hutton's land for £190.³³⁰ It held 30 acres by confirmation and 31 by plan.³³¹ Company freehold in these deeds sold at between about £4 15s and £6 10s an acre.³³²

Later sales were smaller and often to officials. In November 1738 John Bazett bought 21 acres at Woody Ridge for £30.³³³ The same month Governor Goodwin granted himself a town lot with a brewhouse for 15s.³³⁴ In 1744 a later governor, Powell, surrendered a deed for 3 acres above the Company's plantation. Two planters judged that clearing it "might open salt springs to the detriment of the water supplying the shipping".³³⁵ The Company still bought where it needed ground. In December 1755 it paid Simon Whaley's orphans £3 for 1⅔ acres to give its cattle a way to water, "it being free land".³³⁶ In August 1773 it offered 25 acres at Lavandy Valley and 23 acres called Perkins for sale by private treaty.³³⁷

The quit-rent on freehold and free land on the rent rolls ↑

Freehold paid a yearly charge from early on. The registering due of 1683 was 12d an acre, payable "to the company as lords proprietors of the island".³³⁸ The account of revenues to 25 March 1716 set a yearly duty of 12d an acre on all land, with head money on slaves. The total came to £124 15s 4d.³³⁹ By 1727 the island's revenues from "the duties on the free land, the rent of the lease land and the yearly payments for cattle and slaves" were £554.³⁴⁰

From 1742 freehold sold by the council carried a written quit-rent of 1s an acre. The occasion was the estate of the late Governor John Goodwin, sold to make good what he had taken of the Company's property. At the auction of 10 August 1742 George Gabriel Powell, the new governor, bought most of the land.³⁴¹ The bills of sale bound each buyer to pay the Company "a yearly rent of 1 shilling an acre each Michaelmas".³⁴² Francis Wrangham senior took 32½ acres for £204 0s 7½d on these terms.³⁴³ His deed of the same month gives the land as 22½ acres and the rent as due on 25 March.³⁴⁴ Samuel Doveton bought 24 acres for £295, "yielding and paying yearly to the Company a rent of one shilling an acre on the feast of St Michael the Archangel".³⁴⁵

Powell bought 69 acres in the West Division and 20 acres called Longs for £835.³⁴⁶ The deed also entered at 042/147-148 reads £8,035 and is crossed out. That figure is wrong: two other entries of the same conveyance read £835.³⁴⁷ The third entry gives 49 and 70 acres instead of 69 and 20, which also looks like a misreading.³⁴⁸ In February 1743 Powell, as Governor, granted himself 3 acres of waste for £3 at the same quit-rent.³⁴⁹ The council sold a dead soldier's 1¼ acres at Oatery to Samuel Knipe for £25, at a quit-rent of 1s at Michaelmas.³⁵⁰

The annual rent rolls show how much land was free. The roll of October 1745 gave 2,109½ acres of freehold and 1,813¼ of leasehold. Its rents fit 1s an acre on free land and 2s 6d on lease land.³⁵¹ From 1748 to 1772 the free land stood at about 2,200 acres in every roll whose total can be trusted. Leasehold, by contrast, grew from about 1,800 acres to more than 2,300.

Section 4 gives the free and lease acreages of every rent roll from 1742 to 1772.

Several clerks' totals did not agree with their entries. The roll of 1759 gave 2,676 acres of free land, but the figure rested on a misread holding.³⁵² The roll of 1771 was headed £825 0s 3d, though its pages carry to about £625. The cash account received "30 September 1771, rents, £625 0s 3d".³⁵³ A game order of 1753 ranked free land at twice the worth of lease land. It bound anyone holding less than "10 acres of free land or 20 acres of lease land from the Company".³⁵⁴

Forfeiture, escheat and the ruling on inheritable freehold ↑

Freehold could be lost in several ways. A man who struck the governor forfeited "all his lands, tenements, goods and estate".³⁵⁵ In 1688 men executed for robbery were summoned to surrender their estates, and their houses and land passed to the Company.³⁵⁶ The widow Grace Coulson kept her executed husband's 30 acres in Rappot Valley only by paying £6 and £2 a year.³⁵⁷ In 1698 John Nichols sought to recover 10 acres of his father's land confiscated in 1688 for a debt to the Company.³⁵⁸

The settlement of 1711 eased some of these penalties. The Company set aside the seizure of Mr Hodgkinson's land, held for orphans, on condition the fencing law was obeyed.³⁵⁹ It granted the widow Mercy Alexander a lease of her husband's seized lands.³⁶⁰ Debt to the Company remained a ground for seizure. Governor Goodwin's freehold was sold in 1742 "to make good his embezzlement".³⁶¹ In October 1754 the council sold Richard Gurling's 10 acres called Vaughans, since he had died intestate.³⁶² It acted under "the authority the Company had given them to deal with the estates of anyone who died without leaving a will".³⁶³

The island's freeholders still needed leave to sell. In December 1752 Desfountain, intending to go to India, asked leave to dispose of 23½ acres of freehold, and it was granted.³⁶⁴ Freehold had not become freely alienable: even an emigrant had to ask. The attorneys of Gabriel Stewart, an absent native, likewise sought leave in 1754 to sell his 9 acres of freehold at auction.³⁶⁵ John Goodwin asked the same leave in 1757 when "He was selling all his effects on the island".³⁶⁶ Elizabeth Desfountain had leave in 1770 to sell 25½ acres of her freehold at public auction.³⁶⁷ An unregistered deed of gift of freehold was set aside in 1754 as void.³⁶⁸

The clearest statement of what the old grants meant came from the Company's solicitor, John Smith. He answered a letter of the council of 25 October 1779 on Captain Richard Beale's estate.³⁶⁹ Matthew Bazett had argued that all private land on the island was personal property. Smith rejected this.³⁷⁰ Under the commission of 19 December 1673 planters had received land under the common seal "to them and their heirs for ever" for dues and services. Such land descended to heirs as inheritable freehold.³⁷¹ The Company had since bought back or taken by forfeiture many estates. It had let parts of its own land on leases for years, which passed to executors as personal estate.³⁷² The title deeds were to show which kind Beale had held.³⁷³

Smith also restated the old rule for absent heirs. If Anthony Beale was heir at law, he had to come and live on the estate within two years of his uncle's death. "He would have to ensure that every 20 acres of the land carried two inhabitants and two cows."³⁷⁴ Otherwise the land was forfeit to the Company under the regulations of March 1680.³⁷⁵

A later case, from 1798, shows escheat at work after the period. John Fabiano had left a house and a slave to Tellan for life, then to her son Billy and his heirs for ever.³⁷⁶ Billy, apparently illegitimate, died intestate and childless in his mother's lifetime. His future interest escheated to the Company as lords of the island, which might keep it or grant it as it chose.³⁷⁷ The solicitor advised regranting by kinship and need, with compensation between the two claimants.³⁷⁸

Interpretations ↑

The settlement of 1711-1717 was probably a bargain struck from weakness on both sides. The Company had no secure record of who held what, and the inhabitants had no secure deeds. The evidence suggested that the Company gave up its claim to land taken beyond the old grants. In return it fixed a boundary around freehold and drew the rest into leasehold at a rent.

The freehold confirmed in 1711-1713 came to about 1,750 acres in the surviving deeds, once the deeds that confirm the same ground twice are set aside. The rent roll of 1745 gave 2,109½ acres of free land. Most freehold on the rolls therefore traced back to those confirmations, with the sales of the 1720s and 1740s making up much of the rest. After about 1745 the figure barely moved for nearly 30 years. Freehold had probably become a closed stock, enlarged only by small sales of waste and town ground.

That closure helped to make freehold valuable. Land sold in 1700-1719 fetched a median of about £3 13s an acre, and in 1740-1759 about £11 15s. In 1752 the council told London that land and leaseholds "they had sold for much more lately than ever it did".³⁷⁹ A sworn valuation of 1754 rated freehold at three to seven times the value of leasehold on the same estate.³⁸⁰

The island freehold remained a conditional estate throughout. It needed leave to sell, an entry in the register and a quit-rent at Michaelmas. It could be resumed for debt, crime or absence. Smith's ruling of about 1780 confirmed that it was inheritable. It did not make it free of the lord.

Comparisons ↑

In England the line between freehold and copyhold turned on the manor court. A copyholder held by entry on the court roll and paid fines and heriots at the lord's will or by custom. A freeholder owed little beyond a fixed quit-rent.³⁸¹ St Helena's freehold sat between the two. It was granted in socage to heirs for ever with a quit-rent, as an English freehold was. Yet it passed only by licence and entry in a register kept by the lord, as copyhold did. The Company's own phrase was apt: in 1712 it reminded the Governor that a lord of the manor did not buy his tenants' lands.³⁸² At Laxton the manor court still regulated holdings and transfers in the eighteenth century, though without the forfeiture for absence known on St Helena.³⁸³ Thirsk's volume for 1640-1750 traces the steady conversion of copyhold and leasehold to freehold in England, the reverse of the island's direction.³⁸⁴

Prices for land give a second measure. St Helena freehold sold at a median of about £1 2s an acre in 1680-1699, £3 13s in 1700-1719 and £4 17s in 1720-1739. English land cost much more. An estimate derived from Clark's rent series and Locke's rule of 20 years' purchase puts English farmland at about £8 18s an acre in the 1690s.³⁸⁵³⁸⁶ A like estimate from Clark's rents and his rate of return on land gives about £12 7s in 1725-29.³⁸⁷ These are estimates derived from Clark's series, not prices paid, and the rents behind them include tithe. Colonial land was far cheaper. The Pennsylvania proprietor sold land at £5 for 100 acres in the 1680s, about 1s an acre.³⁸⁸ In 1732 the proprietors raised the price to £15½ for 100 acres.³⁸⁹ Land near Charleston in South Carolina was worth $1.25 an acre in 1720-24, about 5s 8d sterling at the rate stated by the source.³⁹⁰ In Jamaica 1,000 acres of unsettled land "may be worth at present about £400 sterl." in 1709, or about 8s an acre.³⁹¹

Only good West Indian sugar land matched the island. The former French lands of St Kitts were expected in 1714 to rise to "3, 4, or 5l. per acre, which last ... is more than was ever given there before".³⁹² In 1717 the highest bidders there offered no more than £6 an acre, "excepting only Col. Codrington, who has offered £8 pr. acre".³⁹³ Before 1740 St Helena land thus sold well above colonial prices and below English ones. It fetched about what new sugar land fetched on St Kitts.

Bermuda offers the nearest company parallel. Its land was divided among the shareholders of the Somers Isles Company, and most inhabitants farmed as tenants of absent adventurers. Only after the Company's charter was annulled in 1684 did Bermudians come to hold their land outright.³⁹⁴ St Helena's company kept its lordship, so its settlers never made that passage.

Barbados settled its disputed titles in a bargain much like that of 1711-1713. In 1663 the Crown confirmed the planters in their lands and extinguished the proprietary claims of the Carlisle patent. The planters in return granted a duty of 4½ per cent on exports.³⁹⁵ In both places confirmation of title was bought with a permanent revenue to the lord.

At the Cape the Dutch East India Company granted freehold, "eigendom", to free burghers near Cape Town from 1657. From about 1714 it ceased to grant freehold on the frontier and issued loan farms instead. These were held at an annual recognition fee and could in principle be resumed.³⁹⁶ The timing matched St Helena closely. Both companies fixed a core of old freehold in the 1710s and let further land only on terms that kept their own title.

In Company India the same instinct appeared at Bombay. There the Company confirmed existing holders in their land in the 1670s in return for a fixed yearly payment, treating itself as sovereign landlord.³⁹⁷ St Helena's quit-rent and its confirmations by beat of drum belonged to that wider practice of corporate lordship.

3. Company Leases ↑

The 21-year lease and its beginnings ↑

The Company lease was the form in which most new ground on St Helena passed into private hands after 1710. Freehold had been granted in the first decades of settlement, but from the resurvey of 1711 the Company let its land rather than gave it. A planter of the mid-eighteenth century usually held a core of freehold inherited from the first settlers and a ring of leasehold taken from the Company's waste around it. In 1745 the rent roll counted 2,109½ acres of freehold and 1,813¼ acres of leasehold among about 70 holders.³⁹⁸ Few of the larger estates were wholly of one tenure.

The earliest leases were experiments. In March 1682 the Company offered a single man or woman 20 acres for 66 years, the rent payable yearly at Michaelmas.³⁹⁹ Peter Williams, having sold his first 20 acres, took 20 more in Sandy Bay in April 1684 on a 60-year lease "at the usual rents".⁴⁰⁰ By August 1683 the records already distinguished a "leasor" holding by lease from a planter holding by grant.⁴⁰¹ The Company sent printed blank forms for freehold deeds and leases under its common seal, the Governor and Council signing as witnesses.⁴⁰² Some ground was held more loosely still. Praise Pledgerd held 10 acres at the Woody Ridge "on hire from the Right Honourable Company" when he made his will in November 1697.⁴⁰³

Two pressures pushed the Company towards letting. By 1701 the Council had stopped granting because "one half or more of the island was already let out".⁴⁰⁴ The Company ordered all land it did not need let to deserving settlers.⁴⁰⁵ The order was repeated in April 1705, so that provisions might be cheaper.⁴⁰⁶ The Company also wished to keep control of the soil. In April 1711 it held that its land should not be let for long terms and directed that new leases run for only 21 years.⁴⁰⁷ The Council resolved at about the same time that no lease should exceed 21 years and that all titles be produced and registered on measurement.⁴⁰⁸ Some long terms survived. Paul Charles obtained a grant for 99 years after the expiry of John Toster's 21-year lease in 1706.⁴⁰⁹

The resurvey turned informal hire into formal lease. In June 1711 Henry Francis took 25 acres of gumwood land for 21 years from Lady Day 1711, at 4s an acre and 1s duty payable at Lady Day.⁴¹⁰ On 4 August 1713 the Governor and Council sealed about 30 such leases in a single sitting, most running from Lady Day 1712 or 1713.⁴¹¹ They ranged from Stephen Lufkin's single acre near Peak Gut to Orlando Bagley's 40 acres in Powell's Valley and Mary Hoskison's 38 acres at the head of Lemon Valley.⁴¹² The rent formula was sometimes written loosely, but Mary Conaway's lease of December 1713 put it plainly as 4s an acre and 1s duty, "making five shillings per acre in all".⁴¹³ The 21-year term at 5s an acre in all remained the standard for the rest of the century. In 1742 the Council read again the Company's direction that its lands were not to be let for more than 21 years.⁴¹⁴

The forms of the lease, 1711-1790 ↑

The covenants grew longer as the Company tried to make its tenants plant wood and fence. The 1711-1713 leases bound the tenant to allegiance and obedience, to leave the fences in repair and not to alter "the fences that serve as landmarks of the annexed plan".⁴¹⁵ No lease could be disposed of without the consent of the Governor and Council. From 1717 the tenant was also to keep up the number of trees and plant 10 fruit trees an acre inside the fences, plantains and figs not counted.⁴¹⁶ The improving leases for lives of 1719 required the tenant to plant one acre in every 10 with timber, set lemon trees inside all fences and keep the ground from running out.⁴¹⁷

The leases of the 1720s added hedges and the plan. Gabriel Powell's lease of 1721 bound him to preserve the existing trees and replant threefold on failure.⁴¹⁸ Richard Mason was to plant a hedge in 1724 that would "mark the violence of the high and blowing winds".⁴¹⁹ The form of 1726 moved the rent day to Michaelmas, charged double duty on any part left unfenced and made the plan settle any dispute over bounds.⁴²⁰ From 1729 the tenant had to fence within 12 months of the start of the term on pain of double rent.⁴²¹ John Thwaites took 8½ acres in 1730 "solely for growing and increasing timber", under a £30 penalty, with no hogs, goats or cattle to be turned in.⁴²²

The long form of 1731-1738 was the fullest statement of the country lease. It opened with a preamble that grazing and distilling had destroyed the island's wood, so that every lease must carry its own share of timber.⁴²³ Samuel Doveton's lease of 27½ acres in Sandy Bay, sealed on 30 September 1738, set out the whole.⁴²⁴ He was to keep his fences on pain of double rent and plant a tenth with redwood, gumwood or cabbage tree. Gates 4 feet wide were to stand on footpaths, and "a gate eight feet wide between post and post was to be erected at each end" of a cartway. The Council could alter roads at the Company's charge, watercourses were to be kept free and fruit trees planted 20 feet apart inside the fences, with furze outside. An inspector sent on complaint could punish neglect by forfeiture, double rent or a fine. The tenant gave a bond of £10 an acre to the Lords Proprietors for performance.⁴²⁵

A shorter form replaced it on most leases sealed in the general re-letting of 1738. Governor John Goodwin's own lease of 9½ acres shows its terms.⁴²⁶ He was to keep buildings and fences in repair and plant a tenth with wood. Furze was to grow along the fences, with apple, lemon, mulberry or peach trees within. He was not to encroach on ground kept for yams, which the long form had ignored. In 1744 a trust form for executors required only that the ground and fences be kept in good heart and the standing trees kept and more planted.⁴²⁷ From 1745 to 1748 the form demanded a sound wall fence at once, the full share of wood and furze about the fences.⁴²⁸ Some cabbage tree leases of 1744-1745 were made subject to the Company's approval and reserved the timber to it.⁴²⁹ The leases of the 1759 re-letting returned to the tenth in wood, furze and fruit trees, sparing yam ground.⁴³⁰

The rents are the rates written in the leases; abatements and the rent roll are treated in section 4.

The general re-lettings of 1738 and 1759 ↑

Leases fell in together because they had been granted together. The terms sealed in 1713 and 1717 ran out in the 1730s, and the Council chose to relet much of the island's leasehold at once. Some 60 leases were sealed on 30 September 1738, covering about 830 acres.⁴³¹ Nine of them were for three lives and 10 were taken by executors in trust for widows and orphans. Adjoining lots of 9½ acres went that day to Governor Goodwin and his neighbours Charlesworth Powell, Martin Harper and Charles Steward. They were probably a single tract divided equally.⁴³² The governor took his lot on the common terms.

The re-letting recognised the quality of the ground. Francis Wrangham's 20 acres were charged £4 a year rather than £5, since much was barren rock.⁴³³ Edward Bagley paid on 30 of his 39 acres, "much being barren and stony".⁴³⁴ Thomas Greentree took 31 acres for three lives at 4s an acre. His rent was reduced because he gave up an older cheap lease of 20 acres with a year or more to run.⁴³⁵ The clerk left some entries unfinished. A lease to James Vaughan was entered with the acreage blank and a term of 31 years, perhaps a slip for 21.⁴³⁶

The register shows the Council's care for its records breaking down within a few years. In February 1745 it found that the Company's letter of 17 April 1741 forbade leases above 21 years, yet the lease book held leases on lives and some for 99 years.⁴³⁷ Worse, "the planters had sold their leases one to another and seldom made any assignment or registered them". All leaseholders were ordered to bring their leases to the secretary's office. An abstract was taken of every lease and the originals returned.⁴³⁸ The Company in turn capped the secretary's fee at one guinea for a lease or a bill of sale.⁴³⁹

The second general re-letting followed when the 1738 terms expired. Leases were renewed from 12 October 1759 and sealed in two sittings on 8 and 12 November 1759.⁴⁴⁰ About 49 leases covering some 570 acres were entered in the register.⁴⁴¹ The Council renewed the leases expiring on 11 October "upon the parties paying one year's ground rent".⁴⁴² Lists of renewals by division followed through October and November, and the executed leases were signed in batches.⁴⁴³ Many went to executors and guardians. Margaret Harper, widow and executrix, took 9½ acres with her son and Samuel Alexander "who together with Margaret were joint guardians of and for his orphans".⁴⁴⁴

Leases for lives ↑

A lease for lives ran for the life of the longest liver of three named persons, the nominees. It was rarer than the term of years but held a distinct place. In 1716 the Company allowed leases for three lives where the tenant made "some considerable or expensive improvement, such as buildings".⁴⁴⁵ Samuel Price took 20 acres at the head of Manatee Bay on these terms in April 1717. He was to build a house at once, fence within 20 months leaving a drift way and plant 10 fruit trees an acre.⁴⁴⁶ The lease was not to be sold "to anyone who already possessed thirty acres of land upon the island". Widows with children held only during widowhood, so that land would not pass to a second husband and be "embezzled".

The fine for a new life soon fell. Price's lease required a year's rent at each admittance.⁴⁴⁷ Antipas Tovey's lease of February 1719 asked only half a year's rent for each new life, and this became the rule.⁴⁴⁸ The register of 1719 closes with nine blank engrossments of the standard lease for lives, prepared for a programme that was not completed.⁴⁴⁹ The fine was still being taken in the 1760s and 1770s. Richard Beale the younger paid "the customary fine of half a year's rent for each new name" in May 1763.⁴⁵⁰ James Greentree paid £4 10s for two nominees in a lease of 18 acres in 1767.⁴⁵¹ Variations occurred. Richard Goodwin paid a full year's rent as "the customary fine for renewing two lives" in 1745, and Purling and Beale paid a fixed £2 2s in 1749.⁴⁵²

The naming of lives reveals the purposes these leases served. Most tenants named their own family. Thomas Greentree named himself, his wife Elizabeth and his brother Richard in 1738.⁴⁵³ Francis Wrangham's town plots were let on the lives of his children James, William and Frances.⁴⁵⁴ Others named neighbours or friends. John Brown, surgeon, held half an acre in James Valley on the lives of John Desfountain, Matthew Purling and Thomas Greentree.⁴⁵⁵ Thomas Cason's lease of 1718 named the family of William Worrall, to whom he assigned it weeks later, so that the lives were chosen for the buyer.⁴⁵⁶ An executor might keep a lease alive for an estate. Goodwin, executor of Edmund Nicholls, put Martin Harper and Matthew Bazett into a lease of 1719 in place of two dead nominees in 1744.⁴⁵⁷

The Company grew uneasy about leases it could not end. In May 1744 Powell sought to assign 18 acres held for three lives at only 1s an acre, though part of the same land had been let to him at 5s.⁴⁵⁸ The Council refused without the Company's approval. Wright was told in 1745 that his lease must "stay as it was until the state of such leases was laid before the Company".⁴⁵⁹ The Court of Directors answered by protecting the sitting tenants. It advised renewing all leases on lives "on the old terms and conditions" to make the holders "quiet and easy in the possession of their property".⁴⁶⁰ In 1756 the Governor ruled that Wrangham's lease upon lives was not forfeited for want of a signed counterpart. The Company was "too indulgent to their tenants to take any advantage of them".⁴⁶¹

The Company finally forbade new leases for lives in 1769. In May that year Thomas Kirkpatrick asked to renew a lease for lives of 12 acres he had lost.⁴⁶² The register showed every nominee dead and none added. Since "the Company had also forbidden any further leases for lives", the Council gave him a lease of 21 years at 5s an acre. Living leases were still renewed by new nominees. James Greentree put his sons James and Walter in place of two dead lives in April 1769, and paid £11 3s 6d for three lives in two leases in July.⁴⁶³ In 1782 John Bagley senior was allowed to part with 21 acres of a lease for lives, and the occupiers took new 21-year leases of their portions.⁴⁶⁴

Leases in trust for widows and orphans ↑

The lease became a means of family provision. Executors took Company leases in trust for a dead planter's family, and the Council wrote the terms of the will into the lease. On 30 September 1738 the executors of John Burling took 2½ acres in trust for his widow and three sons.⁴⁶⁵ The widow had "one third ... for as long as she lived within the term of the lease" and the sons two thirds. Three leases put 55 acres in trust for the widow and six children of John Alexander, gentleman.⁴⁶⁶ Children already provided for were left out. James Greentree's trust excluded his executor son Thomas and his married daughter Elizabeth.⁴⁶⁷

A lease could be shaped to carry out a will in detail. Burling's 34 acres in Sandy Bay were let for three lives. His eldest son Matthew was to take possession at 21 or marriage, "as part of his share of his father's estate rather than as anything additional".⁴⁶⁸ Bridget Bazett, widow, took 20 acres near Diana's Peak in 1731 "for the joint benefit of herself and her children", the land to descend in equal shares after her death.⁴⁶⁹ The Council treated an orphan's claim as strong. A rule of September 1724 gave the lawful heirs or children first claim to a waste-land lease that fell in on the lessee's death.⁴⁷⁰ When a stepfather asked in 1717 to have writings remade in his own name, the Council kept them in the children's names, "as usual".⁴⁷¹

Trust leases recur in every later run of the register. Charles Steward's executors took three parcels in trust for his children in March 1745.⁴⁷² John Bazett's four executors held five parcels for his orphans between 1744 and 1748.⁴⁷³ In 1759 guardians took 19 acres "for and on behalf of John Goodwin, a minor".⁴⁷⁴ The 1763 rent roll carried 16 entries in the names of orphans, the Colgrave orphans paying the largest sum.⁴⁷⁵ Executors often sold an orphan's lease rather than hold it. Robert Gurling's 13 acres were auctioned for his orphans in 1746, and John Bazett's executor sold 23½ acres "for the benefit of the orphans" in 1758.⁴⁷⁶ Whether such leasehold passed to the widow as personal estate was settled in 1754 and is treated in section 5.⁴⁷⁷

Town plots and building leases ↑

In James Valley the Company let ground by the foot of frontage rather than by the acre. The earliest town lease in the register, of 1728, gave John Goodwin a strip 6 feet in front and 80 feet deep beside the Reform House for 21 years at 6s.⁴⁷⁸ Joseph Whaley's plot of 1727, 35 feet in front, bound him "not damage the watercourses or drains under the side of the hill".⁴⁷⁹ In 1737-1738 the householders at the Fort took back yards behind their houses at rents of 10s 6d to 19s.⁴⁸⁰ Jonathan Doveton's rent was held at 19s because he had cleared ground and turned the watercourse at the Governor's request, at a cost "more than the small parcel was worth".⁴⁸¹

Building leases followed in the 1740s as soldiers and craftsmen settled in the town. Nathan Sample took a plot 50 feet by 60 with the house he had built for 21 years at 2s 6d in 1742.⁴⁸² He was to "surrender in good order and repair all such buildings or edifices" at the end of the term.⁴⁸³ A run of plots on the Southwark side was let in 1746 to Andrew Blinman, Gabriel Isaack, John Scott, Richard Tinsley and James Pritchard at 5s to 15s a year.⁴⁸⁴ Lieutenant John Barton's lease of 1747 required him to build a footbridge across the water course "strong enough to carry foot passengers safely".⁴⁸⁵ Each grant followed a view by councillors, who reported the ground "in no way harmful to the Company or the neighbourhood".⁴⁸⁶

The building leases of 1758 fixed the line of the street. John Legg took 47 feet of frontage at 15s, "the house to stand in a straight line in front with the other houses on both sides".⁴⁸⁷ Corporal Gilbert Clough and the quarter gunner John Jacky took plots of 60 feet beside him.⁴⁸⁸ In 1764 the Council let the strip behind six houses whose yards were very small. It judged that "the land served no purpose for the Company but would be of real value to the petitioners".⁴⁸⁹ The six leases were measured by frontage and depth, from Martha Scott's 19 feet by 110 at 12s 5d to Warling's 37 by 108 at £1 4s 2d.⁴⁹⁰ The rents worked out at about 8d a foot of frontage. Later plots were cheaper. The Lieutenant Governor let Captain Henry Bazett 18 feet of frontage in 1769 "at 3d a foot, 4s 6d a year".⁴⁹¹ John Price took ground 80 feet in front at £1 in 1766, and James Goudy and George Bird took plots at 10s and 15s in January 1767.⁴⁹²

The Leases Register of 1766-1790 shows the town plots renewed in turn. When the 1764 back strips expired, John Goodwin took 22 feet by 101 and Lieutenant Richard Knipe 19 feet by 110 in January 1787, at the rents of 1764.⁴⁹³ Captain John Torbett paid £2 5s in 1788 for a plot 45 feet by 100 by the Company's Black House. Being allowed to cut the trees standing there, he "had to plant and raise three trees in place of those he was allowed to cut down".⁴⁹⁴ Later entries in the same register, after 1800, charged encroachments beyond the leased frontage at 6d a foot.⁴⁹⁵

Waste let after a view ↑

Much leasehold was taken in small pieces from the Company's waste beside a planter's own ground. A petition was referred for viewing, and the councillors or the Lieutenant Governor reported whether letting it would harm the Company or the neighbours. Viewing came before any letting of waste.⁴⁹⁶ John Goodwin asked in 1744 to be admitted tenant of about 3 barren acres "at an easy rate for the convenience of fencing".⁴⁹⁷ Dixon and Purling reported the ground no prejudice, and he had it at 1s an acre because "it would save a great length of fence".⁴⁹⁸

Rents were graded by the quality of the ground. Matthew Purling's waste near the Ridge House was let at 1s an acre "on account of its being rocky and barren".⁴⁹⁹ His later warren was let at 7s an acre in 1758.⁵⁰⁰ Isaac Knipe had 4¼ acres at 2s "because it was but very indifferent land".⁵⁰¹ In 1767 Lieutenant Governor Corneille called Mary Twaits's 4 acres "the most barren piece of leased land he ever saw on the island", and her rent was cut to 1s.⁵⁰² The Council used the same views to settle rival claims. In 1768 it divided the waste at Woody Ridge sought by Matthew Bazett and John Desfountain, giving one his fencing and the other water, at 1s 6d an acre.⁵⁰³ Purling divided other waste among Young, the Gurling orphans and Whaley, whose land met it.⁵⁰⁴

Leases of waste were refused where they hurt the Company or the commons. A plot sought by Simon Whaley in 1769 lay too close to Plantation House.⁵⁰⁵ In November 1768 the Council resolved never to lease any part of the barren commons improved by grass sown at public expense.⁵⁰⁶ To do so would be "a great injustice to the people whose labour went into improving it".⁵⁰⁷ The Company had told the Council in 1768 to settle such disputes "for the general benefit of the inhabitants", without referring them home.⁵⁰⁸ Yet in 1766 it had let John Alexander a small common of 30 to 40 acres for 14 years at 2s 6d an acre.⁵⁰⁹ He was to pay 5s for a further seven years, and the water was left outside his fence.⁵¹⁰ The lettings of 1769-1771 were mostly of such poor ground, at 1s to 2s an acre.⁵¹¹

Covenants in practice ↑

The fence covenant had two purposes. It enclosed stock and it fixed the bounds. The tenants of 1747 were "not to alter the fences, which stood as the boundary and land mark to the land".⁵¹² Goodwin's lease of 1749 described "the fences themselves" as "the recognised landmarks of the property".⁵¹³ The plan drawn beside the lease settled any dispute about where the plots lay.⁵¹⁴ A change in the ground "would call for the alteration of the deed and the plan annexed to it".⁵¹⁵ From 1729 a new tenant had to fence within 12 months, and the covenant appeared again in the 1780s.⁵¹⁶

Water and passage were reserved for the neighbourhood. Jonathan Higham was to leave open "the head of the spring" rising in his 4 acres in 1729.⁵¹⁷ Francis Junge's half acre of 1730 carried water "enough for cattle that grazed or fed on the common or unused land to drink".⁵¹⁸ Joseph Whaley's 5¾ acres were "kept apart only by strips left open as a track for driving stock".⁵¹⁹ In 1788 John Sampell, a publican, was to keep a gate on the Longwood road and "bear half the cost of repairing a second gate of the same size on that road".⁵²⁰ The Reverend John Wilson brought water by a drain to Clough's Plain in the same year. If the diversion harmed the adjoining commonage, "he and his successors had to turn the water back into its former course".⁵²¹

Some covenants answered particular fears. Giles Smith's lease of 1730 forbade him to "harbour or conceal any person or persons, nor their goods", on pain of losing the holding.⁵²² Thomas Harper was not to damage the goats grazing in Swanley Valley.⁵²³ The cabbage tree leases of 1745 kept their timber for the Company, and the leaseholders agreed in return to supply rafters and laths in proportion to their wood.⁵²⁴ Wood covenants were also used for timber plantations. James Powell held 6 acres in 1744 at a peppercorn an acre, "since the ground was granted purely for raising and planting timber".⁵²⁵

Assignment and the leasehold market ↑

No covenant was sighted more often than the ban on assignment without leave. It appears in some 95 recorded instances between 1713 and the 1770s.⁵²⁶ The tenant could not sell, let or dispose of the lease without the Governor and Council, who had to accept the new tenant. The Council required that the buyer be able to pay. In 1742 Joshua Worrall had leave to sell 31¼ acres "on condition that he found a tenant whom the Council judged sufficient to pay the Honourable Company's quit rent".⁵²⁷ When Powell assigned 16 acres in 1740, "Joseph Powell was accordingly accepted as tenant for it".⁵²⁸ The assignment was usually written on the back of the lease. Mary Swallow's assignment of 1721 lay "on the back of an original lease granted to Richard Swallow, deceased".⁵²⁹

Leave was almost always given, and leaseholds were bought and sold freely. William Worrall assigned 40 acres to Matthew Purling for £335 in 1739.⁵³⁰ Martin Harper sold the 25 acres called Robinson's Land for £200 in 1734, and the buyer resold them two days later at the same price.⁵³¹ Joshua Worrall bought 31 acres for £122 in 1739 and sold 31¼ for £150 in 1742.⁵³² Prices reflected the houses and crops on the land and the years left to run. Joseph Bates's 3 acres with houses fetched £147 in 1741, while Edward Bagley's 39 barren acres went for £20.⁵³³ Some assignments within a family or an estate were for 10s or £1.⁵³⁴ In 1752 the Council told the Company that "land, as well as leaseholds, they had sold for much more lately than ever it did".⁵³⁵

Leaseholds passed by will and auction like other goods. Stephen Lufkin's executors had leave in 1744 to auction his leasehold as the will directed, and 22 acres fetched £81.⁵³⁶ Elizabeth Allis, a sick widow, had leave in 1745 "to sell her right to certain land, which she held by lease of the Company, in order to pay her debts".⁵³⁷ Planters leaving the island sold their leases before they sailed. Joseph Bates assigned 50 acres to his son-in-law in 1742 before leaving for Bencoolen to pay his debts.⁵³⁸ Leases were also security for loans. Robert Wright assigned leasehold to the Governor and Council in 1747 as security for £20 of an orphan's money.⁵³⁹ Purchasers registered their endorsements for safety. Richard Bagley asked in 1758 to register "several endorsements upon leases for land, bought of Charles Steuard, formerly of the island".⁵⁴⁰

Surrender, renewal and re-entry ↑

A tenant could give up a lease with leave, paying rent to that day. Gilbert Monhoss gave up an acre with its lease in 1720.⁵⁴¹ Grace Bates surrendered 14 acres in Rupert's Valley in 1745 "which was of no use to her".⁵⁴² Scott was allowed in 1742 to give up the barren part of 29 acres at Sandy Bay, keeping the rest at the reserved rent.⁵⁴³ The Company sometimes bought a lease back. Bridget Bazett, widow, surrendered 30 acres to the Company for £25 in 1722.⁵⁴⁴ A surrender could earn a better lease. Joseph Desfountain had 2 acres in 1730 in place of two others "recently surrendered for the benefit of the Company".⁵⁴⁵

Renewal of an expired lease was normally granted on petition. The Council renewed three of Wrangham's leases in 1745 but refused a fourth that had been out for more than 10 years.⁵⁴⁶ A lease two years out was deferred until the Company's orders were examined.⁵⁴⁷ Seale's widow won renewal of 7½ acres in 1757, though the lease had lapsed when the leases were called in in 1744.⁵⁴⁸ She pleaded that the land was "the greatest support of herself and her five children". The Council used renewals to raise nominal rents. Lieutenant St Maurice paid 1s an acre in 1767 "in place of the peppercorn a year charged under the old lease".⁵⁴⁹

The Company rarely took back land by force. The 1738 form gave it the power to forfeit a holding or double the rent for neglect found on inspection.⁵⁵⁰ An early lease of 1707 gave a right of re-entry for non-payment.⁵⁵¹ In practice the Company resumed ground by exchange. In 1764 it took back Matthew Bazett's 6 acres by Longwood and let him an equal acreage at the Woody Ridge.⁵⁵² A lease of ground already included in another lease was entered as void, "the lease was of no value".⁵⁵³

The Leases Register of 1766-1790 ↑

The Leases Register of 1766-1790 recorded every Company lease sealed in those years in a uniform hand. Its first entries are a town plot let to Julio Fabiano in December 1765 and 8½ acres let to Matthew Bazett in February 1766.⁵⁵⁴ About 200 country leases and 75 town leases were entered before 1790.⁵⁵⁵ Every lease ran 21 years with rent due at Michaelmas. The country tenant was to keep the fences and the wood and not alienate without leave. Most country rents were the old 5s an acre, but nearly 60 leases stood at 6d to 4s for poorer ground.⁵⁵⁶ John Alexander's 40 acres of 1768 paid "2s 6d an acre each year for the first 14 years and 5s 0d an acre each year for the remaining seven".⁵⁵⁷

Entries cluster in the years when earlier leases expired. The register entered 30 leases in 1769, after the lettings of waste of 1768.⁵⁵⁸ The years 1787-1789 saw about 60 entries, as the town and country leases of 1764-1768 fell in and were renewed.⁵⁵⁹ Women held in their own right as widows, trustees and administratrices. Margaret Alcock, widow, took three leases in August 1771.⁵⁶⁰ Mary Price held two town plots in 1789, one of them as trustee for John Price's heirs.⁵⁶¹ As later context, the register was kept on into the nineteenth century, with numbered leases and renewals in books D and E.⁵⁶²

Interpretations ↑

The Company lease was less a bargain between landlord and tenant than an instrument of government. The rent changed little between 1713 and 1790, while the covenants grew from a few lines to a page. The Company used the lease to plant wood, fence the land, keep water and roads open and fix boundaries on the ground. The evidence suggested that its interest lay more in the use of the soil than in the rent it yielded.

The ban on assignment without leave was enforced as a formality but probably served a real purpose. It let the Council see who held each parcel and whether the buyer could pay. The calling in of leases in 1745 showed how quickly an unregistered market could escape that control.

The leases for lives were probably tolerated because they settled families on the land. The Company feared terms it could not end, yet the Court of Directors chose in 1745 to renew them on the old terms. The ban of 1769 ended new grants but left the existing leases running into the next century. The pattern probably reflected a Company that preferred quiet tenants to the strict letter of its own orders.

Comparisons ↑

The lease for lives was a familiar English tenure. In the western counties land was let for the lives of three named persons, usually the tenant, his wife and a child. A fine was paid to insert a new life as each fell in.⁵⁶³ English beneficial leases of church and college land likewise ran for 21 years and were renewed on payment of a fine, the rent itself remaining a fixed customary sum.⁵⁶⁴ St Helena borrowed both forms but set the fine at half a year's rent, far below the English fines that often amounted to a year or more of the land's value.⁵⁶⁵

In Bermuda the Somers Isles Company had divided the land into shares held by investors in England and worked by tenants on short terms.⁵⁶⁶ After the Company's charter was annulled in 1684 those tenants became owners. St Helena's planters, by contrast, remained Company tenants for their leasehold throughout the eighteenth century.

The St Helena lease rent was low by English standards. Farmland in England let on average for about 9s an acre in 1700-04 and about 10s 9d in 1720-24.⁵⁶⁷ These averages included the tithe paid by the tenant. By 1780-84 they had reached about 13s 9d an acre.⁵⁶⁸ The island rent of 4s and 1s duty was thus about half the English rent.⁵⁶⁹ The 2s 6d charged in the 1740s was about a quarter of it.⁵⁷⁰ English rents dipped too in those years, to about 9s 8d an acre in 1740-44.⁵⁷¹ The island abatement thus coincided with the English agricultural depression of the 1740s.

At the Cape the Dutch East India Company let grazing land as loan farms, leningsplaatsen, held from year to year for a recognition fee and never surveyed.⁵⁷² The fee was a flat charge for each farm, raised from 12 to 24 rix-dollars by a proclamation of 28 February 1732.⁵⁷³ The St Helena lease was more secure, with a fixed term, a plan and covenants that bound both parties.

At Bombay the English Company also kept the soil while confirming the inhabitants in their holdings for a fixed yearly payment.⁵⁷⁴ St Helena was unusual in letting so much of its land directly to settlers on written leases, each recorded in a register at the Castle.

4. Rents and the Rent Roll ↑

Dues on Land before the Leases, 1678-1716 ↑

The Company drew money from island land long before it kept a rent roll. In September 1678 families holding land, cattle or stock were rated between 6d and 12d a year to pay the sexton.⁵⁷⁵ On 26 March 1679 the Council fixed a due on every transfer of land. The rule was precise: "one penny an acre and no more was to be paid to the governor for the use of the company as chief lords of the soil".⁵⁷⁶ A further fee went to the register for recording and certifying the change.⁵⁷⁷

The laws sent out in August 1683 raised these charges sharply. A deed now cost a fee of 2s 6d, and registering it cost "twelve pence an acre for registering to the company as lords proprietors of the island".⁵⁷⁸ A sale, gift or devise left unregistered for a month was void.⁵⁷⁹ The same laws turned a duty of service into a money rent. Watch every sixth night had fallen on each planter of 20 acres for two months a year. The Company commuted it for a yearly payment of 40s on every 20 acres of freehold.⁵⁸⁰ The 1683 text reads "forty shillings an acre on every twenty acres", but later copies give 40s for every 20 acres.⁵⁸¹ In April 1711 the register described it plainly: "These were rated at forty shillings for every twenty acres, which was two shillings an acre".⁵⁸²

Other charges followed. In August 1687 the Company ordered the inhabitants to accept "the half-tax laid on the plantations of two shillings an acre", sent out under Sir Thomas Grantham's orders.⁵⁸³ By about 1707 the half-tax was described as a charge paid on transfers of land.⁵⁸⁴ The same letter of 1687 censured an exchange of Company ground with John Cannady in Chapel Valley. The Company set the chief rent on the land at two dollars a year and ordered the Council "to enter it in the rent book".⁵⁸⁵ This was the earliest named rent book. John Panackly was likewise ordered to pay two dollars a year as ground rent.⁵⁸⁶

Rent from leased land began in the same years. On 11 March 1682 the Company offered single settlers 20 acres for 66 years, the rent paid yearly at Michaelmas.⁵⁸⁷ The Governor was to collect rents from the inhabitants for the Company's use.⁵⁸⁸ In April 1684 Peter Williams took 20 acres in Sandy Bay on a 60-year lease "at the usual rents".⁵⁸⁹ Arrears soon appeared. In 1684 five years of duty at 6s a head stood unpaid on slaves and cattle.⁵⁹⁰ In March 1690 a warrant summoned all who owed the Company for rents of houses and land to settle their arrears.⁵⁹¹

By the 1690s the duties were collected owner by owner. A revenue roll for 1691-1692 lists sums such as £8 17s from Grace Coulson and £8 11s 9d from John Cleverley.⁵⁹² The account of rents and revenues to 25 March 1716 set a yearly duty of 12d an acre on all land. With head money on the slaves it raised £124 15s 4d.⁵⁹³ A Company letter of 1727 put the whole revenue from free land, lease land and yearly payments for cattle and slaves at £554, besides £35 a year from liquor licences.⁵⁹⁴ Richard Beale's case of 1716-1717 showed the books could err. Two books had charged him for the same land, and the Council refunded the overcharge.⁵⁹⁵

The Lease Rent of 5s and its Abatement, 1711-1753 ↑

The resurvey of 1711 fixed the rent that governed Company land for the rest of the century. Leases sealed from April 1711 ran 21 years at 4s an acre and 1s duty, payable at Lady Day.⁵⁹⁶ The wording sometimes read "5s a year" for the whole parcel. Walter Morris's lease of 1713 states "5s 0d per acre", which settles the per-acre reading.⁵⁹⁷ Jonathan Doveton's lease of 17 April 1711 split the rent by ground: "four shillings for the gumwood and one shilling for the cabbage tree".⁵⁹⁸ The Company remitted its own duty on that first registration and allowed only moderate clerk's and surveyor's charges.⁵⁹⁹ It would not, however, waive arrears of fees and duties already owing.⁶⁰⁰

The 5s rent soon met exceptions. In 1716 the Council proposed letting hard new ground at a peppercorn for five, seven or 10 years, as the Company's payment for clearing and fencing.⁶⁰¹ In November 1725 Gabriel Powell, Francis Wrangham and Edmund Nichols took 12 acres for growing gumwood at 3s an acre (2s rent and 1s duty).⁶⁰² Their second 12 acres of 1727 paid the full 5s.⁶⁰³ By the 1720s rent fell due at Michaelmas or Lady Day.⁶⁰⁴ The great re-letting of 30 September 1738 kept the rent at 5s an acre.⁶⁰⁵ In 1740 a private lease of an orphans' estate passed on the Company's charges as "5 shillings for every acre of leasehold land and 1 shilling for every acre of freehold land".⁶⁰⁶

Freehold carried its own quit-rent of 1s an acre. When the Council sold the late Governor Goodwin's estate in 1742 to meet his Company debt, every buyer held "paying the Company a yearly rent of 1 shilling an acre each Michaelmas".⁶⁰⁷ George Gabriel Powell bought 69 acres for £835 on the same terms.⁶⁰⁸ One copy of that deed reads £8,035, but the other two copies give £835.⁶⁰⁹ Waste sold to Powell in 1743 and a dead soldier's freehold sold that year carried the same 1s quit-rent.⁶¹⁰

The 5s lease rent was not in fact collected in full for a generation. Richard Mason's arrears, paid in April 1745, were reckoned "at 5s an acre to March 1728, then 2s 6d".⁶¹¹ The rent rolls of the 1740s charge lease land at 2s 6d an acre and free land at 1s. On the 1742 roll Orlando Bagley's 25 lease acres paid £3 2s 6d and Samuel Alexander's 19½ free acres paid 19s 6d.⁶¹² John Worrall's 42½ acres at Sandy Bay paid £5 6s 3d, the 2s 6d rate.⁶¹³ In Mary Alexander's case 47 free and 27 lease acres came to £5 14s 6d in 1745.⁶¹⁴

The Court of Directors confirmed the reduction on 31 January 1744/5. It knew there were many poor families among the planters. It agreed that "the planters' rents would stay at the present reduced rate of two shillings and sixpence an acre until the year of Our Lord 1750".⁶¹⁵ In return it expected the planters to exert themselves vigorously for the island's defence.⁶¹⁶ In October 1746 the Governor reminded the directors that the planters "had half their rents abated".⁶¹⁷ He set this against their refusal to supply the garrison with beef.⁶¹⁸ The planters, for their part, said they raised their rents chiefly from beef sold to the ships.⁶¹⁹ Governor Dunbar's remark of July 1745, that rents were continued "at 5 per cent a year until 1760", is not explained.⁶²⁰

On 8 December 1749 the Court ended the indulgence. Since the reasons for it no longer held, "they were, at the expiration of the Court's indulgence, to pay the same rents as before".⁶²¹ The Council read this to the inhabitants in April 1750.⁶²² In May 1750 about 28 planters answered that their only means was the uncertain produce of their land.⁶²³ They asked for a floor price of 5d a pound for beef before they would pay the full rents.⁶²⁴ In June 1752 the Council dismissed their hint that they must throw up their leases. Land and leaseholds, it wrote, "they had sold for much more lately than ever it did".⁶²⁵ The rolls show when the full rent returned. The totals of 1751 and 1752 stood near £369.⁶²⁶ In 1753 the total rose to £564 3s 6d.⁶²⁷ Rachel Alexander's 18 acres paid £4 10s on that roll, the full 5s an acre.⁶²⁸

Rents Graded by Quality and Town Ground Rents ↑

The Council did not charge all lease land alike. From 1719 barren knolls and strips were let at a nominal rent, while good land paid the usual rate. A knoll of about 2 acres below the Company's plantation was added to Antipas Tovey's lease in 1719 "at 1s an acre duty only", to be planted with timber.⁶²⁹ Francis Wrangham's 20 acres of 1738 were fixed at £4 a year because much of the ground was barren rock.⁶³⁰ In 1747 Doveton "held 21 acres but paid rent for only 20, on account of the barrenness of the extra acre".⁶³¹ Purling's waste near the Ridge House was let in 1748 "at the rent of one shilling the acre, on account of its being rocky and barren".⁶³²

Most of these cheap leases were for fencing. Goodwin's ground of 1749 was let at 1s an acre, being barren and "chiefly intended for the convenience of fencing".⁶³³ Richard Gurling took about one acre at the usual rent and four more at 1s, the land being "very barren and valued chiefly for the convenience it offered in fencing".⁶³⁴ Joshua Worrall's 5½ steep acres were let in 1750 at 1s 6d a year.⁶³⁵ Bagley's three barren acres of 1753 paid 1s 6d an acre.⁶³⁶ In February 1758 Benjamin Mason asked for barren waste at less than "the five shillings per acre usually paid".⁶³⁷

The grading became finer in the 1760s. Captain Bazett's rocky ground was let at 2s 6d an acre in December 1762.⁶³⁸ Richard Bagley's partly barren ground in Swanley Valley paid 3s in May 1763.⁶³⁹ John Desfountain's lease of July 1766 charged 16 acres at 5s and 7¾ acres at 2s 6d.⁶⁴⁰ John Alexander's 40 acres of 1768 paid 2s 6d for 14 years and 5s for the last seven.⁶⁴¹ In November 1768 Young paid the full 5s for well grassed ground, while the Gurling orphans, Whaley and Harper paid 2s for poorer land.⁶⁴² Sarah Fuge's poor waste was worth "no more than 1s an acre".⁶⁴³ Samuel Knipe's barren strip of 1770 and Gosling's of 1771 paid 1s, and Young's better part paid 1s 6d.⁶⁴⁴

At the bottom of the scale lay peppercorns and sixpences. James Powell held 6½ acres at a peppercorn on the 1745 roll.⁶⁴⁵ Francis Wrangham junior's 6 acres were "held only at the acknowledgement of a peppercorn a year".⁶⁴⁶ His entry on the 1754 roll paid 6d an acre, "being a pepper green allotted".⁶⁴⁷ Simon Whaley's 6¼ acres were charged 6d an acre in 1768.⁶⁴⁸ Lieutenant Solomon St Maurice renewed his 6 acres in October 1767. The Council then raised the rent to 1s an acre "in place of the peppercorn a year charged under the old lease".⁶⁴⁹ At the top stood a few small parcels. The 1753 roll charged 1½ acres at 20s a year, 5 acres at 16s an acre and 15¾ acres at a pistole an acre.⁶⁵⁰

Town ground in James Valley was let by frontage and depth rather than by the acre. Governor John Roberts took a plot of 43 feet frontage in 1711 at 5s a year.⁶⁵¹ John Goodwin's plot of 1728, 6 feet in front and 80 feet deep, paid 6s.⁶⁵² Leach's plot of about 23 feet square paid 2s 6d in 1742.⁶⁵³ Isaacke's plot of 1746 paid 15s, and Barton and Willingham were granted theirs at 7s 6d and 4s 6d.⁶⁵⁴ In October 1764 a strip behind six town houses was let for a combined £5 a year, from £1 4s 2d down to 12s 5d.⁶⁵⁵ Purling's back ground of 1764, 37 feet broad and 108 feet deep, paid 20s 2d.⁶⁵⁶ By 1769 the rate stood at 3d a foot of frontage. Captain Bazett's 18 feet paid 4s 6d a year.⁶⁵⁷ John Preston, a mason, asked for a plot in January 1769 because "house rent was very expensive".⁶⁵⁸ He was granted 60 feet by 60 at 15s a year.⁶⁵⁹

The Yearly Return and the Rent Day ↑

Rent was paid once a year at a fixed rent day. The day was tied to a yearly return of each household. The laws of 1683 fined any planter 40s for refusing an account or giving a false one.⁶⁶⁰ In September 1746 the Council republished the paragraph of 1683 that approved a yearly list of men, women, servants, children and cattle. Any planter refusing or giving a false account faced "a fine of forty shillings to be levied by distress".⁶⁶¹

The notice took a settled form from the 1740s. In September 1742 the inhabitants were to deliver "an exact account of their families, slaves, quantities of land and cattle" by 20 September.⁶⁶² The rents were reckoned that year on 14 October.⁶⁶³ In August 1747 the stores were closed from 7 to 30 September for stocktaking. Every inhabitant was to give an account at the secretary's office by 26 September and attend at the Castle on 6 October.⁶⁶⁴ The same order recurred almost every August or September. Notices survive for 1749, 1750, 1751, 1753, 1754, 1755, 1756, 1758 and 1759.⁶⁶⁵ In 1752 the stores closed from 29 August and rents fell due at the Castle on 12 October.⁶⁶⁶

The details changed over time. In 1750 the return included the weights of slaughter cattle.⁶⁶⁷ In 1757 servants were counted in place of families.⁶⁶⁸ The rent day moved from about 11 October to 30 September in 1761.⁶⁶⁹ The notice of August 1762 spoke of "quit rents and revenues".⁶⁷⁰ From 1763 the return had to be signed.⁶⁷¹ In 1770 owners also reported cattle lost by death or accident since 1 January.⁶⁷² The notice of August 1782 named "payments of rents and tenths" on 30 September.⁶⁷³

Rent day was a social occasion as well as a reckoning. In November 1754 the Company's table account rose to £35 4s 5¾d. The cause was "a dinner given for the Honourable Company's tenants, the planters, as usual on their paying their rents".⁶⁷⁴ The table account of October 1756 records the same dinner, costing £31 10s 7d in all.⁶⁷⁵ Those who missed the day paid later. John Twaits paid 10s for 4 acres of leased land in November 1742.⁶⁷⁶ In December Dixon paid in £10 2s 6d of quit rents from Elizabeth Ryder, Twaits and Mary Shrace.⁶⁷⁷

The Rent Rolls, 1742-1772 ↑

The rolls themselves survive from 1742. Each entered every holder with a ground rent, acres of free land, acres of lease land and the sum due. The first, of 14 October 1742, lists about 68 holders on about 3,758 acres.⁶⁷⁸ Its stated total of £320 17s 9½d was about 8s below the sum of its entries. No free or lease totals were written.⁶⁷⁹ Rolls survive for every year to 1772 except 1760 and 1761. Over those years the holders numbered between 65 and 82.⁶⁸⁰

Holders are the lines on each roll. A blank means no figure is stated, or the stated acreage does not agree with the entries and has been left out (lease land 1749, 1758, 1759 and 1767; free land 1759). The totals for 1750 and 1762 are the rents entered in the cash account, since the rolls' own figures conflict. The 1771 total is the cash figure of £625 3d, not the £825 3d written on the roll. The free and lease columns of 1772 were labelled the wrong way round in the roll and are given here corrected. No rolls survive for 1760 and 1761.

The series falls into three stages. From 1742 to 1752 the yearly total stood between about £318 and £369. In 1753 it jumped to £564 and held near that figure until 1759. After a dip in 1762 it climbed steadily to £628 7s in 1772. Figure 1 shows the rent collected at each rent day.

The acreage changed less than the money. Free land stood close to 2,200 acres throughout, from 2,109½ in 1745 to 2,205½ in 1772.⁶⁸¹ Lease land rose from about 1,810 acres in the 1740s to 2,311½ in 1772.⁶⁸² The rise came mostly after 1763, as waste was let in small strips at graded rents.⁶⁸³ New leases were charged from their dates, some for only one month on their first roll.⁶⁸⁴ Nathan Sample and Joshua Worrall were charged two months' rent in 1750, and Bird and Merchant seven and a half months in 1771.⁶⁸⁵

Many rolls did not add up. In 1743 neither page agreed with its stated figure, and many rows were inconsistent.⁶⁸⁶ In 1748 the heading gave £313 10s 0½d while the foot gave £343 0s 10½d. The lower figure was the sum paid on the day.⁶⁸⁷ The 1749 roll put lease land at 825 acres, but its entries add to 1,088½.⁶⁸⁸ The summary figures of 1750 are garbled, the money running total falling from £210 to £181 and then to £171.⁶⁸⁹ The cash account that September entered "To rents, £317 17s 3¾d".⁶⁹⁰ In 1758 the heading read £860 17s 5d and the foot £560 17s 5d. The cash account confirms the lower sum.⁶⁹¹ The 1759 roll stated 834 lease acres, but the entries come to about 1,585¾.⁶⁹²

The worst roll was that of 30 September 1762. Its heading gave £671 19s 9d and its foot £1,269 19s 9d. The cash account recorded only "Received for rents, £509 9s 9d".⁶⁹³ The 1763 roll, by contrast, agrees with its entries exactly on money and on free land.⁶⁹⁴ In April 1763 the Council answered a criticism from the Court. "The Council would take care to prevent any mistakes in the rent roll in future."⁶⁹⁵ Errors still followed. The 1767 roll stated 2,983 lease acres, but its entries come to 1,737¾.⁶⁹⁶ The 1771 total was written £825 0s 3d, but the cash account received "rents, £625 0s 3d".⁶⁹⁷ On the 1772 roll the clerk entered leased land before free land under the wrong labels.⁶⁹⁸

The rolls changed form as well. In 1755 the three columns were headed "ground rent", "fees and demands" and "poll".⁶⁹⁹ The 1756 roll spoke of acres and "spare acres".⁷⁰⁰ In 1757 the columns were headed acres granted, acres planted and yams standing.⁷⁰¹ The figures beneath these headings still fit free land at about 1s and lease land at about 5s.⁷⁰²

Holders Great and Small ↑

A handful of families paid a large share of the rent. On the first roll Francis Wrangham held 305½ acres and paid £26 17s 6d. Jonathan Doveton held 204½ acres, John Goodwin 182 and Richard Goodwin 154.⁷⁰³ In 1744 Wrangham's holding was 168½ acres free and 137 lease. The orphans of John Purling held 185 acres and Samuel Doveton 153¼.⁷⁰⁴ In 1748 Samuel Doveton held 194 free and 34 lease acres for £15 3s. John Goodwin and Richard Goodwin's orphans each held 130¼ and 59 acres.⁷⁰⁵

Wrangham remained the largest payer through the 1750s. He paid £41 9s 0½d in 1753 and £43 16s 10d in 1758.⁷⁰⁶ Matthew Purling paid the most in 1751, £21 1s 2d.⁷⁰⁷ Richard Bagley's payments rose fast after 1753. He paid £20 13s on the 1753 roll and £47 14s 4d in 1763 on 126½ free and 182½ lease acres.⁷⁰⁸ By 1771 he paid £53 4s 2d on 126½ free and 197¾ lease acres.⁷⁰⁹ Purling paid £36 6s 8d in 1769 on 313½ acres. James Greentree paid £34 5s 9d and William Wrangham £30 12s.⁷¹⁰ The poll tax rolls of the same years list the same names. Purling, Bazett, Bagley, Wrangham, Greentree and Goodwin headed the counts of heads.⁷¹¹

Women held land in their own names on every roll. The 1742 roll had eight holdings in women's names, Mary Alexander's 156½ acres the largest.⁷¹² Penelope Joell, Mary Seale, Susanna Greentree, Grace Bates and Lydia Harper appear in 1744.⁷¹³ Grace Bates surrendered 14 acres in Rupert's Valley in January 1745, "which was of no use to her".⁷¹⁴ Eight women stood on the 1762 roll, among them Margaret Alcock with 200 acres.⁷¹⁵ In 1763 Alcock held 40 free and 60½ lease acres and paid £17 14s 6d.⁷¹⁶ The 1772 roll has 14 entries in women's names, from Martha Beale's 20 acres to Sarah Desfontaine's 55½.⁷¹⁷

Orphans' estates paid like any other holding. Four were entered in 1742, those of Simon Whaley, John Darling, John Bradley and John Young.⁷¹⁸ Nine paid in their own names in 1743 and 1744.⁷¹⁹ The 1745 roll carried 10, the 1753 roll 14 and the 1754 roll 16.⁷²⁰ In 1763 the orphans of Thomas Colgrave paid £27 1s 9d on 20½ free and 104¾ lease acres.⁷²¹ Executors answered for the land of the dead. In 1772 the executors of Orlando Bagley paid £23 7s.⁷²² Rent fell on the holding, so a guardian or executor took the dead man's place on the roll.⁷²³ The Council also tested a buyer's purse before allowing a sale. In October 1742 Joshua Worrall might sell lease land only to "a tenant whom the Council judged sufficient to pay the Honourable Company's quit rent".⁷²⁴

Arrears, Receipts and the Lists Sent Home ↑

Arrears were found mostly when old leases were examined. In February 1745 the Council called in all leases. It had found that "the planters had sold their leases one to another and seldom made any assignment or registered them".⁷²⁵ The examination showed "several persons in arrears".⁷²⁶ Samuel Doveton, as executor, paid 14 or 15 years' arrears at 2s 6d. John Goodwin paid for 6 acres short paid for two years.⁷²⁷ Richard Mason paid £6 5s 11¼d, including ground rent "from 1 October 1727 to 30 September 1744 at 5 shillings a year".⁷²⁸ Richard Goodwin had complained in November 1739 of paying quit-rents for 18 years on land for which he held no lease.⁷²⁹

In December 1762 the Court warned that "The rent roll of the Company's estate could not be complete". Small arrears of Mary Mason had come to light only on looking over old leases.⁷³⁰ A short payment by John Robinson had not been made good, and the island was to scrutinise the branch closely.⁷³¹ In January 1758 James Greentree said he had sold his young cattle to pay his rents and his debts.⁷³²

The rent charged and the rent received did not always agree. In 1744 the cash account received £384 3s 5¾d for rents against a roll of £335 13s 9d.⁷³³ In 1746 only £240 1s 8½d reached the treasury against a roll of £338 19s 2½d.⁷³⁴ The September cash of 1749 took only £3 13s 10¾d from rents.⁷³⁵ Most rent was perhaps set against the planters' accounts with the store. From 1753 the two figures agree closely. The cash took £564 3s in 1753 and £560 17s 5d in 1758.⁷³⁶ In 1765, 1766, 1768, 1769 and 1772 the cash figure equals the roll exactly.⁷³⁷ In March 1757 the Council proposed carrying rents straight to cash. Its reason was plain: "As they all discharged their rents when due, these could be carried at once to the cash account".⁷³⁸

Rents were a small part of the Company's island income. In September 1747 the rents of £340 15s 11d sat beside £1,138 14s 7½d of store sales in one quarter.⁷³⁹ In 1757 the Council took a second chest of treasure. All "that might be received for store goods, rents and so forth" would not meet a year's expenses.⁷⁴⁰ In December 1757 the Court saw no means of raising more "without oppression".⁷⁴¹

The Company wanted to see the rents in London. In April 1711 it asked for a yearly account naming "the persons and sums they paid for their yearly rents, or other taxes on their lands, blacks, cattle and the like".⁷⁴² In May 1712 it asked for "a rental of the money he received for lands holden of it on the island".⁷⁴³ An account of rents and revenues for 1715 went home in 1716.⁷⁴⁴ From 1748 a "List of rents" went home every year with the list of families and the list of the Company's slaves.⁷⁴⁵ Duplicates followed by a second ship against loss at sea.⁷⁴⁶ The lists of 1749 to 1757 are noted in the letter book.⁷⁴⁷ Later lists are noted for every year from 1758 to 1779.⁷⁴⁸ The packet of October 1772 carried "Rent roll, taken on 30 September 1772".⁷⁴⁹

As later context, the roll of 1821 shows how the balance changed after 1782. A land tax for highway overseers drew on about 2,125¾ acres of freehold and 3,604½ acres of leasehold, 5,730¼ acres in all.⁷⁵⁰ Free land had hardly moved since 1772, while lease land had grown by more than half.⁷⁵¹

Interpretations ↑

The rolls suggested that the rent charged on Company land was set mainly by policy, not by the land market. Free land at 1s and lease land at 2s 6d fitted the totals of the 1740s closely. At those rates 2,109½ free and 1,813¼ lease acres came to about £332, close to the £336 14s 3½d of 1745. At 5s on lease land the 2,200¼ free and 1,819¼ lease acres of 1753 came to about £565. The jump of 1753 therefore probably reflected the end of the abatement and little else.

The abatement itself had probably run from 1728, not from the 1740s. The Court's letter of 1744/5 spoke of continuing a rate already in force. The condition of defence turned a rent reduction into something like the old commutation of watch and ward. The planters paid less rent and owed more service. When the Court ended it in 1749, the planters took three years to pay in full. The rising price of land after 1750 weakened their claim of poverty.

The errors in the rolls pointed to clerks copying figures from page to page without checking them. Carried totals often failed to match, and labels were sometimes reversed. Yet the money received after 1753 agreed with the rolls, so the errors lay mostly in the acreages. The roll served first as a record of money due and only second as a survey of land.

The steady rise of lease land after 1763 suggested a change in how the Company used its waste. Small barren strips were let at 1s to 3s to ease the planters' fencing. Each added a few shillings to the roll and moved land from the commons into private use. The graded rents probably reflected the view of each piece by a councillor, as the records of these lettings describe.

Comparisons ↑

In England the line between quit-rent and rack rent was well established by 1700. Quit-rents on freehold were small fixed sums, often survivals of commuted services. Rack rents on leasehold farms rose with the market through the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries.⁷⁵² In England St Helena's 1s quit-rent on freehold would have passed as a nominal acknowledgement. The 5s lease rent was nearer a fixed charge than a rack rent, since it hardly changed between 1711 and 1772. English landlords also commonly abated rents in hard years, as the Company did for the planters.⁷⁵³ The yearly rent day with a dinner for the tenants was a common English custom too.⁷⁵⁴

English farm rents give a measure of the lease rent. Farmland in England let on average for about 9s an acre in 1700-04 and about 11s 5d in 1760-64.⁷⁵⁵ These averages included the tithe paid by the tenant. By 1780-84 they had reached about 13s 9d an acre.⁷⁵⁶ The island lease rent of 4s and 1s duty was about half the English figure.⁷⁵⁷ The 2s 6d charged in the 1740s was about a quarter of it.⁷⁵⁸ English rents fell in the same years, to about 9s 8d an acre in 1740-44.⁷⁵⁹ The island abatement thus coincided with the English agricultural depression of the 1740s.

By colonial standards the quit-rent of 1s an acre on freehold was high.⁷⁶⁰ On the former French lands of St Kitts the Crown asked "an annual Quit Rent of 6d. sterling upon every English acre" in 1717.⁷⁶¹ Grants in Jamaica paid ½d or 1d an acre.⁷⁶² The Lords Proprietors of South Carolina asked "1d. yearly per acre" in 1709.⁷⁶³ Pennsylvania charged 1s for every 100 acres in the 1680s and "a half-penny per acre" from 1732.⁷⁶⁴ Maryland quit-rents stood "for the most part at four shillings per hundred acres" from 1733.⁷⁶⁵ Virginia asked "two shillings in money, or 24 pounds weight of tobacco for every hundred acres" in 1721.⁷⁶⁶ On Ile de France the French company asked 1 sol per arpent a year and a hen from 1721.⁷⁶⁷ At the Cape a loan farm paid a flat 24 rix-dollars a year, whatever its size.⁷⁶⁸ St Helena thus charged twice the St Kitts rate and many times the rates of the mainland colonies.

The island roll was small in total but heavy by the acre. It brought the Company £320 to £630 a year from about 4,000 to 4,500 acres.⁷⁶⁹ Virginia's quit-rents brought the Crown about £1,411 7s 7d a year in the 10 years to 1713.⁷⁷⁰ They were charged on 2,238,143 acres in 1704 and 2,619,773 acres in 1714.⁷⁷¹ St Helena thus raised between a quarter and a half of Virginia's quit-rent from a tiny fraction of its acreage.

English figures are average farm rents including tithe. Colonial figures are quit-rents on granted land. Full references are in the footnotes above.

At the Cape the Dutch East India Company let grazing land on loan farms for a flat yearly fee, the recognitie. The fee was fixed for each farm rather than by the acre, and the tenure was revocable.⁷⁷² St Helena charged by the acre and graded the rent by quality. Its leases ran for fixed terms and were recorded on a roll that named every holder. Both companies, however, kept the soil as lord and drew a regular payment from settlers.

Bermuda offered a contrast. After the Somers Islands Company lost its charter in 1684, most Bermudian land passed into private freehold. The island's revenue came more from trade than from land.⁷⁷³ In Barbados planters held their land largely in freehold and paid the Crown a duty on exports, not a rent on acres.⁷⁷⁴ St Helena remained closer to a proprietary estate than either colony.

At Bombay the Company also acted as lord of the island and drew land revenue from the inhabitants. That revenue sat alongside customs and farms of trade, much as rents sat beside store sales at St Helena.⁷⁷⁵ In both places the land revenue was modest beside the Company's other income. Its value lay as much in asserting the Company's title to the soil as in the money it raised.

5. Policy from London and the Law of Tenure ↑

The Company as Lord Proprietor ↑

Every title on St Helena rested on the Crown's grants to the East India Company. A charter of 3 April 1664 first granted the island to the Company and let it make laws "not repugnant to the laws of England".⁷⁷⁶ Letters patent of 10 December 1673 made the Company "the true and absolute lords and proprietors" of the island, with full powers of government and judicature.⁷⁷⁷ A charter of 16 December 1673 itemised the grant as all the soil, lands, fields, woods and rivers. It confirmed the power to make and repeal laws under the common seal.⁷⁷⁸ The Crown kept only faith, allegiance and sovereignty over the inhabitants.⁷⁷⁹

The Company held the island of the manor of East Greenwich in Kent, in free and common socage.⁷⁸⁰ It therefore stood to the Crown much as any socage landholder in England, while it stood to the settlers as their absolute landlord. The second charter of Charles II, of 9 August 1685, kept with the Company "the sovereign right, power and command" over all its forts and plantations.⁷⁸¹ A charter of 12 April 1686 renewed its corporate powers and its right to appoint and remove governors.⁷⁸²

The Directors used the language of English manorial lordship without embarrassment. In 1712 they told a governor who had bought up plantations that a lord of the manor does not buy his tenants' lands.⁷⁸³ In 1716 they described themselves as lords of the manor who provided and paid the minister.⁷⁸⁴ In 1744 the Council claimed for the Company the island's natural produce, even orchella gathered from the rocks, "Although the produce of the island belonged to the Company".⁷⁸⁵ The same manorial claim still governed the rules for shooting game in 1795, as later context.⁷⁸⁶

From 1679 the Company refused its planters any absolute ownership. No planter was to hold his plantation in fee simple, and no sale or transfer could pass without the Governor's licence.⁷⁸⁷ The first grants, under the common seal, had been made "to hold for himself, his heirs and assigns for ever" on condition of militia service and four years' cultivation before any sale.⁷⁸⁸ Heirs living off the island had to come within two years or keep two people and two cows on every 20 acres, or the land returned to the Company.⁷⁸⁹

English law was the measure of the island's justice, but not its master. The standing orders of about 1714 said that English laws should govern "as near as might be" though the Company as lords proprietors could make other laws.⁷⁹⁰ Controversies referred home were decided by the law of England, so cases had to be stated with care.⁷⁹¹ In 1683 the Governor's power to fine above 40s was held absolute and not bound by common-law forms.⁷⁹² When Hutchinson was appointed Governor in December 1746 he was told to rule by three guides together.⁷⁹³ These were the known laws of England, the Company's standing orders and "the allowed customs of the island".⁷⁹⁴

Engrossing and the Settler Militia ↑

London's oldest fear about land was engrossing. From the arrival of its letter of March 1682 no further land was to be granted to anyone, and the Governor was simply to collect the rents.⁷⁹⁵ By 1701 the policy had reversed, and all land not needed by the Company was to be let to deserving settlers.⁷⁹⁶ The Council had stopped granting "because one half or more of the island was already let out".⁷⁹⁷

The fear came back in 1712, when Governor Roberts had bought so many plantations that families had left the island.⁷⁹⁸ The Directors ordered him to "buy no more plantations, and take out, or sell all the Governor had bought".⁷⁹⁹ They argued that renting out land was better, since private men husbanded farms better than the Company.⁸⁰⁰

The rule that bound land to men took shape between 1714 and 1720. The original constitution required a man on every 20 acres, though by about 1714 this was "not to be too rigorously insisted upon".⁸⁰¹ In 1716 the Council doubted whether John Goodwin should hold 183 acres, ground which had once kept six families and now had no white man on it.⁸⁰² The Directors wanted planters to keep white men in proportion to their acres and not to buy more land without them.⁸⁰³ In January 1717 the Council resolved that planters without their militia quota should be barred from buying.⁸⁰⁴ Its words were that "all those who had not their due number of able-bodied men to complete the militia of the place should be restrained from making any further purchases".⁸⁰⁵

The Court approved the Council's stand against engrossing because engrossing weakened the militia.⁸⁰⁶ It then required a white man on every 20 acres, to preserve the militia and prevent engrossing.⁸⁰⁷ Petitioners learned to cite the rule. In September 1717 Richard Swallow asked to hire 10 or 12 acres in Powell's Valley and promised a white man to every 20 acres.⁸⁰⁸ By 1720 the Governor held that no man with 40 acres or more should be granted further land.⁸⁰⁹ Such a man might still buy, if he kept a white man to every 20 acres.⁸¹⁰

The same years exposed land taken from the Company by stealth. A complaint suggested that as many as 233 acres lay concealed, and a reward was offered for each parcel revealed.⁸¹¹ Leases for lives granted in 1717 barred any assignment to a man who already held 30 acres.⁸¹² The Company also sold freehold outright when London ordered it. Under orders of 30 December 1723 the Council sold William Slaughter 10 acres in Sandy Bay for £65, £35 of it on bond.⁸¹³

The Directors' Letters, 1744-1752: Rents, Leases and Fees ↑

The general letters of 1744 to 1752 survive in a single run.⁸¹⁴ They show London ruling on island land in fine detail. The island's own copies were incomplete. In March 1746 the secretary listed the general letters held on the island from 19 December 1673 to 31 January 1744, after the Governor found several missing.⁸¹⁵

The Court's first concern was rent. In its letter of 31 January 1744 it noted "many poor families among the planters".⁸¹⁶ It agreed that rents should stay at the reduced rate of 2s 6d an acre until 1750.⁸¹⁷ In return it expected the planters to exert themselves vigorously in the island's defence.⁸¹⁸ Governor Dunbar listed this among the Company's favours in July 1745.⁸¹⁹ In December 1749 the Court ended the indulgence, since the reasons for it "no longer subsisting".⁸²⁰ The inhabitants were to pay "the same rents as before" when the term ran out.⁸²¹

The planters resisted. Told in April 1750 that full rents were again required, about 28 inhabitants answered that the uncertain produce of their land was their only means.⁸²² They had sold beef for 14 months at 3¾d a pound.⁸²³ They asked for a floor price of 5d a pound and promised then to pay their rents.⁸²⁴ Three of the signers acted as guardians of orphans' estates.⁸²⁵ The dispute closed in March 1751, when the planters agreed to supply their beef quotas "for the market or rental".⁸²⁶ In the Council's eyes the beef quota and the tenancy were one bargain.

The Court also had to decide what to do with leases for lives. In February 1745 the Council found a Company letter of 17 April 1741 forbidding leases above 21 years.⁸²⁷ Yet the lease book showed leases on lives and some for 99 years.⁸²⁸ Planters had also sold leases to one another without assignment or registration, "the planters had sold their leases one to another and seldom made any assignment or registered them".⁸²⁹ All leaseholders were ordered to bring their leases to the secretary's office.⁸³⁰

Several holders were left waiting on London. Powell could not assign 18 acres held for three lives at 1s an acre without the Company's approval.⁸³¹ Wright could not insert himself and his wife into a lease for lives on 5 acres in Sandy Bay.⁸³² A 99-year lease of James and Martha Scott's plot in James Valley was held back "until the Company's pleasure on such leases was known".⁸³³ From March 1744 new leases also carried a clause that the grant stood only if the Company approved it.⁸³⁴

The answer came in the letter of 10 January 1745. The Court advised renewing all the leases for lives on the old terms.⁸³⁵ Its aim was to "make them quiet and easy in the possession of their property by renewing on the old terms and conditions".⁸³⁶ The ruling had a long life. In 1756 the Governor cited it to save Wrangham's lease upon lives from forfeiture.⁸³⁷ He held that the Company had been "too indulgent to their tenants to take any advantage of them, even though the law might allow it".⁸³⁸ By 1769 the policy had hardened. The Company had then "forbidden any further leases for lives", and Kirkpatrick's lapsed lease of 12 acres was replaced by a lease of 21 years at 5s an acre.⁸³⁹

The same letter of 1745 capped the secretary's fees. "One guinea for a lease or a bill of sale was a sufficient fee" for the secretary and his clerks.⁸⁴⁰ It also confirmed that Company servants might hold land. James Powell was restored as a writer, "his holding a plantation being no objection, since most of the Company's other servants held them too".⁸⁴¹ The Council meanwhile reserved timber on renewed cabbage tree leases. The Company had paid nearly £40 in a few months to buy laths and rafters from its own tenants.⁸⁴² In April 1745 the leaseholders agreed to supply rafters and laths in return for building timber from the Company's Great Wood.⁸⁴³

Commons, Horses and the Planters' Stock ↑

The Directors treated common grazing as a custom granted at their pleasure. In January 1745 they heard that planters had once turned cattle into the Great Wood when there was grass to spare.⁸⁴⁴ The Council was to revive the practice, "granting the planters this custom of commoning for as long as it did the Company no harm".⁸⁴⁵ A postscript of January 1746 repeated the order, so far as the Council thought it not prejudicial to the Company.⁸⁴⁶ The right was a revocable licence, not a common appurtenant to the holdings.

London also reversed island orders that pressed hard on the poorer planters. The Greentrees' fines for keeping goats were to be repaid.⁸⁴⁷ "The goats were of much more use to the Company and the poorer sort of planters than the growth of ebony", the Court wrote.⁸⁴⁸ Lapsed customs duties on arrack and goods were annulled for the future in favour of the garrison and planters.⁸⁴⁹

Horses drew London into the planters' own stock. In January 1744 the Court thought there were more horses than had ever been useful.⁸⁵⁰ It recommended keeping only those that carried lime and necessaries, and breaking asses and bullocks to the work.⁸⁵¹ In 1745 it asked for an attested list of all horses and mares with their owners' names.⁸⁵² In November 1751 it judged about 100 horses and mares a great hindrance to the increase of horned cattle.⁸⁵³ The Council was to "geld all the stone colts and horses".⁸⁵⁴ In April 1752 an advertisement ordered all stone horses and colts on the island to be gelded forthwith.⁸⁵⁵ In December 1760 the Court approved island rules forbidding horses to graze the Company's waste and limiting who might keep them.⁸⁵⁶

Cattle and beef brought the sharpest statement of London's purpose. In December 1752 the Court ordered a weekly market and a census of each planter's cattle and sheep.⁸⁵⁷ Each planter was to supply the market in proportion to his stock, and no beef or mutton might go to any ship without a written licence.⁸⁵⁸ The Court told the planters not to imagine that the Company bore the island's heavy expense for their benefit.⁸⁵⁹ Its principal objects were its own shipping and garrison.⁸⁶⁰

Later letters handed decisions on the waste back to the island. In 1768 Mr Alcock asked to hire waste in Sandy Bay, and Samuel Alexander objected that the inhabitants had paid to plant it and bring it to grass.⁸⁶¹ The Court directed the Council to settle such cases "in such manner as should appear equitable and for the general benefit of the inhabitants, without referring them to the directors".⁸⁶² In November 1768 the Council resolved never to lease barren commons improved at public expense.⁸⁶³ In May 1778 London ordered a survey of the Long Wood and furze planted on the commons.⁸⁶⁴

Money, Debt and the Company's Cash ↑

The Company's cash on the island served as a bank for private estates, and London watched it closely. In December 1749 the Court found that £70 lent on Wright's land had come from money deposited for John Bradley's orphans.⁸⁶⁵ It forbade the Council ever again to lend "the Company's money, or any lodged in its cash, on any pretence or security whatever".⁸⁶⁶ Wright's mortgaged interest was to be sold to repay the debt with interest.⁸⁶⁷ Any surplus was to go only to a person with a legal right by probate or letters of administration.⁸⁶⁸

The estate of the late Governor John Goodwin tested every rule of debt. In 1744 the Court bought his mortgaged house for £500 against his debt to the Company.⁸⁶⁹ It debited his estate with £910 paid to Captain Mason's heirs and £791 0s 11d paid to discharge Isaac Pyke's bond.⁸⁷⁰ The Company's own demand had to be met before Eleanor Worrall's legacy could be paid.⁸⁷¹ Debtors were to be heard fairly and given "a reasonable time so that the debtors might not be distressed".⁸⁷² In 1754 the Court admitted claims of £254 15s 4½d and divided the balance among the creditors pro rata.⁸⁷³

Part of Goodwin's freehold had already gone to his successor. In February 1742 the Council conveyed 69 acres in the West Division and 20 acres called Longs to Governor Powell.⁸⁷⁴ The sale was to make good what Goodwin "had taken from the Company's property while serving it on the island".⁸⁷⁵ The register copy gives the price as £8,035 in island money, but two other copies of the same deed give £835.⁸⁷⁶

London also protected island creditors against departing debtors. A standing order of January 1761 required 12 months' public notice from covenanted servants who meant to leave and one month's from all others.⁸⁷⁷ No one might depart "until he had fully settled his accounts and paid what should appear due from him".⁸⁷⁸ An absent creditor such as Brown, owed £300 to £400, was to be given "all equitable help according to the laws and customs of the island".⁸⁷⁹

Courts, Juries and the Grant of 1762 ↑

Trial by jury of land was the planters' oldest protection. The code of March 1681 barred anyone from losing his houses, goods or lands without the verdict of a jury of 12.⁸⁸⁰ In 1683 the Company let the Council keep its summary method for small matters, but required a jury where life, limb or land was at stake.⁸⁸¹ In September 1742 Powell, sitting as judge, put the rule to a jury in strong terms.⁸⁸² By the Company's indulgence, he said, "their land estates on the island were their own, and they could lawfully dispose of them by will or otherwise".⁸⁸³ Crafford, he added, had been dispossessed by mere arbitrary power.⁸⁸⁴

The Directors put this jurisdiction on a new footing in 1762. Their letter of 3 February 1762 declared that the Company's right of government covered civil courts for property disputes between private parties.⁸⁸⁵ The Governor and Council would sit as judges with a jury of 12 islanders, made up if need be from Englishmen on the island.⁸⁸⁶ In June 1762 the Council acknowledged its power "to hold courts civil and criminal, and that of oyer and terminer".⁸⁸⁷ On 15 August 1762 it undertook to hear every dispute over property, "and juries would decide cases in each instance".⁸⁸⁸ It promised to follow English law as far as local conditions allowed.⁸⁸⁹

The Council sent home a compilation of the island's laws, a catalogue of law books and a record of jury proceedings from 1679.⁸⁹⁰ The first quarterly court under the new powers sat on 12 October 1762.⁸⁹¹ The Court judged it needless to send out a qualified lawyer.⁸⁹² It hoped that controversy on vexatious and frivolous pretences would be discouraged.⁸⁹³ In April 1763 the Council promised to run the courts by the laws of England and to discourage vexatious suits.⁸⁹⁴

The grant had limits, and the Council drew them in the Company's favour. In September 1764 Robert Ballard demanded a jury before he would block a new door onto the Ladder Hill lane.⁸⁹⁵ The Council held that "the matter was not a dispute over property between two private individuals".⁸⁹⁶ Openings onto a public road encroached on the Company's rights, so it refused a jury and ordered the door blocked.⁸⁹⁷ In December 1768 the Court settled points of procedure. Warrants of execution were to be signed by the justices who tried the case, and Purling could not judge in his own cause.⁸⁹⁸

The Legal Opinions: Leasehold, Custom and Descent ↑

The great test of island custom against English law came from Gabriel Harper's will. Harper left his widow Bridget half his freehold and leasehold lands and houses during widowhood. He also left her a third of his personal estate outright.⁸⁹⁹ She later married Richard Goodwin. In June 1753 Goodwin claimed, in right of his wife, a third of Harper's leasehold land or its value.⁹⁰⁰ His case was that leasehold counted as personal estate.⁹⁰¹

The executors Richard Beale, James Powell, Martin Harper and Benjamin Mason refused.⁹⁰² They said the widow had told the Governor at probate that she was content with the will.⁹⁰³ They argued that Harper had not thought of his leasehold as personal estate and that the claim would injure his orphans.⁹⁰⁴ The Council stated the island custom as it understood it.⁹⁰⁵ Widows took half their husbands' real estate for life and a third of the movables absolutely, and "leasehold land had generally been considered to be such" real estate.⁹⁰⁶ It referred three questions to the Court.⁹⁰⁷ The first was whether a will could limit the customary half to widowhood. The second was whether the widow's consent barred her new husband. The third was whether leasehold was personal estate.

The Company sent the papers to counsel, Charles Yorke.⁹⁰⁸ He found no island law or custom making leasehold descend, answer for debts or pass like freehold.⁹⁰⁹ He advised that "the safest course was to follow English law, which treated leasehold as personal property".⁹¹⁰ On the will itself he held that the widow had elected to take under it, not under island custom.⁹¹¹ On her remarriage her half of the leasehold fell into the personal estate, and Goodwin took a third of it through her.⁹¹² The Court sent the opinion in November 1753 but added a warning.⁹¹³ Such cases had to be decided by the Council's own judgement.⁹¹⁴ Doubtful cases were to go home as an agreed case at the parties' joint expense.⁹¹⁵

On 8 April 1754 the Council read "the Honourable Mr York's opinion" and gave judgement for Goodwin.⁹¹⁶ The opinion confirmed that "leasehold lands were by the law of England deemed personal estate".⁹¹⁷ The executors were directed to give Goodwin a third of the leasehold or its value.⁹¹⁸ The Council's report home named the counsel as Mr Sparks.⁹¹⁹ The rule passed quickly into island practice. In August 1757 Mary Swaite recited that "the Company had since settled and fixed that leasehold lands counted as personal estate".⁹²⁰ She disposed of her third of her husband's leasehold accordingly.⁹²¹

A second dispute of 1753 tested a claimed custom of descent. On 2 April 1753 Thomas French said that when a man died intestate his children divided the estate, the eldest son taking the freehold and an equal share of the personal estate.⁹²² He called this "the law and custom of the place time out of mind".⁹²³ On that ground he denied a share to the infant daughter of James Du Bois, a granddaughter of the intestate John French.⁹²⁴ French also claimed that "as eldest and only surviving son the freehold estate was his right".⁹²⁵

The Council answered that "it could find no such by-law or custom on the island as he mentioned".⁹²⁶ It gave the grandchild her mother's share of the personal estate, secured on the houses of Thomas and Sarah French.⁹²⁷ French paid £122 13s 0¾d into the cash, and the Court paid it out in London.⁹²⁸ The ruling struck at the custom as French described it, but it left his own claim to the freehold untouched. In July 1753 the Council let Thomas Greentree take his missing brother's freehold "as only heir according to the custom of the island", on giving security.⁹²⁹ In 1749 a brother had likewise taken an intestate's real estate as heir, while the sisters shared the personal estate.⁹³⁰

The Company's later opinions, answering letters of 1779 to 1811, refined these lines. The solicitor John Smith rejected Matthew Bazett's view that all private land on the island was personal property.⁹³¹ Land granted under the common seal to planters and their heirs descended to heirs.⁹³² Company leases for years passed to executors.⁹³³ An absentee heir at law still had to reside within two years or keep two inhabitants and two cows on every 20 acres.⁹³⁴ Without that, the land was forfeit under the regulations of 1680.⁹³⁵

Escheat also reached the island. A house and slave left to Billy, apparently illegitimate, escheated to the Company as lords of the island when he died intestate and childless.⁹³⁶ The solicitor advised the Company to regrant by kinship and need, with compensation to the other claimant.⁹³⁷ On Orlando Bagley's estate he held that debts fell first on the personal estate.⁹³⁸ Land answered only for debts by bond or other sealed instrument.⁹³⁹ Bagley's real property went to his eldest brother of the full blood, and the residue of personalty in nine shares among his siblings.⁹⁴⁰

An opinion of about 1811, given here only as later context, settled the conflict of laws. Land and houses of an intestate "were to descend in the manner already established on the island".⁹⁴¹ Personal property followed island custom only if the deceased had been a settled resident.⁹⁴² In 1816 the solicitor held unlawful a clause letting the island court dispense with a jury and decide summarily in equity.⁹⁴³ The slave code of 1792 and the opinions on slave evidence belong to the same run of letters but lie outside the law of land.⁹⁴⁴

Dates are those of the letter or opinion; three opinions are undated and are placed by the Council letters they answered.

Interpretations ↑

The evidence suggested that London's land policy changed its object over the century. Before 1720 the Directors legislated for a settler militia, and engrossing mattered because it emptied the island of armed men. After 1744 the letters dealt far more with rents, fees, horses and beef. The island had become a victualling station, and land policy served the supply of ships.

The Directors' rulings were usually more lenient than the Council's. The rent abatement, the renewal of leases for lives, the guinea fee and the repaid goat fines all reversed or softened local severity. This probably reflected distance as much as benevolence. A Court that saw only letters could afford to be generous, and it wanted the planters "quiet and easy" more than it wanted their rent.

The Harper case probably mattered more than any order on rents. It moved about 1,800 acres of leasehold, a large part of the island's farmed land, from real into personal estate for inheritance.⁹⁴⁵ Widows and younger children gained a share, and heirs lost the security of the family lease. The decision rested on English law because counsel could find no written island custom. The Council's own understanding of custom, that leasehold was real, lost because it had never been written down.

Custom survived where it was already acknowledged. The Council accepted the descent of freehold to the heir and the widow's half for life, while rejecting French's custom on personalty. By about 1811 counsel told the Company that island custom governed land on its own authority. The law of tenure thus ended as a mixture of English rules imposed by opinion and island customs admitted by usage.

Comparisons ↑

The proprietary colonies of North America offer the closest constitutional parallel. The Lords Proprietors of Carolina held their province of the Crown in free and common socage, as the Company held St Helena of East Greenwich.⁹⁴⁶ William Penn likewise granted land in Pennsylvania for quitrents and kept the proprietor's lordship over the soil.⁹⁴⁷ Penn asked a quit-rent of 1s for every 100 acres in the 1680s and "a half-penny per acre" from 1732.⁹⁴⁸ The Lords Proprietors of Carolina asked "1d. yearly per acre" in 1709.⁹⁴⁹ The Company's 1s an acre on St Helena freehold was far heavier.⁹⁵⁰ In both, settlers soon held their land as freeholders in all but name. St Helena differed because the Company was itself the government and the landlord, with no elected assembly between them.

Bermuda under the Somers Isles Company was a still closer case. A London company owned the land, let shares to absentee adventurers and governed through a resident governor until its charter was annulled in 1684.⁹⁵¹ After 1684 Bermudian tenants became freeholders and the island's economy turned to the sea.⁹⁵² The East India Company never surrendered its lordship of St Helena, which is why the Harper case had to be referred to its counsel at all.

At the Cape the Dutch East India Company also held the soil and let most farms on loan tenure for a yearly recognition fee.⁹⁵³ Like St Helena, the Cape was valued above all as a refreshment station for passing ships. The Council's claim in 1716 that St Helena could match the Cape in plenty showed that the comparison was made at the time.⁹⁵⁴

In England a lease for years was a chattel real, which passed to the executor and not the heir. A widow could therefore claim her share of it among the personal estate.⁹⁵⁵ Leases for lives, renewed by fines as each life fell in, were common on church and gentry estates in the west of England.⁹⁵⁶ St Helena adopted the English classification of leasehold only in 1754, and only after its Council had argued for an island custom to the contrary.

The Company's courts in India supply the last comparison. The charter of 1726 set up Mayor's Courts at Madras, Bombay and Calcutta to try civil suits among Europeans by English law.⁹⁵⁷ St Helena had no such charter of justice. Its civil courts of 1762 rested only on the Company's own proprietary right, a weakness counsel noted when he doubted the legal basis of justice on the island in 1781.⁹⁵⁸

Part Two: The Land Itself ↑

Part One followed the rules by which the Company granted, let and taxed its island. Part Two turns to the ground those rules governed. It asks how a parcel was marked out and measured, and how it was fenced, watered, planted and grazed over a century. The evidence comes from the deeds, leases, plans and disputes of the planters themselves.

6. Boundaries, Surveys and Disputes ↑

Bounds in deeds and leases ↑

A parcel on St Helena was described by what lay around it. The usual deed named the valley or ridge and then gave the neighbours on each side. In 1713 George Carne's 30 acres of gumwood land had Richard Gurling to the north and the Company's great plantation to the east. The heirs of George Keiling lay to the south and Walter Morris to the west.⁹⁵⁹ Few deeds gave compass bearings or chained distances in the text. The ground was fixed by the people who held the land next to it.

Natural features served where neighbours failed. Bounds ran to the Main Ridge, the High Peak, Diana's Peak, Coles Rock and the Plaster Bed.⁹⁶⁰ A lease of 1742 in the east branch of Sandy Bay Valley was bounded in part by "a ledge of rocks" that served as a natural fence.⁹⁶¹ A sale of 1700 near the head of Lemon Valley limited the buyer to "the old ditch", any shortfall to be made up towards Thomas Goodwin's land.⁹⁶² Edward Heath's will of 1706 divided his ground at the head of Fishers Valley by "the spring of water that issued from a rock behind the house".⁹⁶³ The land below the spring went to his daughter Mary and the land above it to his stepdaughter.⁹⁶⁴

Family partitions used the same devices. Jonathan Doveton divided his lands among his children in 1749. The line between two sons ran from a lemon tree at the bottom of a gut to the head of the watercourse.⁹⁶⁵ He made the division expressly "To prevent disputes in the future over the division of his lands among his children".⁹⁶⁶ His earlier draft fixed another part "with the old fence as the boundary".⁹⁶⁷ Richard Mason's will of 1750 ran his son's land "up to the stile" and kept the water running in the lower trenches as it always had.⁹⁶⁸

Many parcels carried the name of an earlier holder. A leading planter's inventory of May 1744 named his freeholds Fosters, Coulsons, Ellis, Phillips, Marshes, Hunts and Sandys. Each was classed as cabbage tree or gumwood land.⁹⁶⁹ Leases of the 1740s named Saxton's Ground, Chaplins land, Taylor's land and Ashleys.⁹⁷⁰ The bounds themselves recited the dead. William Seale's lease of 1745 ran to "land late of William Seale deceased" and gumwood "late of Frances Bazett, widow".⁹⁷¹ Benjamin Seale's lease of the same year ran to Isaac Wood's former pasture and land "formerly Bellwards".⁹⁷² Such names carried a memory of descent on the ground. They also made a deed hard to read once the old holders were forgotten.

Town ground was measured more closely. Plots in James Valley were let by the foot. Francis Wrangham's yard of 1737 was 37½ feet in front and 100 feet deep.⁹⁷³ Charles Steward's was 41 feet across at the back and 44 feet at the lower end.⁹⁷⁴ A plot of 1739 was measured from the chimney of a neighbour's house "according to a plan".⁹⁷⁵ In 1770 the school managers' ground ran "112 feet along the watercourse, 133 feet along Mary Hooks's garden".⁹⁷⁶

Measures in the country were rougher, and some were plainly wrong. A sale of 1733 described 15 acres in Prosperous Bay Valley as "eight rods in length and eight rods in breadth".⁹⁷⁷ That square would hold well under half an acre. James Reder's confirmation of 1711 listed parcels of 33 acres against a stated 41.⁹⁷⁸ Francis Wrangham's lease of 1713 stated 11 acres, but its parcels added to five.⁹⁷⁹ The plans for a lease of 1738 to Frances Carne and Richard Goodwin showed 46 acres against the 40 in the text.⁹⁸⁰

The early registers and the jury account of 1682 ↑

The Company tied title to registration from the start. It asked the Governor to send home each man's name and land with "a description of its butts and bounds", so that deeds might be drawn under the common seal.⁹⁸¹ On 20 February 1677 it declared that no sale was valid unless registered, with a duplicate kept safely to prevent suits.⁹⁸² An order of 26 March 1679 gave holders six months to register their land, "recording the quantity of acres, the exact boundaries and the name of the person holding or enjoying them".⁹⁸³ The Governor was to examine each entry and give a certificate without fee.⁹⁸⁴

The Council also settled the first exchanges. In August 1678 it divided 20 acres at Tompstone Wood between Smoult and Williams.⁹⁸⁵ On 30 September 1678 it upheld an exchange between Harding and Steward because Steward had already built and fenced.⁹⁸⁶ Harding exchanged a further 10 acres with Goodale, and both exchanges were registered.⁹⁸⁷ On 21 October 1678 Henry Francis and Daniel Collins swapped their 10-acre allotments as single men.⁹⁸⁸ John Downing, finding his 10 acres too little, asked for 10 more beside the children of James Castle.⁹⁸⁹

The fullest early record is the account given to a jury impanelled on 26 September 1682. It set out how land had been allotted and sold, valley by valley.⁹⁹⁰ Each holding was described by its abuttals, the chain of sale or exchange from the first allottee and its acreage, carried in a running total.⁹⁹¹ The totals ran 450, 650, 800, 940 and 1,090 acres over the surviving pages.⁹⁹² Captain Beale's 90 acres were assembled from four lots by purchase and exchange.⁹⁹³ Edmond Hooker's 50 acres in Chapel Valley joined his own lot to land bought from John Boston and a gift that had passed through two hands.⁹⁹⁴ Richard Leach held part of his Deep Valley allotment "which he had for his wife", bounded by the Company's land.⁹⁹⁵ William Fox the younger's 20 acres were bounded on the north by Black Oliver.⁹⁹⁶

The 1682 account fixed bounds by neighbours and landmarks, not by measured lines. Thomas Swallow's lot in Sandy Bay lay "between Mr Robert Swallow and John Stech".⁹⁹⁷ John Bartlett and John Mudge held lots in Sharks Valley between Woody Ridge and Pleasant Valley Ridge.⁹⁹⁸ The register itself suffered. In December 1707 the clerk certified that its copies came from "an older book that had become unbound and decayed by rats".⁹⁹⁹

Disputes over possession led to a second round of declaration. An order of 30 November 1702 required every sale, alienation or mortgage to be registered, and a claim left unchallenged for six months to stand conclusive.¹⁰⁰⁰ The order was repeated on 30 November 1704 with a register at the fort, signed by buyer and seller.¹⁰⁰¹ An unchallenged claim was then "to be taken as certain evidence of the property, not to be disputed in future".¹⁰⁰² Past disputes were sent to a jury.¹⁰⁰³

The resurvey of 1711-1713 ↑

By 1711 these registers had failed. The Company heard that grants had not been registered and that "many people's titles were become precarious".¹⁰⁰⁴ For want of landmarks, holders had encroached beyond their granted acres.¹⁰⁰⁵ It ordered all fenced land measured. A holder who proved his acres by grant, descent or purchase was to receive a new grant with a plan, and any surplus was to be paid for at a moderate price.¹⁰⁰⁶ Leases were to carry a plan of the survey, the Company remitting its own duty and allowing only moderate clerk's and surveyor's charges.¹⁰⁰⁷

The Council met on 6 April 1711 and found that the inhabitants had never been fixed in their estates since the retaking from the Dutch.¹⁰⁰⁸ The lands lay unfenced without landmarks.¹⁰⁰⁹ It revived the old law that land not fenced between 25 March 1709 and 25 March 1712 was forfeit "to the Lords Proprietors".¹⁰¹⁰ Matthew Bazett had already measured land under warrants, and a separate book of plans and deeds was opened.¹⁰¹¹ Bazett, fifth in council and the surveyor, witnessed his own grant of 25 acres in June 1711.¹⁰¹²

Each confirmation followed the same steps. "Notice had been given by beat of drum for any person to make a claim".¹⁰¹³ If no claimant came forward, the title was examined in consultation and a deed issued with the plan annexed.¹⁰¹⁴ Jonathan Doveton's plans of April 1711 were drawn to a scale of 10 chains.¹⁰¹⁵ Freeholds were confirmed in fee on condition of allegiance and obedience.¹⁰¹⁶ Land held beyond the proven acres was let back on 21-year leases at 4s an acre and 1s duty.¹⁰¹⁷ By August 1713 the register held paired entries for dozens of holders. Thomas Allis kept a freehold core of 3 acres and leased 30 acres beside it.¹⁰¹⁸ Joshua Johnson held 14 acres free under the King's Peak with 28 acres leased to the north.¹⁰¹⁹

The resurvey also produced losers. The Company took back 10 acres Thomas Allis had bought and gave him gumwood ground in exchange.¹⁰²⁰ Thomas Bagley's will of November 1711 provided for his widow whether or not the Company restored "the land from which he had recently been dispossessed".¹⁰²¹ In May 1712 the Company allowed that if the claimant had been unjustly dealt with, Bagley was still to be paid "the charges he was at, in fencing and planting".¹⁰²² After John Alexander built on fresh Company ground and gave up his old plot, the Company forbade further exchanges of that kind.¹⁰²³ The resurvey made errors of its own. The same 30 acres formerly William Bowman's were confirmed both to Elizabeth Bowman and to John Bryan.¹⁰²⁴ Several deeds were left with their dates and witnesses blank.¹⁰²⁵

Section 2 sets out the paired confirmations and leases of 1711-1713 holder by holder.

Fences as landmarks and the annexed plan ↑

From 1711 the lease made the fence the legal boundary. Henry Francis's lease forbade any "alteration of the fences that serve as landmarks of the annexed plan".¹⁰²⁶ The clause was repeated in the run of 1713 leases.¹⁰²⁷ The Company's form of 1726 added that the plan was to settle any dispute.¹⁰²⁸ John Knipe's lease that year bound him to "abide by the plan in any dispute".¹⁰²⁹ The 1738 short covenants kept the rule that boundary fences were not to be moved.¹⁰³⁰ A lease of 1745 put it plainly: the fences were not to be altered, "they being the Boundry or Land Marks of the Parcel of Land aforesaid".¹⁰³¹

The clause tied deed, plan and fence together. Stephen Young's lease of 1757 forbade any change to the fences, since "any change would call for the alteration of the deed and the plan annexed to it".¹⁰³² Leases of 1747 to the Harpers called the fences "the boundary and land mark to the land".¹⁰³³ A lease to Goodwin of 1749 said "the fences themselves served as the recognised landmarks of the property".¹⁰³⁴ The register of the 1760s and 1770s drew the plan beneath the deed: "a plan of many sides", "a tapering plan" or "a plan with compass letters".¹⁰³⁵

The rule moved slowly into the town. The town leases of 1737-1747 bound the tenant to wall or fence and to repair, but said nothing of moving the bounds.¹⁰³⁶ Julio Fabiano's town lease of December 1765 already forbade him to alter or remove the fences that marked the plot's bounds.¹⁰³⁷ From November 1785 the clause became standard in James Valley leases. James Pritchard, a shopkeeper, "might not alter or remove the fences that marked the bounds" of his 60 by 67 feet.¹⁰³⁸ William Chamberlain and John Legg took plots on the same day under the same covenant.¹⁰³⁹

Fencing itself was the price of a secure boundary. A holder whose line ran awkwardly could ask for a scrap of waste to straighten it. In 1738 John French was allowed to enclose some 7 or 8 acres of steep ground up to a cliff. He paid no rent beyond "a peppercorn each year should the Company ever ask for it".¹⁰⁴⁰ In 1751 Matthew Purling asked for a barren piece "chiefly barren and wanted only for the convenience of fencing".¹⁰⁴¹ In 1754 Matthew Bazett sought "a small piece of rocky and barren land which would nonetheless serve to shorten his fences".¹⁰⁴² Such grants ran through the 1760s.¹⁰⁴³

The usual rent for good country land was 5s an acre over the same years.

Later surveys and measurement ↑

The Company returned to measurement whenever it doubted its own records. In January 1727 the Council named John Goodwin, John Johnson, George Wrangham and Edmund Nichols to survey freehold and planted woodland against the acres and bounds in each deed.¹⁰⁴⁴ The woodland survey was repeated through 1729, and defaulters were fined or reprimanded.¹⁰⁴⁵ In August 1726 the Governor and Council measured John Worrall's 8 acres in Deep Valley themselves.¹⁰⁴⁶

On 20 November 1744 the paymaster paid Lieutenant Kendall 12 guineas "for surveying the Horse Point and the Company's pastures about Plantation House".¹⁰⁴⁷ Three soldiers who attended him had 1s a day.¹⁰⁴⁸ The cash account showed £12 12s to Kendall and £2 5s to the three men for 13 days.¹⁰⁴⁹ The clerk's figure for the soldiers did not agree with 13 days at 12d each, which makes £1 19s.¹⁰⁵⁰ Kendall's survey was a survey of the Company's own estate, not of the planters' holdings.

The planters' holdings were checked by calling in the leases. In February 1745 the Council found leases on lives and some for 99 years, against a letter of 1741 forbidding terms above 21 years.¹⁰⁵¹ It also found that "the planters had sold their leases one to another and seldom made any assignment or registered them".¹⁰⁵² It could not trust the land returns of the previous September and ordered every leaseholder to bring his lease to the secretary's office.¹⁰⁵³ An abstract of all leases was taken in March 1745.¹⁰⁵⁴ Some ground was measured years after the grant. Thomas Hayes's 4 acres were let in 1747 after being "not measured until lately".¹⁰⁵⁵

Instruments and men were scarce. In February 1762 the surveyor Charles Gessing, unfit for the Company's commission through drink, was sent home.¹⁰⁵⁶ In September 1763 the Council sent the theodolite home by the Clive for repair, asking for it back "with a new chain for it".¹⁰⁵⁷ In November 1764 the engineer Captain Archibald Mitchell was ordered "to take a survey and make a plan or plans of the island".¹⁰⁵⁸ When he left in 1769 he disputed which of the books and instruments were his own.¹⁰⁵⁹

The largest boundary of the period was the fence round the Long Wood. In August 1778 William Wrangham measured its line at nearly 3½ miles.¹⁰⁶⁰ An earth bank would be useless, and a stone wall at least 5 feet high would cost far more than the £3,000 estimate.¹⁰⁶¹ Wrangham offered to build it under contract for £5,000.¹⁰⁶² The Court sent "a careful account of the cost of similar works in the northern counties of England".¹⁰⁶³ The Council thought labour and quarrying too different and asked for a measured survey of the whole wood first.¹⁰⁶⁴ An "exact survey" of 1775 gave 2,790 yards from Chubb's Spring to the crane for the new water pipe.¹⁰⁶⁵

Private estates were measured less often than Company ground. William Young's will of 1778 ordered his fenced lands to be measured as they stood.¹⁰⁶⁶ He did so "Because the allotment of the fences about his lands left an uncertainty of the acres contained in them".¹⁰⁶⁷ As later context, a return of families, land and stock went to a Survey Office from August 1784.¹⁰⁶⁸

Disputes before the Council ↑

Most boundary quarrels came before the Governor and Council at an ordinary consultation. In October 1696 John Hemen complained that Wills had stopped him fencing and encroached on his land.¹⁰⁶⁹ The deputy surveyor confirmed a corner mark set by consent, and both men were ordered to re-measure.¹⁰⁷⁰ Morris had sold 7 feet of ground to Beale and then sold the house to Clavering.¹⁰⁷¹ The Council gave Clavering his bargain and took the disputed strip for the Company.¹⁰⁷² Swallow complained in about 1717 that ground behind his house had been taken under a deed of gift he signed in drink, and that no such deed was registered.¹⁰⁷³

Title disputes could reach far back. Around April 1726 John Colgrove claimed 6 acres his grandfather had bought, then held by Captain John Alexander, a sitting councillor.¹⁰⁷⁴ Alexander's defence referred to an event in "the year 1657".¹⁰⁷⁵ That year fell before the Company's settlement of the island in 1659, so the date was either a slip or a claim reaching back to the first settlers. The jury found for Colgrove and referred damages to the court.¹⁰⁷⁶ In May 1726 Arthur Swallow senior complained against William Beale over ground behind his plantation.¹⁰⁷⁷ In April 1725 the Council confirmed Richard Girling's sale to Richard Goodwin and treated it as a precedent for the security of planters' titles.¹⁰⁷⁸ About 1731 the Council found that the Beale family had obtained a piece of land unjustly from orphans.¹⁰⁷⁹

The Governor's own land was open to challenge. In 1741-1742 Francis Wrangham alleged that the late Governor John Goodwin had never held good title to a parcel first owned by Henry Francis.¹⁰⁸⁰ In May 1744 the register showed a deed of sale to Governor Powell of 3 acres of waste above the Company's plantation in James Valley.¹⁰⁸¹ Clearing it "might open salt springs to the detriment of the water supplying the shipping".¹⁰⁸² Two planters viewed it, Doveton for the Company and John Greentree for Powell, and Powell surrendered his deed.¹⁰⁸³

Fences between neighbours caused steady friction. In March 1746 Martin Harper said he had fenced his part of the boundary with Joseph Powell, but Powell had left his part unmade for nearly seven years.¹⁰⁸⁴ Powell had broken off an agreement for Harper to build a wall 4 feet high at 10s a rod.¹⁰⁸⁵ Powell's cattle "constantly trespassed on Harper's land and destroyed near half his grass".¹⁰⁸⁶ Two days later Powell admitted his fences were down. Both men were "admonished to agree and live like good neighbours".¹⁰⁸⁷ In 1759 Thomas Harper shot George Alexander's trespassing mare. The Council made Harper pay her value and Alexander pay for his cattle's damage, both fixed by persons indifferently chosen.¹⁰⁸⁸

Town walls and doors raised the same questions. In 1719 the Governor agreed with Doveton to take down a small enclosure that projected into the street.¹⁰⁸⁹ In 1751 Falconer found that a back door in his new house opened onto ground sold to John Bazett in 1738, and he was held to have no right to it.¹⁰⁹⁰ In 1756 Adamson's new wall stopped the passage and watercourse behind the houses of Wrangham and Beale.¹⁰⁹¹ When Mrs Alcock sent a man to pull it down, Adamson swore "no, by God the wall must not come down".¹⁰⁹²

The commonest dispute after 1745 was over waste. No Company waste or town ground was let until a councillor had viewed it and found it harmless to the Company and the neighbours.¹⁰⁹³ Neighbours then competed for it. In 1750 the Widow Goodwin objected that a lease of ground beside her land "would deprive her of a way to draw her cattle to water".¹⁰⁹⁴ The half-acre was left in common for both.¹⁰⁹⁵ In December 1752 a poor man, Knipe, kept the common called the Hanging open against Orlando Bagley: "it should remain unfenced for the general benefit".¹⁰⁹⁶

The Woody Ridge case of 1768 shows the Council dividing a contested piece. Matthew Bazett's land lay in the middle of the Company's waste, with fences so long and poor that "he had never been able to make the least use of it".¹⁰⁹⁷ John Desfountain senior then asked for the same hill next to his own land.¹⁰⁹⁸ The Governor and Purling divided it at 1s 6d an acre.¹⁰⁹⁹ "By dividing the land, both men's needs could be met: Bazett's for fencing and Desfountain's for water".¹¹⁰⁰ In October and November 1768 Purling divided waste in the West Division among William Young, the Gurling orphans, Simon Whaley and Gabriel Harper.¹¹⁰¹ Young paid 5s an acre for well grassed ground and the others 2s for poorer land.¹¹⁰²

The Desfountain case of 1770 shows a line drawn on the ground to protect a neighbour. Purling found that letting all of one piece would hurt John Morrall, whose land and house lay close by.¹¹⁰³ He proposed "a boundary running from an old fence round a plot called Level Wood", beside a large gully and straight up the hill to the corner of Desfountain's own fence.¹¹⁰⁴ Both pieces were very barren and let at 1s an acre.¹¹⁰⁵ The leases of 12¾ acres were signed in September 1771.¹¹⁰⁶

Some quarrels went beyond the island. Margaret Alcock sought the waste behind her house at Sandy Bay in 1768. Samuel Alexander answered that "the inhabitants of Sandy Bay had planted the waste land and brought it into grass themselves".¹¹⁰⁷ The Council referred the question to the Court of Directors.¹¹⁰⁸ The Harper orphans' executors added in 1769 that "It was the only piece of common in the South Division of the island".¹¹⁰⁹ In November 1768 the Council resolved never to lease any part of the barren commons improved at public expense.¹¹¹⁰ The Court then told the Council to settle such cases itself, "equitable and for the general benefit of the inhabitants".¹¹¹¹

Juries and arbitration ↑

The jury of 12 was written into island law early. On 10 March 1681 the Company ruled that "No person was to be deprived or dispossessed of his houses, goods or lands or any other rights" without a jury's verdict.¹¹¹² In 1683 it let the Council keep summary hearings for small matters, since a code drawn for Bombay did not suit an island of under 500 people.¹¹¹³ But "Where the punishment involved the taking away of life, limb or land", the Council was to proceed by jury.¹¹¹⁴

Juries divided inheritances and settled titles from the 1700s. When Mary Dixon's heirs could not agree, a jury viewed her will and her 20 acres and divided them.¹¹¹⁵ In 1708 executors sold 10 of William Dufton's 20 acres, the particular 10 "to be agreed according to a jury's verdict" of 24 March 1708.¹¹¹⁶ In 1711 Gabriel Powell's claim to land held in right of his wife went to a jury of freeholders.¹¹¹⁷ His later deed recorded that "Powell's title rested on a trial at a court of judicature held for that purpose on Thursday 11 October 1711".¹¹¹⁸ Robert Gurling sold 10 acres in 1717 that a jury had awarded him in February 1715.¹¹¹⁹ A verdict of June 1724 declared an assigned lease "vacated", and the land was let afresh.¹¹²⁰

The Crafford case of 1742 made the rule explicit. James Crafford died about March 1736 holding 33 acres of freehold that came to him by marriage.¹¹²¹ In September 1737 the Council refused to prove his will and put in his wife's eldest brother, John Hodgkinson, as heir at law, without trial.¹¹²² Crafford's creditors asked for a jury, and one of 12 planters sat on 21 September 1742.¹¹²³ Governor Powell, as judge, told them that "their land estates on the island were their own, and they could lawfully dispose of them by will or otherwise".¹¹²⁴ No one could be dispossessed without the verdict of 12 men, and Crafford had been dispossessed by arbitrary power.¹¹²⁵ John Bagley replied that the Governor and Council had as much right as a jury to put anyone in possession.¹¹²⁶ The jury found the land and a reversion "were the undoubted right of James Crafford".¹¹²⁷

Juries also met questions the Council would not decide. In December 1746 John Bland, a master mason, said he had agreed to pay £150 for Johnson's house and land.¹¹²⁸ At the later auction Doveton bid against him until it was knocked down at £180.¹¹²⁹ The executor Robert Wright and the bidders were councillors. Bland was reprimanded for his language and told it was a question of law for a jury.¹¹³⁰ In May 1748 a jury ruled on water between neighbouring yam grounds, "Water being of great service to yam plantations".¹¹³¹ The upper user might use the water but had to let it fall back into its old course.¹¹³²

Arbitration ran alongside. In 1693 two arbitrators valued a bullock injured by Parrum's dog at £1 5s and £1 15s, and the matter stayed unsettled.¹¹³³ An award copied into the register of the 1720s settled a watercourse running into the Company's Sandy Bay plantation.¹¹³⁴ John Smith, Edward Pyke and Captain John Goodwin viewed the land and ruled that "The water entering the King's plantation in the upper Water Deemed was not to be obstructed".¹¹³⁵ Brothers ended a partition dispute in 1729 by releasing a 17-acre parcel each to the other.¹¹³⁶ In 1775 William Jenkins brought an award by Orlando Bagley and Henry Powell, with James Colgrave as umpire, against the Seales; "the bench approved the proceedings and confirmed the award".¹¹³⁷

The courts were put on a regular footing in 1762. The directors declared on 3 February that the Company's government covered civil courts for property disputes, with a jury of 12 islanders.¹¹³⁸ The Council undertook in August to "sit as a court to hear and settle every dispute over property, and juries would decide cases in each instance".¹¹³⁹ It sent home a record of jury proceedings from 1679.¹¹⁴⁰ The Court hoped controversy "on vexatious and frivolous pretences" would be discouraged.¹¹⁴¹ The jury had limits. In 1764 Robert Ballard demanded a jury before blocking a new door onto the Ladder Hill lane.¹¹⁴² The Council held "that the matter was not a dispute over property between two private individuals" and refused him.¹¹⁴³

Hard cases could still go home. In 1753 the Court sent counsel's opinion in a dispute between executors but told the Council to decide such cases itself.¹¹⁴⁴ As later context, in 1789 the Council referred Thomas Lester's claim "to certain land and the crops grown on it" to the Court of Directors.¹¹⁴⁵ In 1790 it thought it "wiser for a jury" to settle claims against a dead man's estate.¹¹⁴⁶

Corrections in the register ↑

The registers show their own errors and how clerks mended them. In November 1742 a lease of 7½ acres to the Alexander heirs was entered and signed. Notes at its foot twice state that "the clerk had entered the agreement in the wrong place, so it counted for nothing".¹¹⁴⁷ A corrected lease naming the trustees followed on the next page.¹¹⁴⁸ In October 1759 an 11-acre lease to John Leech in Dogwood Valley was marked "of no value", the ground being included in his 26-acre lease.¹¹⁴⁹ A Worrall lease of about 1725 and a Mawson lease of 1759 were begun and crossed out.¹¹⁵⁰ A lease of 1738 to James Vaughan was entered with its acreage blank and its boundary clause broken off.¹¹⁵¹

The largest correction concerned the late Governor Goodwin's land. In February 1742 the Council sold Governor Powell 89 acres of Goodwin's freehold to recover his debt to the Company.¹¹⁵² The lease book entry gives the price as £8,035 and is crossed out.¹¹⁵³ The deed of 1 February 1742 and the consultation both read £835.¹¹⁵⁴ The clerk had simply written the figure wrongly.

Interpretations ↑

The evidence suggested that a boundary on St Helena was more social than geometric. Deeds fixed a parcel by its neighbours, its ridges and its springs. That worked while the neighbours were alive and the landmarks stood. It failed once holders died, sold or left, which happened often on a small island with a mobile garrison. The repeated declarations of 1679, 1702 and 1704 probably reflected that failure.

The resurvey of 1711-1713 was the decisive change. It bound title to a plan and the plan to the fence. From then on, moving a fence meant altering a deed, and the Company could treat any shift as an encroachment on its own waste. The clause also served the Company's revenue. Land found beyond a holder's proven acres became leasehold at 5s an acre, so measurement turned encroachment into rent.

The pattern of later disputes probably reflected scarcity rather than disorder. Most cases after 1745 concerned scraps of barren waste, short fences, a way to water or a door onto a lane. The Council's answers were practical. It divided pieces, set graded rents and kept improved commons open. The jury, promised in 1681, was used chiefly where land passed by death or sale and where councillors were themselves parties. The Crafford verdict of 1742 showed that planters could turn the Company's own promise against the Council.

Comparisons ↑

In England the period saw the spread of the estate map and the professional land surveyor. Landlords had their estates measured, mapped and recorded in written surveys that tied rents to acreage.¹¹⁵⁵ Enclosure by agreement redrew field boundaries and fixed them with hedges, much as the 1711 resurvey fixed St Helena's bounds with fences.¹¹⁵⁶ Open-field villages that escaped enclosure kept older customs, with strips and commons governed by manorial courts and juries.¹¹⁵⁷ St Helena's leases joined the estate survey to a covenant against moving fences, and it heard disputes before a council more often than a manorial court.

Bermuda offers the nearest island parallel. Richard Norwood's surveys divided the island into tribes and shares, and his resurvey of 1662-1663 recorded each holding for the new owners.¹¹⁵⁸ Bermuda's survey came early and gave a fixed grid. St Helena's came after 40 years of informal holding, and much of it had to confirm what neighbours already accepted.

At the Cape the Dutch East India Company surveyed and registered freehold grants near Cape Town, with diagrams kept by its land surveyor.¹¹⁵⁹ Loan farms in the interior were unsurveyed and bounded only roughly. St Helena resembled the Cape's surveyed freehold zone more than its frontier, because its land was small and closely held.

In Barbados early land disputes arose from vague grants and competing patents, and surveyors' plats became central evidence in suits over sugar estates.¹¹⁶⁰ Barbadian disputes turned on large and valuable estates. St Helena's were mostly over a few acres of barren hillside, a fence line or a spring.

In Company India the question was jurisdiction rather than measurement. The Company claimed the right to hold courts and judge property among its subjects in its settlements.¹¹⁶¹ The St Helena code of 1681 was itself drawn from Bombay. The Company adapted it to an island where the Governor and Council were landholders too.

7. The Commons, Waste and Grazing ↑

The Company's Waste and Its First Grazing Law ↑

All land not granted or let to a planter remained the Company's waste. It was never empty ground. The planters' cattle and goats ran over it from the first years of settlement, with sheep, hogs and horses. On 1 August 1683 the Company ordered that no one let cattle stray on its waste unless they bore the Company's brand, applied each year at Rupert's Bay.¹¹⁶² Owners paid "twelve pence a head for allowing it to graze one year on the company's waste".¹¹⁶³ The island's abstract of laws added that straying beasts were held until 12d a head was paid, with a further 12d for every year they had grazed unmarked.¹¹⁶⁴ A parallel copy of the laws called the due pescionage and claimed unmarked beasts as the Company's goods, as lords of manors in England claimed strays.¹¹⁶⁵

The Company spoke of its waste as a manor. It reserved the deer to itself: "The company was to have all the deer, as a royalty of the manor".¹¹⁶⁶ Every sale of an ox or other beast had to be entered in the Company's toll book, and an unregistered sale was void.¹¹⁶⁷ The consolidated laws set up about 1707 repeated the brand and the yearly charge of 12d a head.¹¹⁶⁸

Private land was surrounded by this waste. In April 1698 Elizabeth Johnson, widow, bought about 20 acres in Lemon Valley bounded on all sides by the Company's common, paying £20 in store credit.¹¹⁶⁹ Thomas Cole's 17 acres at the head of Deep Valley, sold in 1705 for £104, were bounded on every side by the waste.¹¹⁷⁰ Some buildings stood on the waste itself. Of Jonathan Higham's holding in Sharks Valley it was written that "The buildings stood on the Right Honourable Company's waste lands".¹¹⁷¹ In 1698 Sutton Isaack gave his grandson "A small piece of common free ground of sufficient extent to build a house".¹¹⁷² In 1725 half an acre under the Great Wood Ridge was sold with land that had been obtained by exchange.¹¹⁷³ It had been taken for "one certain spot of ground formerly known by the name of Common Ground".¹¹⁷⁴

Pressure on the grass appeared early. In December 1706 the Company feared that close-grazing sheep were spoiling the pasture, since "there was not herbage enough for both sorts".¹¹⁷⁵ It left the inhabitants' quarter meetings to settle what numbers were fit.¹¹⁷⁶ In January 1716 the Council proposed to fence the Great Wood.¹¹⁷⁷ There "the young and small trees that arose were all destroyed by the cattle, which went there as if on a common".¹¹⁷⁸ The enclosure would have needed 100 men for a year, because the stone lay far off.¹¹⁷⁹ A year later the Council accused Gabriel Powell of driving a herd almost as large as the Company's from one fresh patch to the next, 50 head at once in Tombstone Wood.¹¹⁸⁰ It wrote that "he had no regard to the wrong he did other people in thus engrossing the common range to himself".¹¹⁸¹

Planters short of grazing asked for pieces of the waste. Thomas Burch was granted 10 acres of Company waste in Sandy Bay for 21 years, measured out by the surveyor general according to custom.¹¹⁸² Richard Alexander rented 10 acres of waste in Sandy Bay for two years from 25 March 1698.¹¹⁸³ John Long, holding only 10 acres, sought 8 acres of waste called Tayler's Ground to preserve his cattle.¹¹⁸⁴ Richard Gurling asked for 15 or 18 acres in Swanley Valley, since without pasture his stock would perish in the dry months.¹¹⁸⁵ The Governor proposed a common field of 12 to 15 acres in the same valley, enclosing one of the best springs for all who settled there.¹¹⁸⁶

Company leases carved out of the waste protected the grazing round them. Thomas Harper leased 1½ acres in Swanley Valley in October 1725.¹¹⁸⁷ Neither he nor his servants "were at any time to do damage to the stock or stocks of goats grazing in and near this Swanleys Valley".¹¹⁸⁸ Francis Junge's lease of half an acre in February 1730 reserved water "enough for cattle that grazed or fed on the common or unused land to drink".¹¹⁸⁹ John Thwaites's timber lease of 1729 barred hogs, goats and cattle from the ground without the Council's leave.¹¹⁹⁰

Fencing was a public duty owed by every holder. The Company funded fencing through its pay office and allowed more time where timber and iron were lacking.¹¹⁹¹ In April 1711 the Council revived an old law under which land not fenced between 25 March 1709 and 25 March 1712 was forfeit to the Lords Proprietors.¹¹⁹² Holders short of slaves were given more time but no dispensation.¹¹⁹³ Thomas Burnham, who laboured at the fortifications and owned one slave, received 12 further months in January 1713.¹¹⁹⁴ By 1717 owners with surplus slaves could contract for fencing as undertakers, paid by the rod.¹¹⁹⁵ Hard new ground was let at a peppercorn for between five and 10 years, the abatement standing as the Company's payment for clearing and fencing.¹¹⁹⁶

Goat Ranges as Property ↑

A goat range was a customary right to run goats over a defined tract of the Company's waste. It could be sold, devised and inherited like land, though it was not land. In November 1738 John Long sold Gabriel Powell "a range on the common called Banks Ridge" in Rupert's Valley for £5.¹¹⁹⁷ Long had inherited the range from his mother, Elizabeth Marsh.¹¹⁹⁸ In November 1722 neighbours had petitioned against Sarah Southen's new goat pound under the High Hill, and the Council rejected their complaint.¹¹⁹⁹

About 1729 the inhabitants agreed to kill all their goats and sheep for 10 years to preserve the young wood.¹²⁰⁰ When that term ended in 1742, people who had no range claimed one.¹²⁰¹ They argued that "every planter on the island formerly had a goat range and that the same ought therefore to continue".¹²⁰² The jury read the Company's letters of 4 December 1730 and 19 November 1731, which ordered the ranges of each plantation to be registered and described.¹²⁰³ It could not agree and asked the Council to settle the matter.¹²⁰⁴ The Council called a vestry at the Castle for 13 October "to resettle the inhabitants in their property to their several ranges of goats".¹²⁰⁵

The inhabitants met in vestry on 15 October 1742. They agreed that those who had run goats in particular ranges when the order to destroy them was published should have those ranges back.¹²⁰⁶ They then set out about 20 ranges by landmarks, such as Deep Valley to Powells Valley, Fays Ridge to Fords Pasture and Ebony Plain to West Point.¹²⁰⁷ Several ranges were held by groups of partners. Others belonged to widows such as Mrs Ryder and Mrs French, or to orphans.¹²⁰⁸ The Company held the range from the top of Ladder Hill to Fays Ridge.¹²⁰⁹ Disputed titles were settled by oath, and the minute records that "Mrs Wrangham was sworn to the title".¹²¹⁰

On 19 October 1742 the inhabitants agreed the rules of sale, descent and trespass. A man might sell his range to whom he pleased, but only to one person.¹²¹¹ "After his death, if he had but one range, it descended to his eldest son".¹²¹² A second range went to the second son, and any more to the daughters in order of seniority.¹²¹³ Goats pounded three times in another man's range could be charged 1d a day for a fortnight, then killed and laid on the pound wall.¹²¹⁴ The owner had written notice each time and three months to clear his goats from other ranges.¹²¹⁵ The Council confirmed the ranges and rules and ordered a table of them posted at the market house.¹²¹⁶

Ranges carried a money value. At the auction of the Goodwin estate in 1743 Thomas Easthope paid £21 6s for "a range for goats omitted in the inventory and account sales".¹²¹⁷ Robert Wright's hogs, goats and kids, "with a range in Sandy Bay", fetched £3 12s 6d in 1748.¹²¹⁸ At Gawling's sale in September 1754 John Goodwin paid £36 for 30 goats in the Lemon Valley range together with the range.¹²¹⁹ Stephen Herbert paid £8 5s for six goats in the Peak Hill range with its range.¹²²⁰

Ranges also passed by will. Robert Gurling, by will of November 1742, gave his widow "the benefit of keeping goats in Sandy Gut during her life".¹²²¹ Doveton in 1745 left two goat ranges to his sons John and Isaac outside their shares of the estate.¹²²² Richard Goodwin's will of January 1748 gave ranges at Devil's Hole and Lemon Valley.¹²²³ Joseph Whaley left his son James a range from Stone Top to Prosperous Bay Valley with five cows in 1751.¹²²⁴ John Bagley gave his son John "his goat range and five ewes in the range" in 1754.¹²²⁵ William Burnham's goats and range at Stone Top were to be delivered to his son Thomas at 16.¹²²⁶ Thomas Greentree bought two ranges at public auction, one sold by the Governor and Council, and left both to his nieces in 1766.¹²²⁷ His widow Elizabeth left her ranges in Peak Gut and Lemon Valley with their goats to her nephews in 1769.¹²²⁸

The descent of ranges was tested in 1751. Samuel Desfountain objected when his late father's executors advertised a range in Rupert's Valley for sale.¹²²⁹ He "claimed the range as his own property and asked the Council to decide the matter".¹²³⁰ The Council found the by-law of October 1742 unclear in parts and summoned the inhabitants for 12 August 1751.¹²³¹ In vestry they declared that a range not disposed of by will passed to the heir.¹²³² They added that "the range should descend to his heir and not be sold to meet his debts, provided other effects were sufficient".¹²³³ Several ranges passed by seniority among the sons and then the daughters, not by lot. Ranges were not valued into the children's shares.¹²³⁴ The Council adjudged the range to Samuel Desfountain.¹²³⁵

Range partners kept their own pounds. In November 1746 sheep owners on the common at Thomstone Hill were refused the use of the goat pound by its owners.¹²³⁶ The board allowed them to build a sheep pound of their own on "the common of the island called Thomstone Hill in the west division".¹²³⁷

Goats, Ebony and the Young Wood ↑

Goats threatened the island's young trees throughout the century. In 1711 a Company officer proposed "to kill all the goats, unless they could be kept from browsing on the young trees".¹²³⁸ Yet in 1714 the Company's own goats numbered "about two hundred in the valley and more up in the country".¹²³⁹ They were thought cheaper to keep than sheep, since the Company's slaves pounded them and they bred faster.¹²⁴⁰

The conflict reached its height in 1744. In September the Governor reported that Peak Gut had once yielded much ebony, but "the goats allowed to range there ate down the growing trees".¹²⁴¹ The Council asked the holders of the range to accept "either on a reasonable payment for the range or to keep their goats off it for three or four years".¹²⁴² Several ranges had the mange, and Dixon and John Goodwin were to inspect the goats and kill the diseased.¹²⁴³ In October the Council asked the holders of a range near Sandy Bay on what terms they would give it up for the ebony.¹²⁴⁴ Their interest was to be appraised by neighbouring planters and paid within two or three years.¹²⁴⁵

The Greentrees refused to pound their goats for inspection. They answered that "they had something else to do, and would pound the goats when they wanted them".¹²⁴⁶ They were fined for contempt, and £10 each was received from them in November 1744.¹²⁴⁷ The Council told them that "resisting authority was the beginning of rebellion".¹²⁴⁸ In February 1745 Dixon and Goodwin killed upwards of 20 goats found with scab or mange.¹²⁴⁹ The Peak Gut holders were then asked to kill their goats, keeping the sole right to restock after four years if the ebony failed.¹²⁵⁰ The Council's own Governor had offended in the same way, for "Powell had taken a range for goats under the waterfall for his own use".¹²⁵¹

The Directors took the planters' side. By their letter of 10 January 1745 the fines on the Greentrees were to be repaid.¹²⁵² They held that "The goats were of much more use to the Company and the poorer sort of planters than the growth of ebony".¹²⁵³ The Council did not wholly yield. In June 1745 Franks found goats on the range where young ebony grew, and "they had barked some of the young trees, which had in great measure killed them".¹²⁵⁴ A corporal and two men were ordered to shoot every goat found there.¹²⁵⁵

Later orders aimed at the Company's own plantations and woods. In July 1755 owners of goats near Horse Point had to keep a man or boy with them, and "any goats found there in future would be killed".¹²⁵⁶ In December 1758 the rule was repeated, since goats could not be kept out by any fence.¹²⁵⁷ Garrison powder was fired "to frighten the goats on Munden's Point and Ladder Hill" in 1755.¹²⁵⁸ In May 1768 the Company's overseer at Sandy Bay counted as many as 60 goats from Lot's range and the Sandy Bay range inside the Company's plantations.¹²⁵⁹ The owners promised to keep herders or remove their goats.¹²⁶⁰ The artillery issued 6 lb 14 oz of lead ball for shooting goats in December 1771 alone.¹²⁶¹

As later context, the customary right itself was finally denied on part of the waste. On 18 December 1784 the Council ruled on the ground from Lot Ridge to Sandy Bay Water.¹²⁶² It determined that "no person had any right or ownership over that part of the Honourable Company's waste land" as a goat range.¹²⁶³ In December 1789 it reaffirmed that ruling and allowed neighbours to shoot goats straying into their enclosures from that common.¹²⁶⁴

Horses, Sheep and the Stint ↑

Horses were the first animals to be limited. In November 1742 the Governor sold two Company colts for 30s and 50s, holding that "one horse ate as much grass as two bullocks".¹²⁶⁵ In May 1751 there were near 100 horses and mares on the island, "which the Council thought an overstock for the island".¹²⁶⁶ The Directors told the Council to "geld all the stone colts and horses".¹²⁶⁷ In April 1752 the Council ordered all stone horses, sows and boars gelded at once.¹²⁶⁸

Sheep were the next concern. In January 1752 every inhabitant was to employ shepherds, "under penalty of a fine of 4 shillings for each sheep found trespassing" on the Company's land.¹²⁶⁹ In November 1757 owners who returned too few sheep faced 5s for each sheep above the return, "excepting natural increase".¹²⁷⁰

The fullest regulation came from the planters themselves. On 10 December 1757 a committee chosen by the planters at Rosetta proposed limits tied to land held.¹²⁷¹ Landholders and leaseholders were "allowed to keep only one sheep for every three acres of land they should from time to time possess".¹²⁷² The landless were to keep none, and their sheep were to be sold for the poor if not disposed of within six months.¹²⁷³ Saddle horses were limited to one for 10 to 70 acres, two for 70 to 140 acres and three above 140, with none on the Company's waste.¹²⁷⁴ Four principal grazing grounds, including the Horse Pasture and the Woody Ridge, were to be closed from 1 January until the Council opened them.¹²⁷⁵ Vestry inspectors were to act in each division.¹²⁷⁶ The Council adopted the articles in January 1758 and ordered them published.¹²⁷⁷

Enforcement followed. In March 1758 horses still grazed the waste about Fig Hill and Red Hill, and owners were fined 5s a head each time.¹²⁷⁸ The vestry chose churchwardens and overseers "to survey the stocks of sheep belonging to the several inhabitants of the island and the Honourable Company's waste land".¹²⁷⁹ The same election was held in April 1759.¹²⁸⁰

On 24 September 1759 the Council republished a vestry rule barring horses and mares from the waste at any season, with 10s for each trespass.¹²⁸¹ The reason given was "as they ate up the herbage from the black cattle".¹²⁸² One entry of the notice dated the vestry's resolution 12 December 1737, while another dated it 12 December 1757.¹²⁸³ The later date agrees with the planters' articles of that month, though the earlier may record an older ban renewed. In October 1759 the acreage scale for horses was enforced with £5 for each horse over the limit.¹²⁸⁴ Under it "anyone owning 140 acres or more was permitted three, and no more".¹²⁸⁵ In February 1760 the horses of William Seale, John Desfountain junior and Benjamin Sealy were found on the waste, and each owner paid 10s.¹²⁸⁶ Half of each fine went to the informer.¹²⁸⁷

The Directors approved the rules in December 1760. Among them were the rules "for forbidding horses to graze on the Company's waste land to the harm of the black cattle, for regulating the number of horses and what persons should be entitled to keep them".¹²⁸⁸ In October 1768 the Council heard that idle young people and junior Company servants were keeping horses on the commons.¹²⁸⁹ It republished the regulation, declaring that "no one holding less than ten acres of land could keep a horse".¹²⁹⁰ The fines were £10 for keeping a horse without right, 20s for each trespass on the waste and 5s for each sheep of the landless.¹²⁹¹ All grazing on the waste was to stop each year from 1 February until the churchwardens reported it fit again.¹²⁹²

The stint was tightened in the drought years of the late 1770s. In January 1777 the court resolved that "every colt should be gelded within its first year and that no mare should be put to a stallion for some time".¹²⁹³ In April 1779 the justices heard many complaints of "the excessive growth in the number of sheep and goats, which was damaging the rearing of cattle".¹²⁹⁴ A vestry committee of landholders drew up rules, which became law on 13 September 1779.¹²⁹⁵ Only landholders might keep sheep, apart from the clergyman's customary 40.¹²⁹⁶ The rule ran that "each landowner could keep sheep at a rate of two sheep for every three acres of land he held, and no more".¹²⁹⁷ Excess sheep were fined 5s, and the sheep of those without right were to be killed.¹²⁹⁸ Inspectors chosen by district counted the flocks each December for 1d a head.¹²⁹⁹ Tame flocks trespassing on enclosed land after three written warnings were impounded at 6d a head.¹³⁰⁰ The inspectors reported their counts in January 1781 and January 1782.¹³⁰¹ The parish received £22 10s and then £70 15s in fines on sheep, beside the dog tax.¹³⁰²

The scale of 1759 is given as one horse for 10 to 20 acres in a second copy of the notice (069/158); the planters' articles of 1757 give 10 to 70.

Seasons, Pounds and Trespass ↑

The Company's own grounds were opened to the planters only on terms. By their letter of 10 January 1745 the Directors told the Council to revive the planters' former practice of turning cattle into the Great Wood when grass was to spare.¹³⁰³ They described it as "granting the planters this custom of commoning for as long as it did the Company no harm".¹³⁰⁴ The order was repeated in January 1746.¹³⁰⁵ Abuse had already been charged. The Company's reeve, Doveton, was dismissed in 1744 for letting his own and other planters' cattle and hogs overrun the Great Wood pasture.¹³⁰⁶

The Company enclosed its pastures with its own slaves. In January 1743 the Governor reported the work done "without any other expense to the Masters than the labour of the few plantation slaves, which never exceeded 12 men".¹³⁰⁷ By November 1754 "The fences between the Company's ground and the planters', which had needed repair, were almost finished."¹³⁰⁸

Trespass on those pastures was punished by impounding. On 18 June 1754 "upwards of two hundred and thirty sheep belonging to the planters had been found in the Long Wood".¹³⁰⁹ Sheep found there or in the Company's plantations were to be pounded at 6d a head.¹³¹⁰ In December 1758 the charge was set at 4d a sheep and 6d a hog.¹³¹¹ In October 1759 another 200 planters' sheep were found in the Long Wood, and the rule was published again.¹³¹² The Company's own hogs were impounded under the same notice, and 5s was paid to redeem one in 1771.¹³¹³

The waste itself was opened and closed by public notice. The articles of December 1757 closed two tracts to cattle before 1 January in any year.¹³¹⁴ One ran from Man and Horse Pasture and the Red Hill to Southern's Water and the Windy Ridge, the other from Prosperous Bay to Stone Top.¹³¹⁵ In March 1760 the inhabitants were "permitted, from Tuesday 1 April, to graze their cattle and other livestock upon the Honourable Company's waste lands" until 1 January 1761.¹³¹⁶ In March 1763 the planters "could turn their cattle out onto the common from 1 April 1763".¹³¹⁷ In 1770 cattle were allowed on the commons until 12 February and had to be removed by 29 March.¹³¹⁸

The Horse Pasture shows how one tract changed status. In 1680 the Council granted Adulph Eden 20 acres on the Horse Pasture plains.¹³¹⁹ In 1726 the Company let 90 acres called the Horse Pasture to five members of the Goodwin and Greentree families jointly.¹³²⁰ In 1746 Company labourers were burning the young wood there and planting potatoes.¹³²¹ By 1757 it was one of the four grounds closed under the planters' articles.¹³²² In 1764 Isaac Knipe leased 15 acres "carrying the byname of the Horse Pasture".¹³²³ In July 1780 the grand jury proposed that "cattle be barred from grazing the part of the commons known as the Horse Pasture for three or four years".¹³²⁴ The drought had damaged its rushes, which were the island's thatch.¹³²⁵ A fine of 5s a head ran from 1 August 1780.¹³²⁶ As later context, black cattle were allowed back on the Horse Pasture common in August 1783.¹³²⁷

Gates kept stock off the common or on it, and they were often broken. In December 1756 the Council raised its reward to 20 dollars after "the gate leading to the Common below Mr John Goodwin's house" was thrown off its hinges.¹³²⁸ In April 1760 "the gate leading into the pasture called Hutchings had been broken to pieces".¹³²⁹

Trespass between neighbours came before the Council too. In March 1746 Martin Harper complained that Joseph Powell had left his share of their boundary unfenced for nearly seven years.¹³³⁰ As a result "his cattle constantly trespassed on Harper's land and destroyed near half his grass".¹³³¹ Powell promised repairs, and both were "admonished to agree and live like good neighbours".¹³³² In 1759 Thomas Harper shot George Alexander's mare for trespassing with Alexander's cattle.¹³³³ The Council ordered Harper to pay the mare's value and Alexander to make good the damage, both sums fixed by persons indifferently chosen.¹³³⁴

Sheep held in partnership on the commons needed rules of their own. In October 1777 the grand jury complained that some owners had their servants impound sheep without warning their partners.¹³³⁵ The justices ruled that "No owner was to send his slaves to impound sheep for any reason without first informing two or more of the partners."¹³³⁶ Slaves had to carry written orders and could not impound unless a white person was at the pound, on a fine of £1 for a first offence.¹³³⁷

Dogs were the commoners' worst enemy. In July 1752 the Company, having lost lambs, ordered dogs not granted to their keepers to be returned.¹³³⁸ In 1755 sheep were found in the East Division with their throats torn, and goats at Sandy Bay were caught by dogs and "afterwards killed by the blacks who set them on".¹³³⁹ No slave was to take a dog from home without written permission, on pain of whipping.¹³⁴⁰ In November 1770 a group of 10 inhabitants complained of "heavy losses they and the islanders in general were suffering from dogs".¹³⁴¹ A meeting proposed dog numbers scaled to acreage.¹³⁴² It also declared that "No soldier without such property, and no black, could keep a dog for any reason whatever."¹³⁴³ The Council refused the scale, judging that it would increase the harm rather than reduce it.¹³⁴⁴ In January 1778 the grand jury proposed a tax of 5s a dog because of "the damage dogs were doing to property held in common".¹³⁴⁵ The justices made it law on 29 April 1778, collected by the churchwardens like the head money.¹³⁴⁶ The constable was to seize undeclared dogs, hold them 24 hours at the slaughterhouse and then destroy them, for 1s a dog.¹³⁴⁷ The dog tax brought £40 12s in 1782 and £42 6s 3d in 1783.¹³⁴⁸

Keeping the Commons Open ↑

From the 1740s the Council let small pieces of barren waste to adjoining holders, chiefly to shorten their fences. In 1744 John Goodwin was granted 3 acres of barren ground at 1s an acre because "it would save a great length of fence".¹³⁴⁹ In 1749 he leased 15½ acres in the West Division at 1s an acre, since the ground was "chiefly intended for the convenience of fencing".¹³⁵⁰ Each petition was first viewed. A grant followed only when the land was "found not to be prejudicial either to the Honourable Company or to the surrounding neighbourhood".¹³⁵¹ Later grants, such as Samuel Knipe's 23 acres at 1s in 1771, followed the same test.¹³⁵²

The viewing also protected rights of common. In November 1750 the Widow Goodwin objected that a lease to Richard Goodwin "would deprive her of a way to draw her cattle to water".¹³⁵³ The half acre in question was left open for the benefit of both.¹³⁵⁴ In December 1752 Isaac Knipe protested against a lease of the Hanging under the Main Ridge to Orlando Bagley.¹³⁵⁵ Knipe was a poor man with young children who fed his few cattle daily with grass cut from that common.¹³⁵⁶ The Council held that enclosure would harm him and others having a right to the common, and ordered that "it should remain unfenced for the general benefit".¹³⁵⁷

The commons were also a buffer for the Company's own grounds. In December 1766 an inspection of Benjamin Mason's petition found that the ground "shielded the Peak fence from people straying off the common".¹³⁵⁸ In October 1767 Lieutenant St Maurice was granted one rocky piece at 3s an acre but refused a second below the Plantation House road.¹³⁵⁹ If it were enclosed, "the furze would in time spread over the rest of the common, which was already very barren".¹³⁶⁰ In February 1768 Corneille reported that "the old fence no longer kept out the sheep and goats from the common land" at the entrance to the Company's pastures.¹³⁶¹

Not every common was kept. In December 1766 a small common of 30 to 40 acres, almost surrounded by John Alexander's land, was let to him on an improving lease.¹³⁶² He paid 2s 6d an acre for 14 years and 5s for seven more, and the water was left outside his fence so that neighbours were not harmed.¹³⁶³ The lease was executed in September 1768 for 40 acres.¹³⁶⁴

The decisive dispute arose over the waste at Sandy Bay. In February 1768 Margaret Alcock asked to lease Company waste next to her enclosed land there.¹³⁶⁵ John Scott was refused 30 acres called Green Saddle because she had applied first.¹³⁶⁶ On 7 March Samuel Alexander objected that "the inhabitants of Sandy Bay had planted the waste land and brought it into grass themselves".¹³⁶⁷ He added that Alcock had contributed nothing, and that a lease would hem in his land and the Harper orphans' land.¹³⁶⁸ Since the South Division had little common land, the Council made no grant and referred the question to the Directors.¹³⁶⁹

The Council meanwhile made its own rule. On 14 November 1768 Purling reported that part of the waste sought by William Seale had been sown with grass at public expense.¹³⁷⁰ The Council agreed that letting it would discourage such improvements.¹³⁷¹ "It also resolved never to grant leases for any part of the barren commons that had been improved at public expense".¹³⁷² It reported the resolution home, since a lease to individuals would be "a great injustice to the people whose labour went into improving it".¹³⁷³ Seale was allowed instead to exchange a piece of his own land for the ground, because "The piece he gave up in return would serve the public equally well as common grazing".¹³⁷⁴ In February 1769 Richard Bagley exchanged his lease of 4¼ acres at Monkey's Ridge for waste beside his own land.¹³⁷⁵ His old plot was found to hinder the commoners: "It was a small plot in the middle of a large common, and so it hindered the cattle grazing there".¹³⁷⁶

The Directors answered on 14 December 1768. They told the Council to settle the Alcock case and all like it themselves.¹³⁷⁷ They wished "the council settle them in such manner as should appear equitable and for the general benefit of the inhabitants, without referring them to the directors".¹³⁷⁸ In September 1769 Margaret Alcock pressed again, and the Council sent the Lieutenant Governor and Purling to establish where the common lay.¹³⁷⁹ The executors of Thomas Harper's orphans petitioned against any lease in October 1769.¹³⁸⁰ They pleaded: "It was the only piece of common in the South Division of the island."¹³⁸¹ If it were let, they asked an equal share for the orphans, whose land also bordered it.¹³⁸² No lease to Alcock was entered. In January 1770 John Worrall used the same argument against John Desfountain junior, since the ground "had been sown with grass at public expense".¹³⁸³

Leases now protected the commoners' water as well as their grass. The Reverend William Bearcroft's lease of 61 acres in September 1770 forbade him to divert a stream when neighbours' cattle on the adjoining common lacked water.¹³⁸⁴ The covenant ran: "The water had to be left to run in its usual channel down the valley."¹³⁸⁵

Use of the commons by the free Black population drew complaint, as later context. In October 1802 the grand jury presented "free black inhabitants who had built dwellings on the common land" as a nuisance.¹³⁸⁶ The Council replied that its inquiries had found no proof, every charge resting on accusation alone.¹³⁸⁷

Fencing the Long Wood ↑

The Long Wood was Company pasture and woodland, and the island's main source of fuel. From 1761 no one was to take wood from it except for his own fuel, on a fine of "10 shillings for every stick or piece sold".¹³⁸⁸ In November 1762 hatchets were banned from the Long Wood, and fuel could be brought out only by the Rutledge Road.¹³⁸⁹ The wood had no fence on its side towards the planters. In October 1764 Matthew Bazett, who leased land beside it, complained of constant trespass.¹³⁹⁰ His petition ran: "Because Longwood had no fence, animals strayed freely between the two, and the resulting trespasses caused constant trouble both to the Company and to Bazett."¹³⁹¹ The Council resumed his 6 acres beside the Long Wood and leased him an equal area at the Woody Ridge at 8s an acre.¹³⁹² Any further ground he needed to run his fences was let at 1s an acre.¹³⁹³

By 1777 the wood was failing. In July the Council warned that cattle, sheep and goats destroyed the young trees and that the wood might last only 12 to 15 years.¹³⁹⁴ Landowners would then guard their own fuel.¹³⁹⁵ But "The rest of the inhabitants, who had no land, would be reduced to the greatest distress."¹³⁹⁶ The Council proposed a fence costing no more than £3,000.¹³⁹⁷ It also proposed a pipe from a nearby spring, costing up to £518 19s, so that cattle need not go down the steep hillsides to drink.¹³⁹⁸ The Directors rejected the pipe, and the Council replied that grass on the neighbouring commons went to waste for want of water.¹³⁹⁹ In May 1778 it agreed to survey the wood, plant trees in the Horse Pasture and plant furze "on those parts of the common land where it judged the plant would grow".¹⁴⁰⁰

The survey showed the cost. In August 1778 William Wrangham measured the line.¹⁴⁰¹ "The boundary ran for nearly three and a half miles."¹⁴⁰² An earth bank would be useless, and a stone wall at least 5 feet high was needed from stone blasted and carted round.¹⁴⁰³ The estimate of £3,000 was far too low, and Wrangham offered to build the wall by contract for £5,000.¹⁴⁰⁴ From London "The Court had sent a careful account of the cost of similar works in the northern counties of England."¹⁴⁰⁵ The Council thought conditions too different and wanted a measured survey by Captain Pierie first.¹⁴⁰⁶ On 2 November 1779 it advertised for proposals for fencing the Longwood estate.¹⁴⁰⁷ In January 1781 the justices proposed that road labour be used "to fence off a stretch of the Company's waste land known as the Barn Ground and plant it with trees".¹⁴⁰⁸ The grand jury agreed at once.¹⁴⁰⁹

As later context, the Long Wood was enclosed within a few years. In March 1786 residents were warned to keep their goats out of the enclosed land at Longwood.¹⁴¹⁰ In July 1794 the Longwood fence was ordered repaired and sheep and goats found inside were to be fined.¹⁴¹¹

Interpretations ↑

The evidence suggested two layers of right on the same ground. The Company owned the waste as lord and claimed strays, deer and a grazing fee in the language of an English manor. The planters held customary rights over it that the Company could regulate but rarely extinguish. The goat range was the clearest of these rights. It was registered by vestry, sold at auction, devised by will and protected from creditors, yet it gave no title to the soil. The ruling of 1751 that ranges descended by seniority, and not by lot or valuation, treated them almost as a separate estate in land.

The pattern of regulation probably reflected the planters' own interests more than the Company's. The stints of 1757 and 1779 were drafted by committees of landholders and only then adopted by the Council. They tied the right to keep sheep and horses to the acreage a man held. The landless, the junior servants and the soldiers were excluded, and the dog proposals of 1770 would have excluded all Black islanders. The commons were thus shared among holders of land rather than among all inhabitants. The Hanging case of 1752 stood out because it protected a poor man's cut grass against a richer neighbour.

The ebony dispute of 1744 and 1745 showed the limits of the Council's power over customary rights. The Council tried compensation by appraisal, a four-year rest and outright shooting. The Directors overruled it in favour of the goats and the poorer planters. Protection of the young wood succeeded only where the Company could fence or herd its own ground, as at Horse Point and finally in the Long Wood.

The resolution of November 1768 marked a change in how improvement was valued. Elsewhere improvement was the usual ground for a private lease of waste. At Sandy Bay and in Dogwood Valley the Council treated improvement made by common labour as creating a common claim. This probably owed much to the scarcity of common in the South Division and to the standing of the objectors.

Comparisons ↑

English commons were governed in much the same way. Manor courts and village juries fixed stints, set the dates when common fields and meadows were opened and closed, and appointed officers to count stock and impound strays.¹⁴¹² At Laxton the jury set the number of beasts each holder might turn out according to his holding, as the St Helena vestry did with sheep in 1757 and 1779.¹⁴¹³ In England, as on the island, right of common usually belonged to occupiers of land. The landless relied on custom, gleaning and tolerated use.¹⁴¹⁴ The St Helena goat range had no close English parallel, for it was a several right over open ground that passed by its own rule of descent.

Bermuda offered an island contrast. Its land had been surveyed early into shares and tribes, so that little open pasture remained and stock was mostly kept on private holdings.¹⁴¹⁵ In Barbados the sugar estates had engrossed almost all the land by the later seventeenth century. Livestock there was kept on the estates for draught and manure, and no general common survived.¹⁴¹⁶

The Cape stood at the other extreme. The Dutch East India Company let its colonists graze vast tracts as loan farms in return for a yearly fee, without granting the soil.¹⁴¹⁷ Like the goat range, the loan farm was a grazing right over Company land that colonists bought, sold and bequeathed. The scale differed greatly, and at the Cape grazing pressure was relieved by moving outward rather than by stinting. The harm done by goats to St Helena's ebony and gumwood became a familiar case in early colonial conservation.¹⁴¹⁸

8. Water, Ways and Shared Resources ↑

Water in Deeds and Wills ↑

Running water was part of the land from the first surviving conveyances. In November 1683 Samuel Jeffrey sold Henry Kersey about 10 acres in Fryer Valley for £5, "with the crops and watercourses, for ever".¹⁴¹⁹ Philip Savage's sale of 10 acres to John Fuller in March 1686 listed "water, watercourses and timber trees" among the things conveyed.¹⁴²⁰ Later deeds repeated the same words. Isaac Wood bought 5 acres in Fishers Valley in 1712 with "party fences, water and watercourses".¹⁴²¹ Gabriel Powell's purchase of Taylor's Land near the Peak in 1721 carried "party fences, walls, banks, ditches, water, watercourses, wood, trees".¹⁴²² The formula ran on into the 1750s, when Francis Mowatt sold the Purslain Beds in James Valley with water and watercourses for only £8.¹⁴²³

In the town a watercourse often fixed the back line of a house plot. John Nicholls held a house in Fort James Valley with the garden behind "as far as the watercourse".¹⁴²⁴ John Hemon sold a Chapel Valley house in April 1704 with the ground behind it "down to the watercourse".¹⁴²⁵ A Southwark Street house sold in 1718 passed with any watercourse then or later joined to it.¹⁴²⁶

Water could also be granted apart from land. In March 1703 Sarah Sensney gave her father-in-law George Dweight, a soldier, leave "to draw water from her land into the watercourse" and carry it above his own ground.¹⁴²⁷ She bound herself and her heirs to the grant and signed by mark. It is the earliest written grant of a water right in the registers.

Testators used springs and channels to divide their land among heirs. In June 1706 Edward Heath left his daughter Mary his house at the head of Fishers Valley. With it went "the spring of water that issued from a rock behind the house" and the land below it.¹⁴²⁸ The land above the spring went to his stepdaughter Sarah Foster. Gabriel Powell's will of September 1729 split his estate equally among five children and kept the water flowing between their shares.¹⁴²⁹ "The children were not to molest or hinder one another in the passage of the water courses."¹⁴³⁰

The larger wills of the 1740s and 1750s made shared water a standing term of the family settlement. Richard Goodwin died on 1 January 1748 and ordered that "whoever held his land should have an equal benefit from the springs of water".¹⁴³¹ His will also set aside watering places and "a strip or gore of land sufficient to give free passage to and from that watering place".¹⁴³² Richard Mason's will of February 1750 left the water to run "in the lower trenches as it then ran and always had".¹⁴³³ He confirmed the clause in his codicil of 1754.¹⁴³⁴ Lieutenant Thomas Easthope, in August 1751, directed that the cattle watering place be held in common between his two sons. He gave his reason plainly: "to prevent any feuds over the water for their cattle to drink at".¹⁴³⁵ Samuel Doveton's partition of 1749 drew the line between his sons' shares from a lemon tree to the head of a watercourse.¹⁴³⁶

Water Reserved in Company Grants and Leases ↑

The Company treated water as the key to settling its land. In January 1711 the Governor proposed to carry the run of water from Plantation Valley onto a hill to command at least 200 acres.¹⁴³⁷ In January 1716 the Governor and Mr Scattergood surveyed Rupert's Valley. They judged that water carried over the saddle from James Valley would make plantations "for ten industrious families".¹⁴³⁸ By December 1716 the Council had brought a spring into the Company's gardens at the plantation house.¹⁴³⁹

Standing orders of about 1714 required inhabitants to fence their lands so "that there was to be made proper conveyance for carrying the water from one plantation to another".¹⁴⁴⁰ The same orders told planters to bring water to their plantations, following the Company's example.¹⁴⁴¹ Where water was scarce the Council would hold a spring in common. In Swanley Valley the Governor proposed a common field of 12 to 15 acres, enclosing one of the best springs and open to all who settled there.¹⁴⁴²

Company sales and leases from the 1720s began to reserve water for others. On 4 October 1727 the Council sold Richard Goodwin the land called Carne's Gutt for £65. The Company kept the right to draw at all times enough water, common to all, "sufficient to supply the Honourable Company's cattle" in its pastures nearby.¹⁴⁴³ Leases of 1729 and 1730 reserved springs for the neighbourhood. Jonathan Higham junior, a stone cutter, took 4 acres in Sandy Bay Valley in February 1729. "For the benefit of the neighbourhood, Higham and his heirs were to leave open and not enclose the head of the spring."¹⁴⁴⁴ John Knipe junior's lease of February 1730 included an acre called the Salt Spring. He was to leave open as much of a spring in his 6 acres as the Governor and Council thought reasonable.¹⁴⁴⁵ Francis Junge's half acre carried water "enough for cattle that grazed or fed on the common or unused land to drink".¹⁴⁴⁶

The table lists every lease or grant in which a water reservation is written out; most leases simply passed "wood, water and watercourses" to the tenant.

The full country lease of 1738 made free watercourses a general covenant. Samuel Doveton's lease of 27.5 acres in Sandy Bay required that watercourses be kept free.¹⁴⁴⁷ The Company also guarded its own supply. In May 1744 Governor Powell surrendered a deed for 3 acres above the Company's plantation in James Valley. Planters had judged that clearing it "might open salt springs to the detriment of the water supplying the shipping".¹⁴⁴⁸

The widow Mary Seale's case of 1757 shows the covenant at work. John Seale had bought a lease of 7.5 acres in Sandy Bay for £100 and raised its yams from 25,000 to 70,000.¹⁴⁴⁹ The executor failed to renew it in 1744. When the widow asked for renewal, objection was raised that the ground kept water from the Company's land at the lime kiln. The Council renewed it on 12 September 1757 but reserved the water to the Company's land above and below.¹⁴⁵⁰ The new lease forbade that "neither the widow nor any of the orphans hinder or divert the water from the Honourable Company's land".¹⁴⁵¹

Later leases protected commoners as well as the Company. In 1766 the Council let a small common of 30 to 40 acres to John Alexander, but only because its water lay outside the proposed fence.¹⁴⁵² Matthew Bazett and John Desfountain both sought the same barren waste at Woody Ridge in 1768. The Council divided it so as to meet "Bazett's for fencing and Desfountain's for water".¹⁴⁵³ Orlando Bagley, as executor of Thomas Harper, asked for half an acre of waste in Powell's Valley "for the sake of the water there".¹⁴⁵⁴ The Reverend William Bearcroft's lease of 61 acres in September 1770 barred him from diverting a stream in drought when neighbours' cattle on the common lacked water. "The water had to be left to run in its usual channel down the valley."¹⁴⁵⁵ As later context, the Reverend John Wilson's lease of 1788 allowed him to drain water onto Clough's Plain. If the diversion harmed the adjoining commonage he had to turn it back into its former course.¹⁴⁵⁶

Shares, Diversions and Disputes ↑

Disputes between neighbours over water came before the Council from the 1720s. Samuel Jessey and Thomas Leech quarrelled over water access in January 1723.¹⁴⁵⁷ An award in the register settled repeated disputes over a watercourse in Sandy Bay. It ran from lands Captain John Alexander had bought into the Company's plantation. The arbitrators were John Smith, Edward Pyke and Captain John Goodwin, who viewed the ground.¹⁴⁵⁸ They awarded Alexander, Shoolbred and others the part of the watercourse running into their land. They also ordered that "The water entering the King's plantation in the upper Water Deemed was not to be obstructed".¹⁴⁵⁹ The award carries a date of 1784 that cannot be right for its volume, which belongs to the 1720s.

The Company could also grant a timed share of a stream. On 14 December 1743 Joseph Powell, free planter, took 2 acres in Lemon Valley and 2.5 acres called the Tobacco Springs for three lives at 5s an acre.¹⁴⁶⁰ The Lemon Valley ground was worth little without water for yams. Powell might therefore turn the stream across the former Greentree ground "for four days in every six, either the whole flow or any part of it".¹⁴⁶¹ He held the right unhindered by the neighbour whose ground the channels crossed.

Water rights also went to juries. On 24 May 1748 Girling complained that Doveton was turning water from its usual course.¹⁴⁶² The jury held "Water being of great service to yam plantations". It let Doveton use the water as he thought fit, provided it fell back into its original course above Girling's plantation. In the same court Powell complained that Mason's deep trench stopped water reaching his ground. The jury found Mason entitled to what he took, but let Powell draw water through Mason's plantation if no harm was done.¹⁴⁶³ The rule of these verdicts was that an upper holder might use water but not send it away from the lower ground.

Town tenants pressed the same claims. In September 1756 Francis Wrangham senior and Onesiphorus Beale complained that a new wall and a cut bank had stopped their passage and watercourse.¹⁴⁶⁴ Adamson answered that their leases named no watercourse or way. He contrasted them with the late Mr Goodwin's lease, which listed "springs, wells, gutters, watercourses, easements, profits, liberties and appurtenances whatsoever".¹⁴⁶⁵ Wrangham, then in his 70th year, replied that five tenants had cut the channel at their own charge. He called the water "the only thing that made those grounds of any value to them".¹⁴⁶⁶ Without it from the main run "they had it entirely upon sufferance" from neighbours above.¹⁴⁶⁷ In October 1756 the Governor ruled that the wall be replaced by a shorter one with a door. Wrangham and Beale might take water from the main run.¹⁴⁶⁸

Access to water for stock was a recognised interest. In July 1749 the Council allowed Thomas Greentree, trustee for the Ryder orphans, to exchange ground beside the Company's pasture in Swanley Valley. The ground "served mainly as a passage for their cattle to reach the water".¹⁴⁶⁹ In October 1750 Richard Goodwin sought a lease of waste beside the Widow Goodwin's land. She said a lease to anyone "would deprive her of a way to draw her cattle to water".¹⁴⁷⁰ On viewing, the Council found the ground not above half an acre. It left it unlet for the benefit of both, "with which they seemed satisfied".¹⁴⁷¹

The Company met the same need for its own herds by purchase and works. In December 1755 it bought 1⅔ acres in the Longwood hangings from the orphans of Simon Whaley for £3. The ground gave the Company's cattle an easy way to the water, "it being free land".¹⁴⁷² In early 1756 Jonathan Doveton was paid for "4 loads of bamboos at 2s 6d per load to convey the water for the cattle in the pastures".¹⁴⁷³ Soldiers spent 193 days in 1759 cutting a road through the Longwood to the castle's watering place.¹⁴⁷⁴ In July 1777 the Council proposed a pipe from a nearby spring into the Long Wood so that cattle need not go far down the hills to drink.¹⁴⁷⁵ The Court rejected it. The Council replied that grass on the commons went to waste and that many Company cattle had died going down the steep hill to drink.¹⁴⁷⁶

The James's Valley Watercourse and the Shipping ↑

The main watercourse of James's Valley served the town, the gardens and the ships. In April 1743 the Council told a Danish crew "They could draw water only at the common watering place".¹⁴⁷⁷ The paymaster charged for "clearing the water course for the supply of the shipping" in July 1743.¹⁴⁷⁸ Building leases near it carried setbacks. John Goodwin's lease for lives of 1737 barred building within 25 feet of the watercourse feeding the shipping crane.¹⁴⁷⁹ When the Reverend Edwin Alcock took the same ground in 1743 the line was cut to 10 feet.¹⁴⁸⁰ Joseph Whaley's town lease of 1727 bound him "not damage the watercourses or drains under the side of the hill".¹⁴⁸¹

Many small town leases ran down to the water run. John Aldrich took a strip in 1742 from his back yard to the main watercourse at 2s 6d a year.¹⁴⁸² John Leech took a plot of 12 by 28 feet beside the main water run in 1748 at 4s.¹⁴⁸³ Jonathan Doveton's rent of 19s in 1737 was abated because he had turned the watercourse at the Governor's request. "That work had cost him more than the small parcel was worth."¹⁴⁸⁴

The Company protected the channel by penalties. In June 1755 Thomas Pledger was convicted of taking lead pipe from the watercourse, "which carried the water for the use of the garrison". He was ordered to restore its price of 15s and three times its value.¹⁴⁸⁵ He also paid a 40s fine. Hogs rooting in the channel to the crane might be shot from September 1755.¹⁴⁸⁶ The order was repeated in 1758 with a 5s pound fee in the town.¹⁴⁸⁷ Horses and cattle found in the channel below the Mulberry Gardens cost their owners 10s a beast from December 1758.¹⁴⁸⁸ In 1765 a slave boy was tried for an act with a cow "standing in the water run above Chubb's Spring", which shows stock still grazing in the town's supply.¹⁴⁸⁹ From June 1768 no one might take earth near the watercourse on Munden's Point hill, on pain of 40s. "Loose stones on the side of the hill could still be taken for building."¹⁴⁹⁰

Floods were the channel's other danger. In 1750 the Company paid 51 men 1s 3d each "for cleaning the watercourse to prevent flood damage to houses in the valley".¹⁴⁹¹ In June 1756 a torrent broke the Company garden wall, buried thousands of yams and destroyed "almost every person's yard walls on that side" by Ladder Hill.¹⁴⁹² The paymaster called it "the late extraordinary and most violent flood, such as had never been remembered by the oldest person then living on the place".¹⁴⁹³ Floods in June 1763 almost destroyed some inhabitants' plantations and damaged the works at Lemon Valley.¹⁴⁹⁴ No rent relief for the settlers appears.

Private builders shared the burden of flood works. John Robinson, carpenter, took a strip of 64 by 15 feet in 1767 at 3s a year to build a wall holding back floods.¹⁴⁹⁵ In 1770 the Company paid Solomon St Maurice £12 3s 8d, "half the cost of a wall he built on the bank of the watercourse for the safety of travellers".¹⁴⁹⁶ In April 1772 the grand jury found the channel choked and the bridge too small for flood water.¹⁴⁹⁷ In October the Council ordered the channel cleared and cut to the sea, fearing a repeat of 1756.¹⁴⁹⁸

Chubb's Spring Piped by Subscription ↑

The valley water was poor, and a better source lay at Chubb's Spring in Chapel Valley. In January 1744 the Court refused a costly plan to pipe water from Chubb's to a crane in Lemon Valley. It judged the Lemon Valley water "fully as good or rather better, more convenient for boats".¹⁴⁹⁹ Small leases near the spring went to planters. Joseph Desfountain took 1½ acres "below the Chub Spring" in 1730, and Stephen Young 1.5 acres below Chubby Spring in 1757.¹⁵⁰⁰

By July 1775 the Council had raised £722 3s 0d by subscription among inhabitants and returning gentlemen to pipe the spring to the town and crane.¹⁵⁰¹ The valley water caused fluxes among the poor and the garrison and delayed ships after rain. "An exact survey had found the distance from the spring to the crane to be 2,790 yards."¹⁵⁰² The Council asked for 2-inch pipe, solder, a plumber, 6 cocks and stone for 4 or 5 reservoirs. The Court approved the scheme and engaged two plumbers, Charles Bradford and Thomas Pinkston.¹⁵⁰³ The Council allowed each £56 a year for diet and lodging.¹⁵⁰⁴ The Court's materials cost more than £1,100.¹⁵⁰⁵

The work met setbacks. A case of lead pipe was lost in landing from the Duke of Grafton in 1776.¹⁵⁰⁶ The plumbers condemned 190 yards of English pipe and recast it on the island.¹⁵⁰⁷ By December 1776 "the water from Chubb's Spring had been brought to within 308 yards of the crane".¹⁵⁰⁸ In July 1777 the Council reported "The waterworks at Chubb's Spring were finished", and Bradford went home.¹⁵⁰⁹ The plumbers had trained black workmen, later named as Company slaves, to solder pipe.¹⁵¹⁰ The waterworks were the largest shared resource on the island built by the inhabitants' own money.

Roads and Highway Labour ↑

Highway labour was a duty on everyone. An order of 1 August 1683 required "planters, shopkeepers, brewers, artificers and all servants, labourers and slaves" to give one day's labour a year on the highways, or pay for a day.¹⁵¹¹ The consolidated laws of about 1707 repeated the duty under the surveyors and the governor's warrant.¹⁵¹² A roll of 1698 listed every white inhabitant and male slave due for a day's road work, the slaves entered under their owners.¹⁵¹³ In 1717 the path into the country had been strengthened with "a stone wall of 440 yards long", with 640 yards still to build.¹⁵¹⁴

From the 1740s overseers of the highways served in each division. In July 1740 Harper, Thomas Bazett and Burnham received warrants and were told to plant furze on Company land.¹⁵¹⁵ In April 1746 Benjamin Seale, Richard Harper and Thomas Easthope were returned for the east, west and south divisions.¹⁵¹⁶ Roadside furze was protected from December 1750.¹⁵¹⁷ From 1770 the overseers returned quarterly reports of road work to the court, and new overseers were sworn each October.¹⁵¹⁸

The grand jury used the quarterly court to press for new roads. In July 1767 it presented a bridleway from Lemon Tree Gut over the Main Ridge to Sandy Bay. The court ordered "enough labourers be added to the usual assessments for repairing the highways".¹⁵¹⁹ In July 1774 the jury complained that repairs in October, November and December came when plantations most needed their slaves. "Having to send their slaves away to mend the roads at that time seriously disrupted their work."¹⁵²⁰ The justices fixed the start of repairs at 1 October. In January 1781 they turned the road labour to fencing and planting the Company waste called the Barn Ground, against a coming shortage of fuel.¹⁵²¹

As later context, the duty widened after 1782. Cart owners owed 4 days' service from 1784.¹⁵²² From 1808 each estate took its turn as overseer, "beginning with the largest estate".¹⁵²³

Ladder Hill and the Public Road ↑

The road up Ladder Hill was the main way out of the town. Hogs on the slopes rolled stones onto the paths, and from 1755 they might be shot.¹⁵²⁴ People digging earth for mortar beside the path were stopped in November 1758.¹⁵²⁵ Loads might not be rested on the path walls from 1762, on pain of 2s 6d for whites and punishment for slaves.¹⁵²⁶

In September 1764 nine landholders complained that two doors and a window opened onto the narrow Ladder Hill lane frightened horses. The Council found that "Mrs Elizabeth Kennedy and Robert Ballard had knocked them through without permission".¹⁵²⁷ It ordered them blocked and allowed openings through their back walls instead. Mrs Kennedy complied. Ballard claimed the protection of English law and demanded a jury.¹⁵²⁸ "The Council held that the matter was not a dispute over property between two private individuals." An opening onto a public road encroached on the Company's rights, so no jury was due.¹⁵²⁹ A week later five householders, one of them Martha Scott, asked for useless Company ground behind their houses since "none of their houses had a back door".¹⁵³⁰ The Council let the strip at a combined £5 a year.¹⁵³¹

In October 1770 the grand jury presented the road as dangerous and proposed a new line with wider curves.¹⁵³² The court ordered it but noted that "no decision had yet been reached on how the work would be paid for". The Council settled the cost in October 1771. The road was the only one the Company built and kept up, and the inhabitants had subscribed generously. "The Company would pay an equal share with them until the road was finished."¹⁵³³ The road took £151 6s 3d in the last quarter of 1771 and £179 0s 11d in the first of 1772.¹⁵³⁴ The gunners spent 174 lb 4 oz of powder on it in October 1771 alone.¹⁵³⁵ From September 1772 all loads had to go by the old road, never the new.¹⁵³⁶

Drift-ways, Gates and Passages ↑

Stock needed ways between pasture, water and market. Before 1714 a committee in three groups was named to "view, regulate and appoint drift ways for driving cattle" in each district.¹⁵³⁷ John Coalson was granted a drift way to 10 acres above Doveton's house through Doveton's and Marsh's land.¹⁵³⁸ In May 1721 William Seale's refusal to let John Gurling and Benjamin Pledger use a drift way came before the Council.¹⁵³⁹ Samuel Price's lease of 1717 required him to fence within 20 months, leaving a drift way for man and horse.¹⁵⁴⁰ Joseph Whaley junior's 5.75 acres of 1738 lay in three pieces "kept apart only by strips left open as a track for driving stock".¹⁵⁴¹ The standard lease of 1738 required gates 4 feet wide on paths and 8 feet on cartways. Roads might be altered by the Council at the Company's charge.¹⁵⁴²

Gates on the roads kept stock on or off the commons, and they were often broken. In February 1753 several gates on the high road and in Sandy Bay were broken, and the Council offered a reward.¹⁵⁴³ Rewards for gate breakers followed in 1755, 1756, 1759, 1760, 1774 and 1776.¹⁵⁴⁴ In 1756 the gate "leading to the common, below John Goodwin's house" was thrown off its hinges.¹⁵⁴⁵ As later context, two leases of January 1788 made John Sampell and John Robinson keep road gates on the way to the Long Wood and share a second gate between them.¹⁵⁴⁶

The Council also confined travel to the public road. From September 1753 wood carriers to the Long Wood had to use the high road after sheepskins were found by a byway.¹⁵⁴⁷ Travel through the Company's yam ground called Sufferings, "where there was no roadway", was forbidden in 1754.¹⁵⁴⁸ Fuel from the Long Wood had to come by the Rutledge Road from 1762.¹⁵⁴⁹ In May 1779 anyone making by-roads over Company ground from the White Gate to Bates's Branch "would be treated and prosecuted as thieves".¹⁵⁵⁰ A holder needed leave even on his own ground. In 1772 John Robinson asked leave to cut a path through the Main Ridge at Sandy Bay to join his two pastures.¹⁵⁵¹

Small passages and bridges were granted, refused or held on sufferance. Francis Wrangham's lease of 1731 behind the court house gave him "full liberty to turn or alter that window into a door for the common and free passage of Wrangham and his servants".¹⁵⁵² He surrendered it within six months. In July 1751 Falconer was refused a back door onto ground sold to John Bazett in 1738 and unused since.¹⁵⁵³ In 1770 the trustees of Martha Jacks were refused a lease of a passage beside her house. The Council "allowed the trustees to use the passage leading to the back building on sufferance".¹⁵⁵⁴ Lieutenant John Barton's lease of 1747 bound him to build a bridge over the water run "strong enough to carry foot passengers safely".¹⁵⁵⁵ Wills divided passages with yards. Powell's will of 1772 kept the lower half of a yard "and passage" with his own house.¹⁵⁵⁶

Interpretations ↑

The evidence suggested that water was treated as both private and common at once. Deeds conveyed watercourses with the land, yet wills, leases and verdicts limited what a holder could do with them. The guiding principle was close to the English rule of natural flow. An upper holder might use a stream but had to return it to its course below. Wills by Powell, Goodwin, Mason and Easthope showed families applying the same rule within an estate to prevent feuds.

The Company's position probably reflected its double role as landlord and largest user. It reserved water for its cattle, its plantation and the ships, and it protected the commoners' cattle in later leases. The pattern suggested a growing sense, from the 1720s to the 1770s, that springs on Company waste belonged to the neighbourhood. The Ballard ruling of 1764 showed the limit of the inhabitants' claims. A public road was treated as the Company's own concern, outside the jury's reach. Yet the Ladder Hill road and the Chubb's Spring works of the 1770s were paid for jointly, which perhaps marked a shift towards shared public works.

Comparisons ↑

In England the Highways Act of 1555 laid four, later six, days of statute labour a year on parishioners under surveyors of the highways.¹⁵⁵⁷ St Helena's order of 1683 took the same model but set only one day and included slaves. English law also recognised easements of way and water, and an upper riparian owner could not divert a stream to the harm of those below.¹⁵⁵⁸ The 1748 jury verdicts followed that rule closely.

Bermuda had no rivers and few springs, and its settlers relied on rainwater stored in tanks and cisterns.¹⁵⁵⁹ St Helena's springs and streams made water a matter of rights between neighbours rather than of storage. In Barbados the planters met their highway duties by sending slaves, as the St Helena landholders did by the 1770s.¹⁵⁶⁰

At the Cape the Dutch East India Company granted loan farms that were commonly centred on a spring or other water source. Control of water there determined the value and the reach of a farm.¹⁵⁶¹ St Helena's Council went the other way and kept some springs open to all. Concern about forest loss and water supply on St Helena also drew early official comment in the eighteenth century.¹⁵⁶²

9. Wood and Timber ↑

The Great Wood and the First Prohibitions, 1678-1716 ↑

Wood on St Helena was both a common resource and a form of property. The Company's first laws treated it as the lords proprietors' own. Each planter settling in 1678 was to have 200 acres, and timber was granted to him to build a house above his plantation.¹⁵⁶³ On 1 August 1683 the Company forbade anyone to cut timber, or trees growing into timber, on its ground, on pain of 20s for each offence.¹⁵⁶⁴ The same letter told the governor and council to value the whole of the "great wood", which the Company understood to be "nearly two miles square".¹⁵⁶⁵

Private deeds treated standing wood as something that could be held apart from the soil. When Samuel Jeffrey sold 10 acres in Fryer Valley to Henry Kersey in November 1683 for £5, a memorandum bound him to forfeit 20s if he cut any of the wood.¹⁵⁶⁶ William Bowman's will of 1696 left his grandson the 30 acres on which all the timber of a 60-acre holding stood, the wood to be divided equally between two heirs.¹⁵⁶⁷ Governor Thomas Goodwin sold 10 acres to George Hoskinson in December 1707 for £24 but reserved the standing wood to himself and his heirs.¹⁵⁶⁸ A tenant of Gabriel Powell in the same month was barred from felling or selling green wood.¹⁵⁶⁹ An arbitration of June 1714 disallowed as unjust a charge of £88 16s for 74 timber trees against the Beale orphans' land.¹⁵⁷⁰

Distilling was the first drain on the woods that the Company tried to price. From December 1698 no one might distil arrack from roots and fruits without compounding for the Company's wood at 12d a hundredweight, besides 4d a gallon on low wines.¹⁵⁷¹ The consolidated laws of about 1707 repeated both the 20s fine and the distillers' composition.¹⁵⁷² By December 1705 the Company had approved, though late, a council proclamation to prevent the destruction of the remaining wood, and had sent coals because the wood was almost gone.¹⁵⁷³ In April 1708 it blamed the governor himself for allowing the wood to be so much destroyed.¹⁵⁷⁴ Fencing and planting were pressed on the planters at the same time, on pain of forfeiting their lands.¹⁵⁷⁵

The letter of 5 April 1711 joined grazing, fencing and wood into one programme. Governor Roberts had proposed to kill all the goats "unless they could be kept from browsing on the young trees".¹⁵⁷⁶ The Company wanted the laws for fencing and planting enforced with their penalties, with more time but no dispensation for holders short of slaves.¹⁵⁷⁷ The great wood was to be fenced and new trees planted in place of those barked for tanning.¹⁵⁷⁸ A joiner, Richard Clove, was put in charge of the Company's timber in 1713 and given a warehouse for it the next year.¹⁵⁷⁹ The council was to send home yearly accounts of timber with the accounts of cattle and rents.¹⁵⁸⁰

The fencing of the great wood proved beyond the island's labour. In January 1716 the council reported that its old trees were dying and that cattle "went there as if on a common" and destroyed every young tree.¹⁵⁸¹ A wall would take 100 men a year, since the stone had to be fetched from far off.¹⁵⁸² Firewood was already dear in labour. A slave sent about the country to gather wood cost 18d a day, more than imported coal, so coal became the cheaper fuel for the forges and lime kilns.¹⁵⁸³

Waste, Erosion and the Planting Law, 1716-1720 ↑

The council's letters of 1716 and 1717 gave the fullest early account of what deforestation did to the land. The inhabitants had wasted great quantities of wood distilling arrack from potatoes.¹⁵⁸⁴ Where the wood was cut, wind and rain washed the soil away to the naked rock.¹⁵⁸⁵ On the high ground the soil had gone to the rock, and the Company's garden in the fort valley had been barren six years.¹⁵⁸⁶ Mr Powell's plantation, stripped of wood, lost its lemon garden until the planting law made him replant it.¹⁵⁸⁷ At his other plantation, formerly Bowman's, "all the gumwood trees had been cut away", and 600 lemon trees bore nothing.¹⁵⁸⁸

Grazing compounded the damage. Powell drove a herd nearly as large as the Company's about the island, putting 50 head into Tombstone Wood until it was destroyed.¹⁵⁸⁹ The council charged him with "engrossing the common range to himself".¹⁵⁹⁰ Tanning was a third drain. So much bark was stripped that very few cedar trees remained, and the governor proposed a single licensed tanner.¹⁵⁹¹ The planters would name no man, since each wanted the office for himself.¹⁵⁹²

The council admitted that it had not enforced its own law. It called the planting law of Governor Roberts's time the most needed on the island.¹⁵⁹³ Yet it had not compelled the planters, because "it employed the people's spare slaves at the works".¹⁵⁹⁴ The Company's reply kept the laws for fencing and planting wood in force and indulged those short of slaves or white help for a time.¹⁵⁹⁵ New tenants were bound by all the laws, especially the one requiring one acre in 10 to be planted with wood within three years.¹⁵⁹⁶

Gumwood and Cabbage Tree Leases, 1711-1738 ↑

The resurvey of 1711 described the uplands by their vegetation. Freeholds and leases were confirmed as "gumwood land" or "cabbage tree land", and the Company's leases ran 21 years at 4s an acre and 1s duty.¹⁵⁹⁷ Grace Coulson, a widow, was confirmed in 20 acres of gumwood land and 10 of cabbage tree land, and leased 5 acres more of gumwood.¹⁵⁹⁸ Gabriel Powell's freehold of 50½ acres was all cabbage tree land.¹⁵⁹⁹ The leases of 1711 required the fences to be kept as the landmarks of the annexed plans, but said nothing yet about trees.¹⁶⁰⁰

Planting covenants entered the leases in 1717. William Alexander's 15 acres of gumwood at Woody Ridge were let on condition that he kept up the number of trees and planted 10 fruit trees an acre inside the fences.¹⁶⁰¹ Captain George Haswell had to replace trees cut, used or lost to wind or age.¹⁶⁰² Samuel Price's improving lease of April 1717 added a penalty of 10s an acre a year if the governor and council found the planting short.¹⁶⁰³ From 1719 the lives leases fixed the proportion at one acre in 10 planted with timber, replanted on failure, with lemon trees inside all fences.¹⁶⁰⁴ The register closes with about nine blank engrossments of this form, prepared for a programme of new leases.¹⁶⁰⁵

The leases of the 1720s refined the covenant in several ways. Gabriel Powell's lease of 1721 bound him not to fell or destroy the wood and to replant threefold on failure.¹⁶⁰⁶ Some leases named the trees. John Bradley was to plant "young ebony trees, and fig round the fences" in 1724.¹⁶⁰⁷ John Harding was to keep up gumwood and ebony on 2 acres in Deep Valley in 1726.¹⁶⁰⁸ Richard Mason's hedge of 1724 was to break "the violence of the high and blowing winds".¹⁶⁰⁹ The form of 1726 charged double duty on ground left unfenced and required a furze hedge along the fences.¹⁶¹⁰

The Company also let ground solely for raising wood, at reduced rents. Table 12 sets out the leases of this kind.

Rents as stated in the leases. Years given as 1729/30 and 1730/31 are those the register gives, which probably fall in the following modern year.

The three partners of 1725 received a second 12 acres in 1727 at the full 5s, so the concession did not last.¹⁶¹¹ Thwaites's lease kept his 8½ acres "solely for growing and increasing timber and for no other purpose".¹⁶¹² He was to weed and loosen the soil, replant failures and keep hogs, goats and cattle out without the council's leave.¹⁶¹³ Burling's lease was the first to name fuel as the purpose.¹⁶¹⁴ The leases of 1729-1731 all required timber and furze to be planted and kept.¹⁶¹⁵

The council checked these covenants by survey. Surveyors appointed in January 1727 produced on 14 March 1727 a return of the woodland, fencing and planting of some 69 planters, freehold and leasehold alike.¹⁶¹⁶ The survey was repeated through 1727 and again by October 1729, and defaulters were fined or reprimanded.¹⁶¹⁷ In January 1730 inhabitants complained of the decay of the wood.¹⁶¹⁸ The Company's own lime kiln stood against this policy, for in March 1727 it was found to have cost more than £250 a year for several years.¹⁶¹⁹

The Council's Woodland Policy and the Leases of 1735-1763 ↑

The fourth register of leases opens with the council's own statement of policy, written into a lease to Orlando Bagley sealed on 1 April 1735. Grazing and distilling had destroyed the island's wood, and no lease would be renewed unless the ground stood planted and fenced.¹⁶²⁰ Every lease renewed or assigned "would still have to carry its own proportion of wood somewhere within its bounds".¹⁶²¹ The tenant gave a bond of £10 to the lords proprietors.¹⁶²²

The full form of 1738 set out the duties in detail. Samuel Doveton's 27½ acres in Sandy Bay were to carry a tenth planted with redwood, gumwood or cabbage tree wood, or with fruit trees.¹⁶²³ Fruit trees were to stand 20 feet apart inside the fences and furze to grow outside them.¹⁶²⁴ The holding could be inspected on complaint, and the bond rose to £10 an acre.¹⁶²⁵ Most of the island's leasehold was relet on 30 September 1738 on a shorter form.¹⁶²⁶ It required a tenth in wood and furze along the fences. It also required apple, lemon, mulberry and peach trees, with the yam ground respected.¹⁶²⁷ Governor John Goodwin took his own 9½ acres on these terms.¹⁶²⁸

The Company tolerated little private dealing in standing timber. An order of 17 April 1741 reserved it on leased land, and grants made contrary to that order were treated as improper.¹⁶²⁹ In October 1739 the council restated that the increase and preservation of wood was of the greatest importance, orders having been issued repeatedly.¹⁶³⁰ In July 1740 the overseers of the highways were charged with planting furze on the Company's lands, though drought left small hope of much success.¹⁶³¹ The governor urged them on for the good of their posterity.¹⁶³² The leases of 1742 put the rule in one phrase, a full proportion of wood being one tenth of the parcel.¹⁶³³

A change came in 1744. Several new grants required the whole parcel to be planted, not a tenth. James Powell's 6 acres were let at a peppercorn an acre "since the ground was granted purely for raising and planting timber".¹⁶³⁴ He also received 3 acres of waste for planting wood.¹⁶³⁵ Thomas Greentree's 12½ acres at Coles Rock and the chaplain Edwin Alcock's acre in James Valley were to be planted wholly with trees, as far as the ground would take them.¹⁶³⁶ Other leases bound the tenant to plant all the wood the land would bear.¹⁶³⁷

Orchards were pressed with the woods. A lease of 21 acres in Old Woman's Valley in July 1744 required lemon trees round the fences and 10 fruit trees an acre.¹⁶³⁸ The ground was to become a fruit-bearing orchard or lemon garden.¹⁶³⁹ The Company bought lemons from planters in large lots, for example 1,450 from Richard Bagley for £2 18s in 1743.¹⁶⁴⁰ In the same years at least five leases excluded ground given over to yams from the planting covenant.¹⁶⁴¹

Cabbage tree timber became a point of contest in February 1745. Cabbage tree land supplied the island's rafters and laths, and former governors had leased it all away without reserve.¹⁶⁴² The Company had paid nearly £40 in a few months buying them back from planters.¹⁶⁴³ Sarah Bazett, for example, received £5 12s for 100 rafters and four loads of laths.¹⁶⁴⁴ The council resolved that renewed leases of cabbage tree land should carry a clause "that the timber was not to be felled except the Company approved of it".¹⁶⁴⁵ In April 1745 the leaseholders agreed instead to supply rafters and laths in turn, in proportion to the wood on their lands.¹⁶⁴⁶ In return they asked for joist pieces for door and window cases out of the Company's great wood.¹⁶⁴⁷

The tenth remained the standing rule. On 16 December 1746 the board advertised that every inhabitant must make up any shortfall of wood by the next planting season, answering for any default at their peril.¹⁶⁴⁸ The leases of 1745-1748 added a wall fence to the planting covenant.¹⁶⁴⁹ The general renewal of 12 October 1759 restated the tenth, furze and fruit trees, sparing the yam ground.¹⁶⁵⁰ Samuel Alexander's renewal was the only one to name oak among the trees.¹⁶⁵¹ In June 1763 Orlando Bagley senior's lease of 21 acres at 2s 6d excepted the wood then standing on it, which was to be kept for the replanting of the ground.¹⁶⁵² Town ground carried similar duties. A lease of 1743 required a tenth of a James Valley plot to be planted with trees.¹⁶⁵³

Private timber was paid for when the Company took it. In July 1746 the widow Mary Alexander was paid for 80 stavers cut from her tree by a Company slave by mistake.¹⁶⁵⁴ The price was the current island price for such wood.¹⁶⁵⁵ Two days later she received a further £4 16s for rafters and laths cut on her freehold by nine Company slaves.¹⁶⁵⁶ The Company also tried to import the means of growing timber. In September 1748 the council asked London for seed of pine, Scotch fir and spruce, a bushel of acorns and a bushel of ash keys.¹⁶⁵⁷

Goats against Ebony ↑

Goats were the oldest enemy of the young wood. In 1714 Newbourne reckoned about 200 Company goats in one valley and argued that they could be kept from the young wood.¹⁶⁵⁸ Leases sometimes protected the goats instead. In 1725 Thomas Harper was forbidden to harm the goats grazing in and near Swanleys Valley.¹⁶⁵⁹

About 1729 the inhabitants agreed to kill all their goats and sheep for 10 years to preserve the young wood.¹⁶⁶⁰ When the term ended in 1742 people without a range claimed one on the ground that "every planter on the island formerly had a goat range".¹⁶⁶¹ A vestry of October 1742 restored the ranges to those who had held them when the order to destroy the goats was published.¹⁶⁶² About 20 ranges were set out by landmarks, several held by widows and orphans.¹⁶⁶³ Rules for their sale and descent followed, and rent-paying landholders might keep sheep on the wood land in their sheep range.¹⁶⁶⁴

The council tested the ranges against the ebony in 1744. The governor reported that Peak Gut had once yielded much ebony and would again but for the goats ranging there.¹⁶⁶⁵ He asked the holders either to sell the range or to keep their goats off it for three or four years as a trial.¹⁶⁶⁶ In October 1744 goats near Sandy Bay were found destroying young ebony that could not be fenced.¹⁶⁶⁷ The council offered to appraise the holders' interests and pay for them within two or three years.¹⁶⁶⁸ The Greentrees replied that "they would pound the goats when they wanted them".¹⁶⁶⁹ They were fined for contempt and paid £10 each.¹⁶⁷⁰ In January 1745 the holders at Peak Gut were asked to kill their goats, keeping the sole right to restock after four years if the ebony failed.¹⁶⁷¹

London overruled the council. The Court ordered the Greentrees' fines repaid, since "The goats were of much more use to the Company and the poorer sort of planters than the growth of ebony".¹⁶⁷² It also allowed the planters to turn cattle into the great wood when grass was to spare, so long as it did the Company no harm.¹⁶⁷³ The council still acted where it could. In June 1745 goats were found to have barked and largely killed the young ebony on one range, and soldiers were sent to shoot them.¹⁶⁷⁴ In July 1755 goats that had destroyed young gumwood at Horse Point were to be herded, or killed if found in Longwood.¹⁶⁷⁵ The order was repeated in December 1758, since goats could not be kept out by fence.¹⁶⁷⁶ As later context, a ruling of 1784 denied any right of goat range on the Company's waste from Lot Ridge to Sandy Bay Water.¹⁶⁷⁷

The Long Wood under Guard, 1746-1782 ↑

The great wood, increasingly called the Long Wood, became the Company's farm as well as its forest. In 1746 a barn was built near Horse Point for a corn crop of over 100 quarters.¹⁶⁷⁸ Labourers were paid for burning and drawing the young wood at the Horse Pasture to clear ground.¹⁶⁷⁹ In 1748 two rooms were fitted up there for the lieutenant governor as the Company's husband, or manager of its husbandry.¹⁶⁸⁰ Yet the wood was also guarded. In February 1746 the council forbade anyone to cut green wood in the great wood, offering 10s to informers, since much fallen wood lay fit for burning.¹⁶⁸¹ In December 1746 newly planted Company trees near the Maldivia garden were pulled up overnight, and a £5 reward was offered.¹⁶⁸²

Animals and vermin added to the losses. Rats and mice barked the young trees on Horse Point until a vast quantity had died.¹⁶⁸³ The Court offered help from England to destroy them.¹⁶⁸⁴ Planters' sheep trespassed in hundreds, and 230 were found in the Long Wood on 18 June 1754.¹⁶⁸⁵ In 1764 Matthew Bazett gave up 6 acres beside the unfenced Long Wood in exchange for waste at Woody Ridge, to end the trespasses both ways.¹⁶⁸⁶ In 1769 a well-wooded plot of 1⅔ acres next to it was taken back, being "very unsuitable to be held by any private person".¹⁶⁸⁷

The wood was policed through the roads into it. From 1753 brushwood could be carried to or from Longwood only by the public highway, on pain of 1s or public whipping.¹⁶⁸⁸ Furze on the roadsides and the Company's pastures was protected from December 1750.¹⁶⁸⁹ In December 1758 no one was to carry hatchets into Longwood or break branches, on pain of £1 for a white man or severe corporal punishment for a black.¹⁶⁹⁰ Elisha Kennedy was fined 40s in February 1759 for cutting trees there.¹⁶⁹¹ Two slaves caught with hatchets received 40 and 30 lashes.¹⁶⁹² A third received 50 lashes for stealing "a piece of firewood".¹⁶⁹³

These orders show who used the wood and how. In February 1761 Longwood wood was declared for domestic fuel only, and anyone selling it to ships paid "10 shillings for every stick or piece sold".¹⁶⁹⁴ From 1762 fuel could come out of Longwood only by the Rutledge Road.¹⁶⁹⁵ In August 1767 slaves were barred from fetching wood on Sundays, and a white buyer of wood from a slave was fined £5.¹⁶⁹⁶ In October 1767 all cutting at Sick Hill and elsewhere was forbidden on a complaint that much wood there had been destroyed.¹⁶⁹⁷ In December 1771 any slave convicted of felling Longwood trees was to receive 100 lashes.¹⁶⁹⁸ The penalty on a white offender rose to £10 by September 1781, for felling at the Keys and Deep Point as well as Longwood.¹⁶⁹⁹

Fuel, Shipping, Lime and the Fence Schemes, 1756-1782 ↑

Shipping drew heavily on the island's firewood. In August 1756 the council feared that within a few years too little wood would remain for the inhabitants.¹⁷⁰⁰ The Court then ordered every commander to lay in fuel in India for the homeward voyage.¹⁷⁰¹ The order did not hold. In May 1761 the council wrote that "The drain on wood greatly distressed the island".¹⁷⁰² It asked for coal every year so that ships could be given coal instead of wood.¹⁷⁰³ Coal was sent to relieve the island's distress for wood.¹⁷⁰⁴ In June 1762 the ships required no wood for fuel.¹⁷⁰⁵ When the order to victual in India was lifted in 1763, the order to bring fuel stayed.¹⁷⁰⁶

Lime burning made a second claim on the wood. In 1764 soldiers spent 125½ days and then 187¼ days gathering wood to burn lime.¹⁷⁰⁷ In June 1765 the engineer Captain Mitchell found limestone in abundance on the island.¹⁷⁰⁸ He reported, however, that island wood was far too scarce for the quantity that lime burning would consume.¹⁷⁰⁹ The council therefore indented for coal, since the island could not afford so great a consumption of wood.¹⁷¹⁰ In December 1765 Daniel Corneille costed both fuels. Burning with wood took three white labourers and 11 slaves for 12,500 bushels at 4d, and with coal two labourers and six slaves for 12,060 bushels at 3d.¹⁷¹¹ He doubted that wood could be relied on for long.¹⁷¹² Coal also reached private households. Planters bought 8 chaldrons 32 bushels of coal for £26 13s 4d from the stores in the first quarter of 1765.¹⁷¹³

The Court made woodland a standing charge on the council. In November 1765 it warned that lime and brick making must not use wood without necessity.¹⁷¹⁴ About 30 or 40 men of the London had cut much wood, by leave or connivance.¹⁷¹⁵ The preservation of the wood was to be "an object of the council's constant care and attention".¹⁷¹⁶ When Captain Webb's crew took 30 loads in April 1766, the governor pleaded that the wood had not been felled for him but lay already on the ground.¹⁷¹⁷ The council promised that ships short of fuel would in future get coal alone.¹⁷¹⁸

Building timber came almost wholly from outside. The Company had no rafters or binders on its own lands in 1755 and bought them from planters.¹⁷¹⁹ In June 1762 the council had hardly enough deals in store to make coffins for the year.¹⁷²⁰ In 1770 it wanted curved boat timbers sent so that such pieces need not be cut from the island's own trees.¹⁷²¹ In June 1765 the lieutenant governor asked for blackthorn to divide the Company's grounds, since the hedges would also serve for fuel if they took.¹⁷²² In 1767 the council refused a lease of furze-covered waste below the road to Plantation House.¹⁷²³ Corneille argued that the furze, if left, would spread over the barren common and destroy a useful supply of fuel.¹⁷²⁴

The decline of the Long Wood came to a head in 1777. The council reported in July that the wood, the fuel supply of the valley, the outforts and the country inhabitants, might last only 12 to 15 years.¹⁷²⁵ Cattle, sheep and goats destroyed the young trees.¹⁷²⁶ When it was gone the landowners would guard their own fuel, and "the rest of the inhabitants, who had no land, would be reduced to the greatest distress".¹⁷²⁷ The council proposed a fence costing no more than £3,000.¹⁷²⁸ In May 1778 the Court ordered a survey, the planting of trees in the Horse Pasture and furze on the common land.¹⁷²⁹ William Wrangham measured the line at nearly 3½ miles and offered to build a stone wall at least 5 feet high for £5,000.¹⁷³⁰ The Court sent an account of the cost of similar works in the northern counties of England.¹⁷³¹ The council thought labour and quarrying on the island too different and wanted a measured survey first.¹⁷³² The Lombardy poplars sent from England all died on the voyage.¹⁷³³ Proposals for fencing the Longwood estate were invited in November 1779.¹⁷³⁴

The inhabitants turned to their own labour. In January 1781 the justices noted the sharp fall in the woodland and the coming want of fuel.¹⁷³⁵ They proposed that the labour owed to the roads be used to fence off the Company's waste called the Barn Ground and plant it with trees.¹⁷³⁶ The grand jury agreed at once and named three of its members to fix the fence line.¹⁷³⁷

The later record shows the outcome. As later context, landless residents were allowed to buy Company coal in August 1788 to save the trees.¹⁷³⁸ A town lease of September 1788 let Captain John Torbett cut the trees standing on his plot on condition that he planted and raised three in their place.¹⁷³⁹ In November 1789 the council found the few remaining gumwood trees on the Company's waste being destroyed by townspeople.¹⁷⁴⁰ No gumwood might come into town without a written note of its origin.¹⁷⁴¹ A petition from James Valley won each landless family leave to gather fallen gumwood up to 200 feet of plank.¹⁷⁴²

Interpretations ↑

The evidence suggested that the Company never settled whether the island's wood was its own property or a common stock held in trust for the inhabitants. The laws of 1683 and 1707 treated the great wood as the proprietors' forest, guarded by fines. The planting covenants treated wood as a duty that ran with every parcel, private or leased. The fence proposals of 1777 treated the Long Wood as the fuel of the landless. Each conception produced its own instrument, and none displaced the others.

The covenant of a tenth in wood was probably more effective as a statement than as a practice. The council admitted in 1717 that it had not enforced the law while it hired the planters' slaves. Surveys and fines followed in 1727-1729, yet the rule had to be advertised afresh in 1746. The shift of 1744 to whole-parcel planting on small waste grants suggested that the council had come to doubt the tenth. Planting where the Company chose may have seemed more certain than scattering a tenth across every holding.

Grazing outweighed wood whenever the two met directly. The 10-year cull of goats lapsed, the ranges were restored as property in 1742 and London ranked goats above ebony in 1745. The poorer planters' goats were a livelihood, while the ebony was a future good. The Court's choice probably reflected its wish to keep a settled population fed and content on an island that supplied its ships.

The pressure on fuel came as much from the Company's own needs as from the planters. Shipping, lime burning for the fortifications and the clearing of the Horse Pasture for corn all drew on the same wood. Coal was the remedy each time, first in 1705 and then from 1761. The pattern suggested that imported fuel, not the planting law, was what eased the strain on the woods.

Comparisons ↑

Richard Grove treated St Helena as one of the earliest colonies where officials linked the loss of forest to soil erosion and drought and legislated against it.¹⁷⁴³ The letters of 1716-1717 bear out that reading closely. They tied the felling for stills to the washing of soil to the rock and the failure of the lemon gardens. They also show how hard it was to enforce a law that depended on the planters' slaves. Much of the later policy that Grove described was already present in the leases and orders before 1782.

Q. C. B. Cronk's study of the endemic flora explains what was being lost. The gumwood, the redwood, the ebony and the several cabbage trees were endemic species of the upland woods.¹⁷⁴⁴ The St Helena ebony was later thought extinct in the wild. The council's trial of 1744-1745 at Peak Gut was therefore an early attempt to save a plant that came close to disappearing.

English woodland law offers a contrast in kind. The Statute of Woods of 1543 required 12 standards an acre to be left when coppice was felled, and the royal forests had their own courts and officers.¹⁷⁴⁵ John Evelyn's Sylva of 1664 urged landowners to plant timber for the navy.¹⁷⁴⁶ St Helena's rule of a tenth in wood was cruder but had the same aim, binding the occupier of each parcel to keep a reserve. The island lacked the manorial courts that enforced such rules in England, so the council and the quarterly court had to do it.

Barbados showed the alternative. Its planters cleared almost all their forest for sugar within a generation of settlement, and by the 1660s the island imported much of its timber and fuel.¹⁷⁴⁷ St Helena reached a similar dependence on imported deals and coal by the 1760s, though without a sugar economy to pay for it.

Bermuda protected its cedar by law because the trees were the basis of its shipbuilding and carrying trade.¹⁷⁴⁸ St Helena's cedar was lost to tanners before 1720, and its ships took firewood rather than timber. The Bermudian laws served a commercial interest that the islanders shared, while St Helena's served a Company that drew on the same wood for its own ships and works.

At the Cape the Dutch East India Company issued placaats restricting the felling of trees in the forests near Cape Town from the 1650s onwards.¹⁷⁴⁹ Wood there was likewise a Company reserve, cut under licence for its own works and sold to burghers. Both companies faced the same problem of a garrison and a shipping station consuming fuel faster than a small wooded area could renew it.

10. The Company's Plantation and Land ↑

The Great Plantation and the Reserved Half, 1678-1730 ↑

The Company was a landholder on the island as well as its lord. Article 37 of the founding instructions of 1678 directed that the Company's own plantation be worked by its slaves and indentured servants.¹⁷⁵⁰ The plantation was to supply the Company's ships and the island. The slaves were to plant the fruit trees and seeds sent on the Johanna and raise refreshments for the Governor's table and the shipping.¹⁷⁵¹ In March 1681 and again in March 1682 the Governor was told to set newly arrived slaves to clearing and taking in more ground to enlarge the Company's plantation.¹⁷⁵²

A survey ordered on 24 March 1680 fixed the division between Company and private land. The Council was to survey all plantable ground not yet allotted, reserve one half to the Company and keep the other half for grants.¹⁷⁵³ The registers of 1682 already used the Company's land as a boundary. Robert Tomps's 20 acres in Sarahs Valley were bounded on the south by the Company's land.¹⁷⁵⁴ Later deeds name the Company's "great plantation" near the head of Fryer Valley. Part of Robert Leach's 15 acres there, sold in January 1705, lay next to the great plantation, the late Governor Keeling's land and Walter Morres's.¹⁷⁵⁵ Robert Gurling's 15 acres in Fryer Valley, sold in April 1709, were also bounded by "the Company's Great Plantation".¹⁷⁵⁶

The Company at first enlarged its demesne by purchase and exchange. In August 1683 the Council was to buy Mr Smalls's plantation beside the Company's land, or exchange other land for it.¹⁷⁵⁷ The same letter ordered the Council to "buy in the plantation of a Mr Knowles that lay next to the company's land".¹⁷⁵⁸ Any other plantation that inconvenienced the Company was to be bought in or exchanged.¹⁷⁵⁹ The Council was also to price the whole of the great wood, which London understood to be "nearly two miles square".¹⁷⁶⁰ In 1692 Robert Addis gave up 20 acres next to the Company plantation, once Anne Whitey's, for land in Sandy Bay, since the Company wanted its timber.¹⁷⁶¹ In June 1707 John Lufkin sold the Company a house and 30 acres next to its main pastureland for £350 in English money.¹⁷⁶²

Debt brought other holdings into the Company's hands. In August 1687 Mr Smowke's cattle were seized and his plantation taken into Company possession for his debt.¹⁷⁶³ Conveyances he had made after bonding with the Company were void. The second manuscript gives the name as Smoult and voids transfers to Mr Eyson or a son-in-law.¹⁷⁶⁴ The same letter of 1687 rebuked the Council for exchanging Company ground with John Cannady in Chapel Valley without any real service to the Company.¹⁷⁶⁵ London set the chief rent on the land transferred at 2 dollars a year.¹⁷⁶⁶

The demesne was too large to keep in hand. Planters already rented Company ground in the 1690s. Praise Pledgerd held 10 acres "at the Woody Ridge, which he held on hire from the Right Honourable Company".¹⁷⁶⁷ In April 1701 London heard that many wished to rent Company land but that the Council had stopped granting "because one half or more of the island was already let out".¹⁷⁶⁸ The Company ordered all land not needed for its own use let to deserving settlers, to retrieve its charges.¹⁷⁶⁹ The order of 16 April 1705 repeated the point: all land not needed was to be let to fit persons so that provisions might be cheaper.¹⁷⁷⁰ The code of laws made the rule standing, reserving only what the Company needed "for its own occasions".¹⁷⁷¹

The Company also let single gardens on commercial terms. On 23 December 1707 it let Paul Graton, free planter, the messuage called the Lemon Garden near Fort James, as the late Margaret Cotgrave had held it.¹⁷⁷² With it went 1½ acres of waste near the head of Chapel Valley. The term was 18 years at £30 7s 6d a year including land duty, far above any other rent on the island. The lease fixed public prices for the produce: banana trees at 6d, lemon juice at 2s 6d a gallon and banana bunches at 2s 6d.¹⁷⁷³ "Lemons were to be sold at 3s 0d per hundred".¹⁷⁷⁴ The dry leaves were reserved to the Company. By 1717 the island believed that all its yams descended from those a slave woman named Maria had brought from Guinea and planted in "John Powell's Lemon Garden".¹⁷⁷⁵

Governor Roberts thought the opposite course wiser. In April 1711 London recalled his view that "it was not the Court's interest to lease out any more of its own land".¹⁷⁷⁶ The Governor was to advise whether trials of sugar cane, yams, maize and the vineyard justified keeping land in hand. Under Samuel Jefsey the Company's plantations had been neglected. The yams and orchards of the plantation bought of Samuel Taylor were gone, with "the ground lying common for other persons' cattle to graze on".¹⁷⁷⁷ Jefsey's own cattle grazed among the Company's yams, and more slaves died there than in 20 years for want of food.

On 30 May 1712 London condemned the purchases outright. The Governor had bought so many plantations that families had left the island.¹⁷⁷⁸ A lord of the manor did not buy his tenants' lands, and the Governor was to "buy no more plantations, and take out, or sell all the Governor had bought".¹⁷⁷⁹ Private men husbanded farms better, London said, witness Hutt's plantation gone to ruin. In March 1713 it heard that three plantations had been bought from the planters for yam ground at "six or seven hundred pounds or more".¹⁷⁸⁰ The yams had rotted and little had been replanted. The Company would be glad if the Council "could let out the greatest part of its land", keeping only enough for its table, slaves and cattle.¹⁷⁸¹ No councillor but Antipas Tovey was to hold a Company plantation or one mortgaged to the Council.¹⁷⁸²

A digest of standing orders, probably of 1714 or later, set the policy down. It recommended letting all the plantations "except the great plantation and the nursery in Chapel Valley".¹⁷⁸³ The digest also allowed 15 slaves to be spared to meet the objection that plantations could not be let without hands.¹⁷⁸⁴ Plantations taken in payment for cattle debts were to be sold at once.¹⁷⁸⁵ A diary of the plantations was to be entered in consultation, "with the number of slaves employed at each".¹⁷⁸⁶ On the disposal of a holding the fences were not valued, since the Company had paid for them.¹⁷⁸⁷ Buildings, planting and stock were valued and sold.

The Company acted as a dealer in land through these years. In August 1712 it resold to Robert Bell for 200 dollars 10 acres in Sandy Bay that Walter Belward had sold to the Lords Proprietors.¹⁷⁸⁸ Jonathan Doveton's 90 acres under Halley's Mount had been bought by the Company from Leonard Hunt and William Marsh and sold on to him.¹⁷⁸⁹ Yet the Company also bought back. George Carne assigned his confirmed 30 acres of gumwood land beside the great plantation to the Company for £150 in December 1714.¹⁷⁹⁰ In June 1722 the widow Bridgett Bazett surrendered a 21-year lease of 30 acres, formerly Thomas Perkins's, for £25.¹⁷⁹¹ The Court forbade further purchases and wished Lufkins sold into private hands.¹⁷⁹² Under orders of 30 December 1723 the Council sold William Slaughter 10 acres called Griff's Land in Sandy Bay for £65, part on bond.¹⁷⁹³ In October 1727 Richard Goodwin bought Carne's Gutt for £65.¹⁷⁹⁴ The deed reserved water "sufficient to supply the Honourable Company's cattle" in the pastures nearby. John Alexander, second in council, bought Hutton's land at the head of Sandy Bay Valley for £190 a month later.¹⁷⁹⁵

The Estate and Its Grounds ↑

The deeds of 1713 show how much Company ground lay among the planters. Francis Wrangham's 55 acres under the Main Ridge touched "the Company's cattle pasture land" and the Company's pasture.¹⁷⁹⁶ John Goodwin's 52 acres were bounded by the Company's great pastures.¹⁷⁹⁷ Doveton's land lay by the Company's enclosure called Halls Plain.¹⁷⁹⁸ Samuel Jesey's 10 acres under the Two Gun Ridge touched the Company's hut pasture.¹⁷⁹⁹ Later deeds name Perkins Plantation and Griffith's Ground (1719), Watkins's pasture land (1725) and Casey's Plantation in Sandy Bay (1748).¹⁸⁰⁰ The leases add the High Peak pasture, the Church Ground and Pokehoss.¹⁸⁰¹ Gates divided the lands called Blisses, Hardings Spring and Casons.¹⁸⁰²

The largest single ground was the Great Wood, also called the Long Wood, on the high plateau to the east. London ordered it fenced in April 1711 and new trees planted in place of those barked for tanning.¹⁸⁰³ The digest of standing orders told the Council not to overstock it with cattle.¹⁸⁰⁴ In January 1716 the Council reported that cattle ran there "as if on a common" and destroyed every young tree.¹⁸⁰⁵ Fencing it would take 100 men a year, since stone had to be fetched from far off. Horse Point lay within it. By the 1740s the Great Wood held the Company's barn, dairy, cart, ox teams and the Lieutenant Governor's rooms.

The Plantation House estate lay above James Valley to the west. Governor Roberts had built the house, but by January 1717 it was so slightly built that "rain came in everywhere".¹⁸⁰⁶ In December 1716 the Council brought a new water supply into the Company's gardens at the plantation house.¹⁸⁰⁷ The house was rebuilt from 1753, pulled down in 1769 and planned anew in 1770, a history that belongs with the built estate.¹⁸⁰⁸ Around it lay pastures, a garden with espaliers and a fowl yard.¹⁸⁰⁹

Other grounds served particular uses. The Maldivia garden near the town grew melons and yams, and from 1768 a yam plantation was dug there.¹⁸¹⁰ Sandy Bay held a lower plantation by the lime kiln and the plantations called Franks and Perkins.¹⁸¹¹ Bamboo Gut held a yam ground of about 100,000 yams.¹⁸¹² There was a fort plantation, a soldiers' plantation in James Valley, the Peak House and its garden, and a hay ground at the Fence Plain in the Great Wood.¹⁸¹³ In 1742 the Company also held the goat range from the top of Ladder Hill to Fays Ridge.¹⁸¹⁴

The Company guarded these grounds with notices and fines. In January 1752 owners had to employ shepherds, "under penalty of a fine of 4 shillings for each sheep found trespassing".¹⁸¹⁵ In June 1754 more than 230 planters' sheep were found in the Long Wood.¹⁸¹⁶ Trespassing sheep and hogs were to be pounded at 6d a head, and no one was to cross the Company's land called Sufferings, where the yams suffered. In October 1759 another 200 sheep were found there, and the pound fees were set at 4d a sheep and 6d a hog.¹⁸¹⁷ Rewards were offered for those who broke Company gates: 40s in 1755, 20 dollars in 1756 and £1 in 1776.¹⁸¹⁸ Pigeons were protected at 10s a bird, and released elks and hares at £5 an offence.¹⁸¹⁹ Wild cats in the Long Wood fetched a pint of brandy each.¹⁸²⁰

Yams, Corn, Hay and the Dairy ↑

Yams were the estate's staple, grown to feed the Company's slaves and stock. Accounts of 1706 to 1710 credited the plantation for what it sent to the Fort table and the ships. A single quarter of 1706 came to £208 5s 0¼d, including slave labour at 2½d a day.¹⁸²¹ The order for nine months to October 1707 included 37,890 yams and 206 gallons of milk.¹⁸²² By December 1716 the Company had 900,000 yams growing and had bought none for 18 months.¹⁸²³ In October 1714 Captain Mashborne had planted 46,000 suckers under the High Peak.¹⁸²⁴

The 1740s brought a long yam failure. In June 1742 the late Governor Goodwin was found to have bought yams for the Company's slaves "for the first time in 12 or 13 years".¹⁸²⁵ He had hidden the purchase behind fictitious entries in planters' names. Recovery followed quickly. In October 1742 the plantations could sell 50,000 suckers instead of buying them.¹⁸²⁶ Powell sold 10,000 suckers at their buying price of 2s 6d a thousand.¹⁸²⁷ In January 1743 the slaves' allowance rose from 40 to 50 yams a week against a raging distemper.¹⁸²⁸ In April 1745 the planters withheld yams from the garrison market, and the Company enlarged its own plantations instead.¹⁸²⁹ The planters complained that "it was hard on them that the Company should raise anything on its own lands for sale".¹⁸³⁰

The yam grounds then failed. In January 1746 the Bamboo Gut ground was rotting, and "there being now neither rice nor paddy in the Company's stores", blacks, hogs and poultry ate only yams.¹⁸³¹ By June 1747 only the Maldivia garden yams were fit to dig, enough for five weeks.¹⁸³² The Council advertised for planters' yams. Wrangham offered 70,000 lb, and most sellers asked £1 10s a thousand, a price "which the council could not prevail on them to lower".¹⁸³³ In the quarter to September 1747 the paymaster bought about 133,000 yams from 11 planters at £1 5s to £1 15s a thousand.¹⁸³⁴ The Company's plantations were "very young and none fit for use". In November 1747, 22,380 lb of the 43,000 lb expended came from planters.¹⁸³⁵ In September 1748 the board bought at 30s a thousand, the lowest price it could get.¹⁸³⁶ In November 1748 only 6,000 lb of 37,011 lb were the Company's own.¹⁸³⁷ The board auctioned 51 hogs for £21 4s 10d, its plantations "not being sufficient to maintain its slaves and stock through the late long drought".¹⁸³⁸ Not until April 1749 were all the yams expended once more the Company's own.¹⁸³⁹

The failure recurred. In November 1754 Adamson ordered 170,000 yams planted at the lime kiln, Franks and Perkins, on ground partly never planted and partly long fallow.¹⁸⁴⁰ In June 1757 the Council admitted that "the plantations of yams not being enough to supply them fully and constantly at all times", rice was needed yearly.¹⁸⁴¹ In December 1765 the Company's plantations were "still too young to yield crops", and it bought yams at 3s a hundredweight.¹⁸⁴² A survey of August 1778 found the crop 200,000 yams below that of Governor Hutchinson's time.¹⁸⁴³ Perkins's and Bamboo Gut had been "turned over to pasture once their soil was too exhausted to grow yams".¹⁸⁴⁴

Corn came to the estate in the 1740s. In July 1740 partridge shooting on "the Company's wheat land" was banned again.¹⁸⁴⁵ In January 1746 over 20 acres in the fort plantation were manured for wheat and barley, and about 32 bushels of barley had been saved.¹⁸⁴⁶ The plantation drew ox yokes, a wheel plough and a harrow "for ploughing in the long wood".¹⁸⁴⁷ In July 1746 the Governor reported a large barn going up near Horse Point in the Great Wood for a corn crop of over 100 quarters.¹⁸⁴⁸ A carpenter was paid for 58 days at the barn.¹⁸⁴⁹ The plantation sold 5,423 loaves of barley bread for £67 13s 11½d in the last quarter of 1746.¹⁸⁵⁰ Early in 1747 it sold 2,238 lb of barley.¹⁸⁵¹ Children were paid for "gleaning 40 bushels of corn at 1d the day".¹⁸⁵² Men were paid 6d a bushel for threshing 99½ bushels of barley early in 1748.¹⁸⁵³ In 1763 the Council still wanted brass rollers for the island's grain.¹⁸⁵⁴

Hay was the answer to a long want of fodder. In 1744 the Company paid £21 4s 3d for haymaking at Horse Point and £10 to Thomas Watkins for advising on hay.¹⁸⁵⁵ Jeptha Germain was paid for breaking ground at Horse Point and "making experiments of the hay seed and others".¹⁸⁵⁶ Lieutenant Kendall had 12 guineas "for surveying the Horse Point and the Company's pastures about Plantation House".¹⁸⁵⁷ Hay sold at 5s a hundredweight.¹⁸⁵⁸ London thought soldiers' haymaking at £48 a quarter made the hay too dear.¹⁸⁵⁹ About six tons were made in the Long Wood in 1753.¹⁸⁶⁰ In March 1751 the Long Wood hay carried the stock through a dry spell.¹⁸⁶¹

The dairy stood in the Great Wood. In early 1743 the Company paid £8 10s for a dairy room there, "there being no house before belonging to the office of the overseer of that part of the milk".¹⁸⁶² Milk sold at 1s a gallon. The paymaster took £25 4s for 504 gallons and £16 5s for 325 lb of butter in the last quarter of 1745.¹⁸⁶³ In the first quarter of 1746 he took £50 2s 7½d for 1,002½ gallons.¹⁸⁶⁴ Slave women kept the dairy and girls learned there.¹⁸⁶⁵ In 1759 soldiers spent 199 days building a dairy house at Longwood.¹⁸⁶⁶ The plantation's provision sales reached the treasury every quarter, usually between £5 and £60.¹⁸⁶⁷ They were small beside the rent roll, which brought £560 17s 5d in October 1758.¹⁸⁶⁸

Overseers, Reeves and the Company's Husband ↑

Officers managed the estate under several titles. In 1688 Mr Cox, supervisor of the Company's plantations, hired out slave gangs to planters and bartered plantation goods for his own gain.¹⁸⁶⁹ In April 1711 Hodgkinson was given "the care of its plantation, house and its dependencies, and its cattle".¹⁸⁷⁰ In March 1714 the third of council became manager of the plantations at £45 a year and a £30 gratuity.¹⁸⁷¹

The title of reeve appears in the 1740s. Doveton, reeve to the Company, claimed £78 a year in May 1744 but had only ever had £60.¹⁸⁷² London raised him to £78, since he was so perfect a master of country business that "a husband would be needless".¹⁸⁷³ Before that letter arrived he had been dismissed. Doveton had let his own and other planters' cattle and hogs overrun the Great Wood pasture and made false stock returns.¹⁸⁷⁴ He had entered 19 pigs as sows and five-month boar pigs as barrows.¹⁸⁷⁵ Nicholas Cleather replaced him as reeve at £7 10s a quarter.¹⁸⁷⁶

The husband was the manager of the Company's husbandry. Powell signed the returns of 1742 and 1743 as husband while he was also Governor.¹⁸⁷⁷ In February 1746 Governor Dunbar and the husband Dixon disputed control of the plantation and its melons.¹⁸⁷⁸ The council held that melons "which were raised upon the Company's ground" belonged to the Company. Dunbar charged Dixon with failing butter: only 24 cows were milked one night, giving 7½ gallons.¹⁸⁷⁹ Richard Girling, under overseer for nearly four years, acted as reeve after Doveton went.¹⁸⁸⁰ In May 1747 he became overseer of the stock and plantations at £60 a year, "having served in that line for several years".¹⁸⁸¹

From 1748 the Lieutenant Governor took charge. Carpenters fitted up two rooms "for the Lieutenant Governor in the Great Wood as being the Company's husband".¹⁸⁸² The overseers' quarterly pay fell to 15s and 7s 10d. In April 1752 the council repaid the Lieutenant Governor £30 spent on his lodge in Long Wood as "the Company's husband".¹⁸⁸³ Adamson was appointed in December 1752 at £250 and £100 diet money, with rooms at Long Wood and the use of some Company slaves.¹⁸⁸⁴ The same terms passed to Nicholas Dunbar and then John Skottowe in 1759.¹⁸⁸⁵ Dunbar was to "have the use of some of the Court's slaves in the same manner those two gentlemen were indulged".¹⁸⁸⁶ Daniel Corneille followed in 1764 as "viewer of the plantations".¹⁸⁸⁷ In 1769 London called the Lieutenant Governor's duty that of "the Court's husband" attending to the plantation lands and stock.¹⁸⁸⁸

Under him served salaried overseers. Gurling died in June 1754, and his £60 was split between Matthew Bazett and George Young at £30 each.¹⁸⁸⁹ Samuel Alexander became overseer of the slaves and plantations in Sandy Bay in April 1755.¹⁸⁹⁰ Daniel Coakes, "having always been in husbandry in England", oversaw the Long Wood stock at £8 a year from 1753.¹⁸⁹¹ A keeper of the Company stock at Longwood was paid £2 10s a quarter through the 1760s.¹⁸⁹² Bazett became chief overseer at £50 in May 1764.¹⁸⁹³ After his death in 1765 the soldier Thomas Warne, brought up to farming, took the post.¹⁸⁹⁴ He was dismissed for neglect within months.¹⁸⁹⁵ In May 1778 the overseers' £90 a year was divided three ways.¹⁸⁹⁶ An overseer at Sandy Bay had £25 and an overseer in the Valley £20. The "Manager of all the Company's pastures, the Long Wood and other plantations" had £45.

Labour on the estate came mostly from the Company's slaves. In January 1716 the overseers hired 49 slaves for two months, the Company's own numbering "not, in the whole, above 100 sound".¹⁸⁹⁷ The roll of March 1744 named 184 Company slaves, among them milkmen kept "always about the pastures and fences".¹⁸⁹⁸ The Company slaves fenced the pastures in 1742 and 1743 "without any other expense to the Masters than the labour of the few plantation slaves, which never exceeded 12 men".¹⁸⁹⁹ From the 1750s soldiers did much of the mowing, haymaking and furze grubbing at 1s a day.¹⁹⁰⁰

Powell and the Private Use of Company Land ↑

The line between Company estate and an officer's own was often crossed. The fullest case is that of Governor George Gabriel Powell, examined after Dunbar arrived in March 1744. Doveton, "relying entirely on his memory", charged Powell with young bullocks, sheep and hogs grazed on Company pastures in 1742 and 1743.¹⁹⁰¹ Powell had fatted hogs in the Plantation House sty and sent about 10,000 lb of yams to his house. The audit added a colt and a foal grazed on Company land and about 15,000 yam suckers carried from the fort plantation to Powell's house.¹⁹⁰² "Powell had taken a range for goats under the waterfall for his own use".¹⁹⁰³ He had also taken 224 days of slave labour under the stone blaster for his own stone.

Girling's charge was sharper still. He listed 13,700 Company yams worth £13 14s and 484½ days of Company slaves carrying stone for Powell's house.¹⁹⁰⁴ Other Company slaves had laid stone, fetched timber from the great wood, dug yams and tanned for him. Henry Moyce, the Company's carpenter, had worked 102¾ days for Powell.¹⁹⁰⁵ Oak framed for the Governor's apartment at the castle went into Powell's door and window cases. Powell had also charged the fortification account £38 19s 6d for his own slaves' labour when the overseer's account showed only 68 days.

Powell had answered an earlier charge in February 1743. His councillor Dixon alleged that 70 of the Governor's hogs grazed on Company land.¹⁹⁰⁶ Powell replied that the Company's cattle more often trespassed downhill on his land than his uphill on theirs. "Gaps of fence would sometimes happen and things slip thus for a few minutes".¹⁹⁰⁷ In September 1743 he borrowed Company bullocks on his bare word to return them when the next slave ship came.¹⁹⁰⁸ He had also registered a deed of sale to himself of 3 acres of Company waste above the Company's plantation in James Valley.¹⁹⁰⁹ In May 1744 he surrendered it, since clearing the ground "might open salt springs to the detriment of the water supplying the shipping".¹⁹¹⁰

Not all such use was abuse. Powell put his own slaves to the Company's pasture fences in October 1743 when rain had stopped the work.¹⁹¹¹ Later Lieutenant Governors drew on the estate by custom. In July 1768 a councillor charged Corneille with feeding Company yams to his hogs in the horse pound at the Long Wood.¹⁹¹² Corneille admitted the use but pleaded long custom: "He held no land of his own on which to raise the common necessities of life".¹⁹¹³ He was acquitted. The Governor fixed his allowance at 200 lb of good yams a week besides refuse yams, "since he had no plantation or land of his own".¹⁹¹⁴ In 1769 London allowed the Lieutenant Governor garden vegetables, mutton up to £3 a quarter and the customary use of the dairy.¹⁹¹⁵ He was to have "liberty, as usual, to feed his stock from the Company plantations".¹⁹¹⁶ Gardeners were held to account more strictly. In May 1768 James Black was ordered to repay £9 10s for onions and potatoes sold from the Plantation House garden, "since the produce was the Company's property".¹⁹¹⁷

The Company's Herds and Flocks ↑

The herds and flocks were the estate's movable wealth. From 1683 Company cattle were marked on each horn so that any sold by stealth would be known.¹⁹¹⁸ The Governor kept the record of land, cattle and goods, with a separate account of the Company's cattle.¹⁹¹⁹ Yearly accounts of cattle, sheep, goats, hogs and blacks were ordered in April 1708.¹⁹²⁰ By the 1740s the husband sent monthly returns. From May 1765 counts were made quarterly, since driving the cattle into a pen each month did "real harm to the herds".¹⁹²¹ The returns also entered the births and deaths of Company slaves below the poultry.¹⁹²²

Figures are the closing totals stated in the returns. The 1714 sheep are those on the list, though the Council said none were left. The 1744 figures are those corrected after Doveton's false returns.

The herd rose from almost nothing after 1714. The Council reported 92 black cattle on 25 March 1714 against 60 by February 1715.¹⁹²³ By December 1716 the Company had bought cattle of every kind, and neat cattle stood at 177.¹⁹²⁴ The cattle stood near 250 in 1740 and rose to about 400 by late 1746.¹⁹²⁵ By then the planters complained that "the Company now held the best grown cattle on the island, while the planters were in a low condition".¹⁹²⁶ The drought of 1747 and 1748 cut the herd to about 200. Since 7 April 1747, 15 cows, 24 calves, nine yearlings and a heifer had died.¹⁹²⁷ The Governor fed part of the stock on plantain trees bought at 3d each, there being "little or no grass in the pastures".¹⁹²⁸

The herd's purpose was the shipping. In 1759 London called refreshing the homeward ships "the principal use of the island".¹⁹²⁹ In the 1750s each Company ship commonly received 560 lb of beef.¹⁹³⁰ In April 1745 the Company had "not above 50 head fit to kill this season" for 12 or 14 ships.¹⁹³¹ The council would not slaughter the breeders.¹⁹³² In April 1746 the planters offered to supply the garrison market two days in three, and the council supplied the third from the Company's stock.¹⁹³³ The Court found in 1753 that the Governor had supplied the market from Company stock with double what he took.¹⁹³⁴ Horses were sold off, since "one horse ate as much grass as two bullocks".¹⁹³⁵

The drought and disease of 1759 to 1763 cut deep. In August 1759 "the usual rains had failed, and for want of them the grass in the pastures was now very short".¹⁹³⁶ By December "some cattle had already died for want of herbage".¹⁹³⁷ The herd fell from 391 in October 1759 to 309 by May 1760.¹⁹³⁸ In June 1760 "the beef proved very small and poor, owing to the failure of the two previous seasons".¹⁹³⁹ In December 1760 cattle at the Long Wood died from eating a new grass called canary, and slaves were set to grub it out.¹⁹⁴⁰ A sudden distemper followed in 1761, and 50 cattle died of it, "chiefly among the breeding cattle".¹⁹⁴¹ By June 1762 the Council doubted the grass theory, since "the beasts died all over the island, in places where none of it ever grew".¹⁹⁴² It sent to the Cape for cattle, and London sent angelica, nitre and lucerne seed.¹⁹⁴³ In February 1763 "the sickness among the cattle had entirely ceased".¹⁹⁴⁴

Corneille rebuilt the herd after 1766. He cut the ships' beef from a third to a quarter of the charter-party allowance, citing the plantation accounts of 1761 to 1763.¹⁹⁴⁵ Cape cattle and sheep came by commanders' ships.¹⁹⁴⁶ By 30 September 1769 he reported 437 head, an increase of 162 since he took charge.¹⁹⁴⁷ He also proposed a monthly sale of Company beef to the soldiers, who "could not afford the 5d a pound that the planters charged for their cattle".¹⁹⁴⁸

The drought of 1769 to 1772 undid the gain. In January 1771 the Council reported that the Company had lost 150 cattle and the planters 550 in the past year.¹⁹⁴⁹ The herd fell to 322 by December 1770, with 49 dead in the quarter.¹⁹⁵⁰ By March 1771 the slaves drew only 3,170 lb of yams against 19,400 lb for the livestock.¹⁹⁵¹ In February 1773 the Council feared a third year of drought "would again cause great losses among the island's livestock".¹⁹⁵² Some 710 Cape sheep were bought for the Company between February and May 1773, mostly at 15s a head.¹⁹⁵³ The rains returned in June 1773, and the Company's plantations "had recovered a great deal".¹⁹⁵⁴ English bulls sent from London improved the breed, and from 1773 young bulls were sold to the inhabitants.¹⁹⁵⁵

Buying Back and Letting Out ↑

After 1730 the Company bought land only for a clear purpose. It bought the black house from Thomas Moslyn for £100 in June 1743.¹⁹⁵⁶ On 15 December 1755 it paid Simon Whaley's executors £3 for a small piece in the Longwood hangings.¹⁹⁵⁷ The ground gave the Company's cattle "an easy way" to water, "it being free land".¹⁹⁵⁸ The consultation called it 1⅔ acres, the cash book 1 acre 1 rood 16 perches.

The Council also drew land back by exchange. In 1764 Matthew Bazett's 6 acres beside Longwood were judged better in the Company's hands, since unfenced pasture let animals stray both ways.¹⁹⁵⁹ He was given an equal area at the Woody Ridge at 8s an acre. In February 1769 Hayes gave up about 1⅔ acres of wooded land by the Long Wood. "Being so close to it, the plot was very unsuitable to be held by any private person".¹⁹⁶⁰ Simon Whaley's petition for ground near Plantation House was refused outright.¹⁹⁶¹ In 1771 ground the Company had bought for £100 was refused to the engineer Tippet for a house.¹⁹⁶²

The Company still held grounds it did not need. In August 1773 it offered by private treaty "25 acres of land known as Lavandy Valley and 23 acres known as Perkins".¹⁹⁶³ It was the only Company land offered for sale in the registers before 1782.

As later context, the Company let most of its farms by auction in 1794. In July 1794 two houses with their plantations were let with six slaves and a stock of pigs.¹⁹⁶⁴ Swanley Valley pasture of about 30 acres and the High Peak estate of about 48½ acres were let, and their stock sold.¹⁹⁶⁵ Mason's, Harding's and the Hangings were let with six Company slaves.¹⁹⁶⁶ The Woody Ridge pasture of about 150 acres followed.¹⁹⁶⁷ The Dead Wood pastures of about 290 acres were let in September, the Lieutenant Governor keeping the right to graze his horses, draught bullocks and 20 ewes there.¹⁹⁶⁸ The Maldivia Gardens were sold in five lots.¹⁹⁶⁹ Again as later context, in September 1828 the Company bought back two country leases of 190 acres and 20¾ acres.¹⁹⁷⁰

Interpretations ↑

The evidence suggested that London never settled what its island estate was for. The orders of 1701 and 1705 treated the demesne as surplus to be let. Roberts in 1711 thought it should be kept for trials of new crops. London in 1712 borrowed the voice of an English landlord, who let his land and did not buy out his tenants. Yet each Governor kept a plantation in hand, and the Lieutenant Governor's office was later built around it. The great plantation probably survived because the island had no other secure source of beef and yams for ships and slaves.

The herd returns suggested a ceiling set by grass rather than by policy. Neat cattle rarely passed 400 and fell to about 200 in each bad drought. The Company refused to kill its breeders, rationed the ships and bought Cape stock when the pastures failed. Sheep rose much more than cattle after 1755, perhaps because Cape wethers could be bought cheaply from homeward ships.

The yam accounts showed a dependence the Company was slow to admit. In the late 1740s and again in 1765 and 1766 the estate fed its slaves on planters' yams. The planters' prices then measured their power. The officers' private use of the estate pointed the same way. The boundary between Company property and an officer's allowance was drawn by custom more than by deed, and it was enforced mainly when councillors quarrelled.

Comparisons ↑

The closest parallel was the Dutch East India Company at the Cape. The VOC kept its garden in Table Valley to supply passing ships, much as the great plantation supplied the Fort table and the shipping.¹⁹⁷¹ It also kept granaries and farms of its own, such as Groote Schuur and the estate at Rustenburg, while freeburghers supplied most grain and meat. The Cape Company's slaves, like St Helena's, laboured in its garden and posts and were counted in its own establishment.¹⁹⁷² At both places the Company gave up direct farming for supply by settlers, though the Cape went further and sooner.

English landlords offered the model London invoked in 1712. Between 1640 and 1750 most great owners let their land to tenants and kept only a home farm in hand for the household.¹⁹⁷³ The St Helena demesne resembled such a home farm, supplying the Governor's table with mutton, milk and garden produce. Its reeve and husband bore the old titles of the English manor.¹⁹⁷⁴ The rule that fences, paid for by the landlord, were not valued on a sale also echoed English tenancy practice.

Soldiers mowing and haymaking on the Company's estate earned 1s a day.¹⁹⁷⁵ An English farm labourer earned on average about 10d to 11d a day between 1680 and 1764, and 13.3d in 1780-84.¹⁹⁷⁶ The island rate sat close to the English farm wage.

The sugar colonies show a plantation of another kind. A model Barbados plantation of 100 acres was costed at "£5,625" in 1690. The sum covered 50 slaves and seven white servants with the mill, boiling house and stock.¹⁹⁷⁷ In 1774 the mean Jamaican sugar estate was valued at £19,500 sterling.¹⁹⁷⁸ The Company's plantation on St Helena grew yams, hay and milk for the garrison and the ships, not a crop for export.

In Company India the presidencies held land chiefly round their towns. Company servants at Madras and Bombay kept gardens and garden houses, and the Company held ground for its own buildings.¹⁹⁷⁹ The Company's claim to the soil at Bombay rested, as at St Helena, on a royal grant and its own sovereign charter.¹⁹⁸⁰ St Helena differed in that the Company there farmed on a scale no Indian settlement attempted, with its own slaves, herds and ploughs.

The Long Wood also had a place in the history of conservation. The orders to fence the Great Wood and to keep goats and hatchets out of it were among the earliest of their kind in an English colony.¹⁹⁸¹ The island's endemic woodland suffered from the Company's own stock as much as from the planters'.¹⁹⁸²

Part Three: Passing Property On ↑

Land, houses, slaves and stock on St Helena changed hands in three main ways: by sale between the living, by pledge for debt and by inheritance at death. The Governor and Council stood over each of them. They licensed transfers, kept the registers, sold the estates of debtors and the dead, and guarded the property of orphans and absentees.

11. Sale, Conveyance and the Land Market ↑

Deeds of Sale, Gift, Exchange and Release ↑

Sale of land began almost as soon as land was granted. The Company's first instructions let each planter hold his share "to himself, his heirs and assigns for ever", but barred sale until it had been improved.¹⁹⁸³ The bar was set at one year, then four years and at one point seven years.¹⁹⁸⁴ A planter who had held and cultivated his land four years "could sell, transfer or dispose of it as he pleased".¹⁹⁸⁵

Planters used that freedom at once. The jury roll of September 1682 traced most holdings through chains of sale and exchange.¹⁹⁸⁶ Captain Beale's 90 acres at the head of Waterfall Valley had been put together from four lots, bought and exchanged through several hands.¹⁹⁸⁷ Part of Richard Harding's lot in Fryer Valley, 10 acres, passed by sale through four men before reaching Thomas Bolton.¹⁹⁸⁸ Exchange was as common as sale in these years. The Council confirmed exchanges of allotments between Harding and Steward, and between Henry Francis and Daniel Collins, in 1678.¹⁹⁸⁹

The deeds copied into the land registers from the 1680s followed English forms. On 3 November 1683 the free planter Samuel Jeffrey sold Henry Kersey about 10 acres in Fryer Valley for £5, "with the crops and watercourses, for ever".¹⁹⁹⁰ A memorandum bound Jeffrey to forfeit 20s if he cut any of the wood. John Young, soldier, "sold and enfeoffed" 8 acres to Thomas Goodwin in May 1693, to be held "of the chief lords of the fee by the services formerly done".¹⁹⁹¹ Later deeds carried full covenants for title, quiet enjoyment and freedom from encumbrance.¹⁹⁹²

Gifts passed land within families. Owen Bevean gave his son-in-law John Goodwin 10 acres with house, plantation and timber outright in February 1690.¹⁹⁹³ Benjamin Seale gave his son-in-law Praise Pledger 10 acres "for natural affection" in 1693.¹⁹⁹⁴ In June 1713 Antipas Tovey and his wife gave Mary Maxwell 4 acres in Sandy Bay, possession "given by the delivery of a piece of wax".¹⁹⁹⁵

Releases and quit-claims cleared old rights. Stephen Child released to Thomas Allis for £3 his right in Benjamin Meller's former lot, already in Allis's hands, in June 1704.¹⁹⁹⁶ Allis had gathered the same ground by lease, release and purchase. Heirs sold reversions to widowed mothers to settle families. Richard Swallow sold his mother Margaret Sech the reversion of her country house and 70 acres for £140 in February 1706, "to prevent disputes among the children of both marriages".¹⁹⁹⁷ John Coulson sold his mother Grace the reversion of her James Valley house for £200 in June 1722.¹⁹⁹⁸

A deed could pass by endorsement. James Eastop sold John Coole 10 acres at the head of Fisher Valley for £8 sterling in 1687. Coole assigned it by endorsement to Edward Brayne in 1688, and Brayne to Edward Heath in 1702.¹⁹⁹⁹ A lease of 99 years in 1758 was "too old to be endorsed without risk of defacing it", and a separate deed was drawn.²⁰⁰⁰ Another assignment was written separately because "there was no room left on the lease itself for a note of it".²⁰⁰¹

Exchange continued to the end of the period. Thomas Kirkpatrick and John Goodwin swapped 5 acres of leasehold in Sandy Bay for 12 acres called the Brian in October 1754, with no money passing.²⁰⁰² In September 1750 Gabriel Isaacke had leave to give his right in a slave for a parcel of ground in Palmers Valley.²⁰⁰³

Leave to Sell, Licences and Registration ↑

The rule most often met in the records was that land could not be sold without the leave of the Governor and Council. The Company's leases barred any sale or assignment without leave, and the rule recurs about 95 times in the consultations and registers up to 1773.²⁰⁰⁴ It began as a control on freehold too. The early codes required the Governor's licence for any sale, registration within a month and 12d an acre to the Company.²⁰⁰⁵

The Council used its leave to choose its tenants. In March 1718 Thomas Cason assigned his 45-acre lease of Roebleys Land "by consent of the governor and council", the whole board witnessing the deed.²⁰⁰⁶ In October 1742 Joshua Worrall had leave to sell 31¼ acres of lease land. The condition was that he find "a tenant whom the Council judged sufficient to pay the Honourable Company's quit rent".²⁰⁰⁷ In May 1744 the Council refused George Gabriel Powell leave to assign 18 acres held for three lives at 1s an acre, a rent far below the customary 5s.²⁰⁰⁸ In 1745 it let James and Martha Scott sell a piece held for 21 years. A piece held for 99 years was to stay as it was "until the Company's pleasure on such leases was known".²⁰⁰⁹

Planters often ignored the rule. In February 1745 the Council found that "the planters had sold their leases one to another and seldom made any assignment or registered them".²⁰¹⁰ Several leases had passed through two or three hands. The Council called all leases into the secretary's office to be checked.

The licences of the 1740s to 1770s show the rule in steady use. They fill the consultations, often several at one sitting. In November 1747 John French had leave to dispose of 57 acres of lease land, his whole leasehold on the rent roll.²⁰¹¹ In August 1750 John Worrall had leave to pass 132 acres of leasehold to John Swash.²⁰¹² In December 1750 Richard Beale and Samuel Alexander had leave to sell 22 acres "to the best bidder".²⁰¹³ A lapsed lease had first to be renewed, as William Worrall's 16¾ acres in Sharks Valley were in December 1766.²⁰¹⁴ By 1771 and 1772 leave was given without enquiry in every case.²⁰¹⁵

Freehold also needed leave. Samuel Desfountain, going to India in 1752, asked leave to dispose of 23½ acres of freehold to Samuel Henry.²⁰¹⁶ John Goodwin, "selling all his effects on the island", had leave to sell his freehold in July 1757.²⁰¹⁷ Elizabeth Desfountain had leave to sell 25½ acres of her freehold at auction in October 1770.²⁰¹⁸ Leave was not always sought. Richard Beale, executor of Gabriel Harper, had already sold 11 acres of freehold called the Infirmary before he asked leave to assign the orphans' single acre of leasehold.²⁰¹⁹

Registration was the second safeguard. From 1677 no sale was to be valid "unless it was registered, with a duplicate kept safely".²⁰²⁰ Every sale, transfer or inheritance was to be entered "within one month of the change".²⁰²¹ The fee on transfers changed often. It was 1d an acre to the Company in 1679, 12d an acre with 2s 6d to the register in the early code, and a half-tax of 2s an acre about 1707.²⁰²²

The register could be falsified. In November 1709 William Marsden found entries "seemingly made recently but bearing old dates", among them a bill of sale of 15 acres from Gurling to Carne for £55.²⁰²³ The Council also found that much land was "held, bought and sold without registration", including the Church lands and John Lufkin's land.²⁰²⁴ Registration could lag by years. Francis Wrangham senior sold William Young an acre in September 1751, and the deed was entered only in April 1758.²⁰²⁵

Buyers registered their deeds for security. Henry Bazett asked in July 1758 to register bills of sale from Charles Steward "so that his title should be secure".²⁰²⁶ Richard Goodwin registered the bill of sale for his house in 1767 "for his greater security".²⁰²⁷ Matthew Purling registered five bills of sale for houses and land in July 1762.²⁰²⁸

The secretary charged for drawing and entering deeds. In April 1745 Dixon, the secretary, claimed £9 9s from Powell for bills of sale and leases from the auction of Governor Goodwin's estate.²⁰²⁹ Powell's attorneys said the seller bore the charge, and that bills drawn by planters themselves should pay 6d to register. The Council upheld the table of fees at one guinea a bill of sale, whether drawn or only registered. It held that "the planters drawing their own bills of sale was not only attended with ill consequences but also defrauded the secretary of his just fees". London had already ruled in January 1745 that "one guinea for a lease or a bill of sale was a sufficient fee".²⁰³⁰ From 1744 many deeds noted that no stamped paper was to be had.²⁰³¹

Auctions and the Public Outcry ↑

Public sale by outcry, or auction, was the usual way to turn an estate into money. Wills directed it as early as 1699. Katherine Fensdale ordered her late husband's house and land "be put up to public auction" for her sons.²⁰³² Robert Addis in June 1714 directed "all his lands and cattle be sold at public auction" for his three children.²⁰³³ Samuel Jessey in 1734 gave his son and then each daughter the first offer of his land at a valuation. Failing them, "the executors were to sell the lands at public outcry".²⁰³⁴

The Council sold debtors' estates the same way. In September 1722 it seized the James Valley house of Thomas Southern, who had left the island owing £138 18s 2¾d. "The house was exposed to public sale on a day in September", and Samuel Jefsey bid £138.²⁰³⁵ The effects of Thomas Free were sold at outcry in Fort Valley on 2 November 1721, each item entered with its price and buyer.²⁰³⁶ London ruled that land seized for debt was to be sold "for the most it would yield", any surplus going back to the debtor.²⁰³⁷

George Carne's estate passed through an auction in 1717. On 19 November his widow's son John Goodwin bought all Carne's houses, lands and slaves at public auction to pay his debts.²⁰³⁸ Three bills of sale passed 89 acres in Lemon Valley, the James Valley mansion, nine slaves and the stock.²⁰³⁹ Goodwin then leased the house and land back to his mother for 99 years. In April 1718 she paid him £530 sterling and he declared her "true and lawful owner of the lands, houses and tenements formerly belonging to the deceased George Carne".²⁰⁴⁰

The rules of a fair auction were stated in a dispute of September 1745. The marshal complained that James Greentree had held a private auction without notice, put up a house of Joseph Bates and bid it in himself.²⁰⁴¹ Greentree had acted as marshal and outbid Ebenezer Leech, the last bidder. The Council held that "Greentree was the seller and the auctioneer, neither of whom ought to bid in such a case". It overlooked the offence when he admitted his error.

Sham bidding was alleged in December 1746. John Bland, master mason, said he had agreed with the executor Robert Wright to pay £150 for Johnson's house, whose owners lived at Bombay.²⁰⁴² At the auction Samuel Doveton bid against him until the house was knocked down to Doveton at £180. The board would not judge its own members and left Bland to a jury.

Auctions were cried by the marshal with a drum. The small estate of Leech in the 1750s paid "the drummer who beat at the auction and the marshal".²⁰⁴³ Andrew Blinman took 5s a day as auctioneer at the Reverend John Dobie's sale in 1750.²⁰⁴⁴ John Price was paid as both sexton and auctioneer at Henry De Laune's sale in 1768.²⁰⁴⁵

Credit was normal at estate auctions. Samuel Falconer's effects were sold in November 1756 with "two months' credit".²⁰⁴⁶ William Turner's in October 1757 had three months.²⁰⁴⁷ Falconer's house was sold in May 1757 with six months' credit, "the purchaser giving security and paying interest on it at the rate of £5 per cent".²⁰⁴⁸ John Adamson, the Lieutenant Governor, bought it for £291.²⁰⁴⁹ Adamson signed the Council's deed to himself as one of the council, and he sold the house to the surgeon Robert Barclay at cost in August.²⁰⁵⁰

Leasehold was sold at auction as freely as freehold. In August 1744 Stephen Lufkin's executors sold his 22 acres of leasehold for £81, with his yams, cattle and tools.²⁰⁵¹ In August 1753 Thomas Greentree had leave to sell his ward Helena Ryder's 29 acres of leasehold called Swan's Valley "to the best bidder at public auction".²⁰⁵² The executors of Thomas Cotgrave had leave in March 1764 to auction 71½ acres of Company lease land, as his will directed.²⁰⁵³

The auctions of the 1760s and 1770s often closed an owner's island affairs. William Wrangham had leave in March 1766 to sell David Alcock's 26¾ acres of leasehold "to the highest bidder", and 10 acres more at Peak Gut in May 1770.²⁰⁵⁴ John Worrall had leave in November 1767 to auction his 38½ acres called Francis's.²⁰⁵⁵ Thomas Kirkpatrick, dismissed from the Council, had leave in April 1769 to auction 14 acres of leasehold and land by his house.²⁰⁵⁶ He then remitted £1,018 8s by bills on London.²⁰⁵⁷ James Greentree had leave in June 1769 to auction leasehold left by the late Thomas Greentree.²⁰⁵⁸ Robert Leech and Jane Wilson, joint holders of a town plot 26 feet square, had leave to sell it at auction in December 1771.²⁰⁵⁹

The Sale of Governor Goodwin's Estate, 1742-1743 ↑

The largest auction of the period was that of Governor John Goodwin's estate. Goodwin died in 1742 owing the Company large sums. The Company authorised the sale of enough of his estate "to raise the sum of money the late John Goodwin was found to owe".²⁰⁶⁰ The council began selling his goods in May 1742 and broke off to dispatch the ships.²⁰⁶¹ It advertised the rest for sale at the Company's storehouse, "where all persons were free to bid and buy for ready money".²⁰⁶² The sale was finished on 3 August.²⁰⁶³

His land was auctioned on 10 August 1742. The new Governor, George Gabriel Powell, bought most of it.²⁰⁶⁴ Freehold fetched between £8 and £12 an acre, and leasehold under £2.

The deed to Doveton gives £295 for his 24 acres.

The slaves were sold the same day by name. The 31 slaves went to 16 buyers for £477 10s, from Old Tacky at £6 to Emmanuel at £40.²⁰⁶⁵ Then came the furniture and plate, the tea and Indian piece goods, and the teak boards, stock and yams. Silver plate sold by weight at 5s 6d to 6s an ounce.²⁰⁶⁶ The whole sale came to £3,237 5s 2d.²⁰⁶⁷ Bills of sale for the land and houses were to be delivered "to the purchasers on payment of their purchase money".

Payment came slowly. There was "little money on the island save what belonged to the Company", and the Company's own servants paid in £2,737 19s 1d by 31 August.²⁰⁶⁸ Powell settled his purchases of £1,344 9s 7d partly by setting off his own unpaid salary and the salaries he had advanced.²⁰⁶⁹ Small receipts from the outcry ran on into 1743 and beyond.²⁰⁷⁰

The deeds were made under the Company's authority, at a quit-rent of 1s an acre. Francis Wrangham senior took 32½ acres for £204 0s 7½d, allowing for £45 14s 4½d he had paid Goodwin in his lifetime.²⁰⁷¹ Samuel Doveton took 24 acres for £295.²⁰⁷² Powell bought 16 acres from his own council for £205 and resold them the same day to John Goodwin, planter, for £204 10s.²⁰⁷³

Powell's main purchase was dated 1 February 1743. The Governor and Council sold Powell, the Governor, 89 acres of freehold in the West Division for £835: 69 acres in several parcels and 20 acres called Longs.²⁰⁷⁴ Powell signed the deed as grantor and was its grantee. A cancelled copy in the lease book gives the price as £8,035, but the deed register and the consultation both give £835.²⁰⁷⁵ The consultation copy gives the parcels as 49 and 70 acres, which does not agree with the other two.²⁰⁷⁶ Much of this land had been Powell's own. In September 1739 he had sold Goodwin his whole estate for £1,539 6s 4d, its schedule valuing 69 acres of freehold at £10 an acre.²⁰⁷⁷

The sale reached far into island life. The chaplain Edwin Alcock bought a garden in Chapel Valley at the auction and was then given a lease of it.²⁰⁷⁸ He also paid £77 4s 10¾d for Goodwin's windows.²⁰⁷⁹ Richard Gurling bought a house standing on Company land without a lease; in December 1745 the Council gave him a bill of sale for it in fee.²⁰⁸⁰ The Company itself bought Goodwin's great house for £500 against his debt, and allotted it as lodgings for writers and officers.²⁰⁸¹

Prices of Land and Houses ↑

Prices rose steeply over the century, as Figure 2 shows. The median price per acre of land sold rose from about £1 2s in 1680-1699 to £3 13s in 1700-1719 and £4 17s in 1720-1739.²⁰⁸² It reached £11 15s in 1740-1759, and £18 10s in the few sales of 1760-1779.²⁰⁸³

Single parcels show the rise. James Eastings sold Thomas Goodwin 10 acres in Peak Gut for £1 10s in September 1694.²⁰⁸⁴ John Keeling, son of Governor Keeling, sold the same 10 acres to Francis Wrangham for £20 in November 1714.²⁰⁸⁵ George Hoskinson sold 20 acres in Peak Gut to Gabriel Powell for £32 in May 1704, and Powell resold them for £100 in December 1706.²⁰⁸⁶ Thomas Dixon bought 40 acres, two houses and provisions of the Ellison estate for £85 in March 1698, with two years to pay.²⁰⁸⁷

Improved land with houses always cost more. Elizabeth Haswell, widow of a deputy governor, sold John Alexander 10 acres in Sandy Bay with a house and outhouse for £480 in May 1719.²⁰⁸⁸ William Worrall sold 5 acres of freehold and 12 acres of Company leasehold with a house and crops for £428 in October 1719.²⁰⁸⁹ Walter Morris sold 10 acres of gumwood land with its provisions to Captain John Goodwin for £200 in November 1723.²⁰⁹⁰ Edward Pyke sold 17 acres of freehold for £150 in island money in 1730.²⁰⁹¹

Some prices were very low. Benjamin Pledger paid £5 for 15 acres of barren ground in Prosperous Bay Valley in 1733.²⁰⁹² Francis Mowatt sold 10 acres called the Purslain Beds for £8 in 1756.²⁰⁹³ A bill of sale to Carling of about 1727 records a whole plantation of 47 acres for £3 6s, far below every comparable price and probably a part payment.²⁰⁹⁴

The Company's own sales of the 1720s ran at about £4 15s to £6 10s an acre. It sold 40 acres called the Hutts to John Coulson for £190 in April 1726.²⁰⁹⁵ It sold John Alexander, second in council, 30 acres called Hutton's land for £190 in November 1727.²⁰⁹⁶ Barren ground was cheaper. Woody Ridge, 21 acres, went to John Bazett for £30 in November 1738, about 28s 6d an acre.²⁰⁹⁷

The 1740s and 1750s were the years of the highest prices. Powell sold Samuel Doveton 50¾ acres for £650 in May 1744, about £12 16s an acre.²⁰⁹⁸ John Goodwin sold Doveton 95 acres with two houses for £1,520 in May 1747.²⁰⁹⁹ James Powell's sale to Francis Wrangham of 72 acres in three parcels with houses was entered at £3,075 the same month.²¹⁰⁰ That is about £42 an acre, more than double Doveton's price. The figure may be a misreading of the deed. The attorneys of the absent Gabriel Steward sold Lemon Valley Head, 21½ acres, for £603 in August 1754, £28 an acre.²¹⁰¹ John Seale, yeoman, sold John Bland 20 acres of cabbage tree land for £600 in July 1758.²¹⁰²

The Council saw the market rising. In June 1752 it rejected the planters' hint that they would throw up their leases if rents were raised.²¹⁰³ Land, it said, "as well as leaseholds, they had sold for much more lately than ever it did". Repeated sales of one parcel show a steady market. The 21 acres called Bates in the East Division sold for £210 in November 1748, then at £220 in 1750 and twice in December 1752.²¹⁰⁴

Leasehold sold for much less than freehold. A lease conveyed only the unexpired term, subject to the Company's rent. Edward Bagley assigned 39 acres of leasehold for £20 in 1739, about 10s an acre.²¹⁰⁵ Giles Smith assigned the upper 3 acres of 8 acres of leased gumwood land for £3 in 1749.²¹⁰⁶ Leases with houses or crops fetched far more. Joseph Bates assigned 3 acres of leasehold with houses in Sandy Bay Valley for £147 in 1741.²¹⁰⁷ John Long assigned 5 acres with its standing crops to John Goodwin for £113 2s 8½d in 1732.²¹⁰⁸

Land was valued in wills and inventories on the same scale. Francis Wrangham's will of 1759 valued 43 acres of freehold at £16 an acre, other freehold at £10 to £15 and leasehold at £2 to £7.²¹⁰⁹ Inventories of 1754 and 1759 put freehold at £10 or £11 an acre and leasehold at £1 to £3.²¹¹⁰ By 1774 Edward Bagley set £20 an acre on 10 acres of freehold offered to Captain Bazett.²¹¹¹ William Young's will of 1778 priced freehold at £15 an acre and leasehold at £5.²¹¹² Samuel Alexander in 1779 priced leasehold above his house at £12 an acre.²¹¹³ As later context, James Cotgrave's will of 1792 valued freehold at £28 an acre and leasehold at £14.²¹¹⁴

Town houses ranged from £13 to £800. Southwark Street, on the hill below the Castle, held the cheaper houses. Benjamin Pledger sold a house there with its land for £25 in April 1715.²¹¹⁵ In 1723 the corporal John Hanson sold William Trenchard's house, with 14 feet to the street, for £8.²¹¹⁶ Martin Harper, executor, sold a Southwark Street house to Elisha Isaacke for £13 in August 1746.²¹¹⁷ The best James Valley houses sold for hundreds. Captain Goodwin's House in the High Street fetched £285 in May 1715.²¹¹⁸ Elihu Carne sold the Carne mansion to John Goodwin for £200 in lawful money of Great Britain in 1733.²¹¹⁹ John Goodwin sold Matthew Bazett a James Valley house for £800 in island money in July 1757, the highest price for a single house before 1782.²¹²⁰ Houses gained value quickly. Sarah French bought a James Valley house for £50 in 1754 and assigned it for £160 in 1756.²¹²¹

Paying for Land ↑

Coin was scarce, and land was paid for in many ways. Prices were reckoned in island money, in sterling, in Spanish dollars at 6s or in store credit. Thomas Fewsdale sold Owen Bevean 10 acres in Sandy Bay in December 1686 for £24 sterling, 40 Spanish dollars and £14 in cattle valued by two appraisers.²¹²² James Draper sold a house in Chapel Valley in 1699 for £18, half "paid in live cattle, appraised by two impartial men" and half in dollars at 6s.²¹²³ Arthur Bradley sold his plantation in October 1705 for 100 Spanish dollars and two cows with calves, staying on two years.²¹²⁴

Credit at the Company's stores served as money. John Greentree sold Elizabeth Johnson 20 acres in Lemon Valley for £20 in April 1698, "the sum being present credit in the stores".²¹²⁵ John Lufkin sold Richard Alexander a Chapel Valley house for £170 in June 1712, "secured to be paid in store credit on the books".²¹²⁶ Algate sold Charles Steward 18 acres and a house in May 1714 for £170, £140 to be paid in the Company's stores and £30 in cash.²¹²⁷

Produce paid for land and houses too. John Bagley sold Andrew Wilson a town house in February 1696 for £25 "paid in hand in yams".²¹²⁸ The widow Mary Maxwell sold Charles Steward 6 acres for 2,000 yams.²¹²⁹ John French sold a piece of ground in Chapel Valley for a heifer valued at £5 15s and £1 5s in store credit.²¹³⁰

Many sales were paid by instalments. James Casthope sold Ripin Wells 10 acres and a house in March 1694 for £30 in island money and £20 in store pay.²¹³¹ The price fell due in three instalments: at signing, on the first ship from England and within three years. John Coulson sold Jonathan Doveton 15 acres and half a house in November 1725, the last payment due "on the arrival here of the next homeward-bound shipping from Great Britain".²¹³² Joseph Bates sold a life interest in 2 acres for £26, half at each of the two rent days.²¹³³

Bonds and interest secured larger sums. Gabriel Powell's sale of 1706 was secured by Robert Gurling's bond.²¹³⁴ Richard Gurling sold George Hoskinson an estate for £500 "in bills of exchange payable in England" in October 1706.²¹³⁵ Orlando Bagley owed £38 of a house price at 8 per cent in 1739, and James Dubois £40 at 6 per cent in 1742.²¹³⁶ Thomas Greentree bought a James Valley house in June 1739 for £72 down and £178 due six years later.²¹³⁷ John Warren bought 42½ acres in Sandy Bay in 1744 for £300 and mortgaged them at once to Charles Steward for £150.²¹³⁸ Richard Gurling backed a warranty of title with "a penal sum of £100".²¹³⁹

Sales to the Company were often made on credit too. The Company sold William Slaughter 10 acres called Griff's Land in August 1724 for £65, £30 paid and £35 secured by bond.²¹⁴⁰ It did so "pursuant to the Honourable Company's orders and instructions dated 30 December 1723".

Buyers, Sellers and Absentees ↑

Officials were the largest buyers. In 1712 London condemned a governor who had bought so many plantations that families had left the island.²¹⁴¹ "A lord of the manor does not buy his tenants' lands," it wrote, and he was to buy no more. The Council agreed in 1717 that wealthy planters engrossed the poorer men's holdings. It barred those without their due quota of men for the militia from further purchases.²¹⁴² A widow could sell, but only men keeping a white man to every 20 acres might buy.²¹⁴³

Governors and councillors still bought from their own boards. Governor Goodwin bought Powell's estate in 1739, and Powell bought much of it back from his own council in 1743.²¹⁴⁴ John Clark of council bought the intestate Richard Gurling's 10 acres called Vaughans from the council in October 1754 for £164 15s.²¹⁴⁵ The auction account of the same estate names the Lieutenant Governor, John Adamson, as buyer of Vaughan's for £144 15s, and the two entries do not agree.²¹⁴⁶ Clark resold 10 acres to Matthew Purling days later.²¹⁴⁷ Francis Wrangham junior, the Company's secretary, sold his father 43 acres for £750 10s in 1756.²¹⁴⁸

Absent owners sold through attorneys. A wife could act for an absent husband. Prudence Sherwin, "wife and attorney" of Thomas Sherwin, sold a Chapel Valley house for £26 in July 1694.²¹⁴⁹ Martha Scott sold town ground for her husband Lieutenant James Scott in 1747.²¹⁵⁰ An attorney's power was confined to his letter of attorney, and the Council would not enlarge it.²¹⁵¹

Island land was held by men far away in the East. John Bazett and Francis Wrangham, attorneys of Thomas Mostyn "of Angingo on the Malabar Coast", sold 30 acres in Great Bottom to Joshua Johnson for £410 in July 1740.²¹⁵² They sold his James Valley ground to Johnson for £100 in 1742, and Johnson passed it to the Company at cost.²¹⁵³ Richard Goodwin, attorney of Joseph Coles of Sumatra, sold three parcels of 28 acres to William Coles of Sumatra for £250 in February 1742.²¹⁵⁴ Both seller and buyer were then in the East Indies. Thomas French sold a James Valley house for Thomas Manning Taylor of Bencoolen in December 1753.²¹⁵⁵

London merchants also held land. The attorneys of John Searle "of London Merchant Planter" sold Francis Wrangham 16½ acres on the Main Ridge for £234 in November 1746.²¹⁵⁶ John Purling, merchant of the City of London, sold his brother Matthew his share of the family estate in March 1751. It comprised 110½ acres of freehold, 62½ acres of leasehold and two houses, for £1,158.²¹⁵⁷

Islanders who left sold up first. James Harding, corporal, made his will in 1740 having "sold the lands he held, intending to take passage with his family on the next outward-bound ship for Bencoolen".²¹⁵⁸ Joseph Bates assigned 50 acres of leasehold to his son-in-law in May 1742 and sailed in the Duke of Lorrain to Bencoolen.²¹⁵⁹ Rachel Alexander, going to Bencoolen in the Exeter, had her guardian sell her leasehold and remit the money to her.²¹⁶⁰ The attorneys of Gabriel Steward, a native of the island, sold his land in 1754 and paid £550 of his fortune into the Company's cash for bills on London.²¹⁶¹ Edwin Alcock of the Neptune, another native, "had sold his possessions" and remitted £700 in September 1767.²¹⁶²

Women bought and sold in their own names. Elizabeth Marsh, widow, bought two houses in Southwark Street in 1723.²¹⁶³ Margaret Goodwin, widow, bought 30 acres from George Gabriel Powell for £300 in June 1742.²¹⁶⁴ Mary Burnham, widow, bought the James Valley house she lived in for £87 3s in 1759 and registered the bill of sale.²¹⁶⁵ Soldiers and labourers bought too. Benjamin Pledger, labourer, bought 16 acres of freehold in Fryer Valley for £100 in February 1724.²¹⁶⁶

Interpretations ↑

The land market probably reflected the island's small size and the Company's hold on most of its ground. Freehold was limited to the early grants and the Company's later sales. Leasehold carried the Company's rent and its leave. Freehold therefore commanded a large premium, and the premium grew as the stock of free land stayed fixed and the population rose. Buyers also paid for houses, crops and yams standing on the ground, so prices per acre mixed the value of land with that of improvements.

The rule of leave appeared to serve the Company's revenue more than any wish to bar sales. The Council asked chiefly whether the new tenant could pay the quit-rent, and by the 1770s it gave leave without enquiry. The evidence suggested that the rule's real force lay in keeping the rent roll and the lease book in step with possession.

Auction was the instrument of an administration that settled estates itself. The Council sold the property of debtors, intestates, strangers and orphans. It kept the proceeds in the Company's cash. Credit at auction and payment in stores show how little coin there was. The sale of Goodwin's estate showed how readily the same few officials could act as sellers, auctioneers and buyers.

Comparisons ↑

English land prices can be derived from Gregory Clark's series of rents and of the return on land. They suggest about £12 7s an acre in 1725-1729, £14 11s in 1750-1754 and £21 8s in 1770-1774.²¹⁶⁷ Improved St Helena freehold thus sold in the English range by the middle of the century. Island prices were reckoned in island money, while Clark's figures are sterling.

The mainland colonies had far cheaper land. George Washington bought 1,806 acres of improved riverside land at Clifton's Neck in 1760 for £1,210 sterling, about 13s 5d an acre.²¹⁶⁸ Land near Charleston in South Carolina averaged about 5s 3d an acre in 1740-1744, 9s 4d in 1755-1759 and 7s in 1770-1775.²¹⁶⁹ In Jamaica land rose to £4 or £5 an acre in the later 18th century.²¹⁷⁰

Colonial figures are sterling equivalents derived in the sources named; the Jamaica currency is not stated.

The comparison shows St Helena's land as scarce, improved and dear. It sold for 25 to 50 times the price of Carolina land and at two or three times the Jamaican rate. At the Cape the Dutch Company's loan farms were held for an annual fee and could not themselves be sold, only the buildings and improvements on them.²¹⁷¹ In price, St Helena's market in freehold, leasehold and town houses stood closer to an English county than to the colonies of North America.

12. Mortgages, Bonds and Credit ↑

The Company as Creditor, 1679-1720 ↑

The Company was the island's first and largest creditor. Its earliest despatches complained that the planters owed upwards of £1,800 on the cloth account, to be recovered in cattle at market price.²¹⁷² William Rutter had run £80 into the Company's debt within 18 months and had taken 10 acres beyond the rules.²¹⁷³ A planter who had paid his full debt for his land was to receive a discharge and a printed Company deed of tenure, for a fee of 2s 6d.²¹⁷⁴ Land, slaves and cloth all passed from the stores on credit before they passed in freehold.

Slaves were sold on the same terms. About 1684 the Company proposed to sell slaves to the planters on credit, with bonds taken for security.²¹⁷⁵ Poorer planters were each to have two slaves for their maintenance, the cost to be repaid to the Company.²¹⁷⁶ In March 1686 an account of 15 slaves sold to planters at £16 to £33 12s each came to £287 15s.²¹⁷⁷ By March 1690 so many owed for rents of houses and land and for slaves that a warrant summoned all debtors to settle.²¹⁷⁸

The Company claimed a preference over every other creditor. In August 1687 London ordered all Mr Smalt's cattle seized, although he claimed to have made over his plantations and cattle to Mr Byam or his son-in-law.²¹⁷⁹ Since no length of time ran against the king, conveyances by a man bound to the Company were void, "the government to have the preference in the case of debts".²¹⁸⁰ The two manuscripts of the island laws give the debtor as Smowke and Smoult and declare the rule a standing law.²¹⁸¹ Smoult's sequestered plantation was re-let for a year, the tenant receiving two slaves and six cows from Company stock to work it and pay the debt.²¹⁸² The earliest will in the register, of February 1682, left James Eastens's estate to his children only once the Company's debt was settled.²¹⁸³

The store became the island's bank and its shop. Goods were priced at 10 per cent over sea prices, and planters without money could pay their debts in provisions at market price.²¹⁸⁴ In 1714 debtors offered shoes, slaves' labour and 10,000 yams to clear their accounts.²¹⁸⁵ Walter Morris, owing £38, was compelled to sell his slave Nick for £25, the balance to be taken in yams.²¹⁸⁶ The directors later held that a planter who cleared his debt should have recovered any slave the Company held as security.²¹⁸⁷ Soldiers ran up debts of £10 to £20 a man at the stores, which were given out blindfold and tempted men to desert.²¹⁸⁸ Debtor soldiers were set to work out their debts at the fortifications.²¹⁸⁹

Credit on the store books served as money. In January 1716 the Council reported that "nothing could be done without it but by transfers at the stores".²¹⁹⁰ The whole money stock in January 1717 was £700 in Company paper bills and coin, against about £2,400 a year for the garrison alone.²¹⁹¹ Land changed hands for store credit. John Greentree sold 20 acres in Lemon Valley in April 1698 for £20, "the sum being present credit in the stores".²¹⁹² John Lufkin sold a Chapel Valley house in June 1712 for £170 secured in store credit on the Company's books.²¹⁹³ Orlando Bagley left his son £10 of credit at the store in 1701, as a man might leave cash.²¹⁹⁴

London tried to curb the system. Small coin and £400 of tokens were sent in March 1714 to end the transfers of small debts from soldiers to planters.²¹⁹⁵ Standing orders of about 1714 allowed no transfer except in consultation, no credit without council consent and no soldier trusted beyond a month's pay.²¹⁹⁶ Money was not to be lent to buy houses.²¹⁹⁷ Planters' debts were to be got in gently, their estates mortgaged for security where necessary.²¹⁹⁸ The Company's paper did not hold its value. By 1754 the treasury carried £539 15s of island cash notes of 40s, 20s, 5s and 2s 6d.²¹⁹⁹ In 1763 the treasury listed them as notes that could not be used.²²⁰⁰

The Forms of Mortgage ↑

The first private security on land appears in December 1684. Smout and Shorwyn were bound in £300 owed in London, and Smout pledged 40 acres against £150 due on the arrival of goods.²²⁰¹ In August 1704 Edward Heath offered to mortgage a house and 20 acres to the Council for £100 and ship credit to buy them.²²⁰² Disputes over possession led the Council in November 1704 to order a register of transfers and mortgages at the fort.²²⁰³ Each entry was to be signed by buyer and seller and attested by the governor and council, or it was not binding.²²⁰⁴ The clerk took a small fee and the books lay open for inspection without charge.²²⁰⁵ The rule passed into the consolidated laws of about 1707.²²⁰⁶

Islanders used three forms of mortgage. The first was the short demise. On 20 July 1708 John Bagley and his wife Margaret demised 10 acres called Smiths Plain to the deputy governor Edward Walkborne for six months.²²⁰⁷ Walkborne advanced £30 with 40s interest and was to keep the land "provided the redemption sum of £32 0s 0d was not paid at the agreed time".²²⁰⁸ The interest of 40s for six months was a rate of more than 13 per cent a year. The word mortgage was also stretched to cover other bargains. In July 1708 George Hoskison mortgaged 45 acres to Richard Gurling for his wife's life, Gurling paying him £11 10s a year, in effect a lease.²²⁰⁹ In August 1709 Joseph and Martha Fox mortgaged 18 acres, two houses and the goods of Martha's children by her first husband for £32.²²¹⁰

The second form was the conditional bill of sale. In July 1730 20 acres of gumwood passed for £80 on condition that repayment within 60 days would discharge the bargain.²²¹¹ On 30 June 1740 Governor John Goodwin conveyed his James Valley house to George Gabriel Powell for £700 sterling.²²¹² The sale was void if Goodwin repaid £750 with 5 per cent interest by 20 April following.²²¹³ In June 1744 Joshua Johnson conveyed 20 acres in Fryer Valley and a town house to Francis Wrangham for £235 on the same terms at 6 per cent.²²¹⁴ In July 1753 the sergeant John Leech conveyed his James Valley house to Augustine Ball, a foot soldier, for £50, void if repaid on the day a year later.²²¹⁵

The third form was the long demise at a peppercorn. On 6 April 1722 John Bowers passed 16 acres of freehold called Beale's Land and 16 acres of Company leasehold to John Smith for £100.²²¹⁶ Smith was to hold for 99 years "paying the rent of one peppercorn yearly", with a proviso for defeasance on repayment.²²¹⁷ The same instrument secured an orphan's portion in 1753. Francis Mowatt demised 27⅘ acres in Sandy Bay to Thomas Greentree, trustee for the orphan Helena Ryder, for 99 years for £300 of the trust money.²²¹⁸ The term was void if Mowatt repaid £300 with 8 per cent on 15 August 1757, and he kept the rents and profits until default.²²¹⁹ In June 1756 Mowatt sold the same land to Wrangham for £340 10s, so the charge was presumably cleared.²²²⁰ The earlier edition read this deed as a trust lease; it was a mortgage.

Leaseholds could be pledged like freehold. In June 1747 Robert Wright assigned parts of two Sandy Bay leases to the Governor and Council as trustees for the orphan of John Bradley, void on repayment by a fixed day.²²²¹ Slaves and cattle were pledged with land or alone. In June 1722 Henry Francis made over gumwood land, a house and a slave named Hannibal, "for the clearing of the land", as security for £136 5s at 6 per cent.²²²² In April 1727 John Long sold four young slaves for £40, keeping their labour until March 1728 or until a debt of £44 was paid.²²²³ It was a bill of sale in form and a security in substance.

Forfeiture did not end the mortgagor's interest. Leech failed to redeem his house, and Ball became owner in law.²²²⁴ Ball died in May 1754, leaving his residue to the officer John Clark.²²²⁵ On 1 April 1756 Clark bought Leech's remaining interest for £60, setting the £50 debt against it and paying £10.²²²⁶ Leech released the house, its reversion and "every claim or interest at law or in equity".²²²⁷ The islanders thus knew the equity of redemption as a saleable thing. A mortgage also passed with the land it charged. Joshua Johnson left his son-in-law his freehold and leasehold in 1745 subject to the mortgage on them.²²²⁸

Registration mattered more as credit grew. Powell had two bonds from Goodwin entered in July 1740.²²²⁹ Francis Wrangham senior registered a mortgage from his son in March 1757, and other holders followed in 1760, 1765 and 1768.²²³⁰ In 1773 four lenders, one a woman, registered a mortgage bond given by Lieutenant Richard Powell.²²³¹ The penalty for neglect was shown in 1754. Richard Gawling's deed of 1751 giving land and four slaves to his daughter was set aside, partly because it had never been registered as the Company's orders required.²²³² The widow's jointure and the creditors were protected.²²³³

A debtor could also defend himself against interest. In April 1747 John Alexander owed £67 14s 4d at 6 per cent to William Worrall, then at Bombay, on the security of his land at Great Bottom.²²³⁴ Nobody on the island held Worrall's authority, so Alexander protested against any further interest or charge on the land.²²³⁵ When Worrall's heirs later pressed for interest, the Council deferred the matter until legal authority came from Worrall or his assigns.²²³⁶

Bonds, Notes of Hand and Rates of Interest ↑

Most island credit rested on personal paper. Wills from the 1680s left bills, bonds, books, debts and plate as ordinary assets.²²³⁷ About 1710 the Council directed that all money lent on bonds of interest be entered in the store books, each borrower charged with the interest yearly.²²³⁸ Sales of land on credit were secured by bond or obligation. Gabriel Powell sold 20 acres at Peak Gut for £100 in December 1706, the price secured by the buyer's bond.²²³⁹ The Company itself sold 10 acres to William Slaughter in August 1724 for £65, taking £35 by bond.²²⁴⁰

The penal bond in double the debt was the usual form. Henry Francis bound himself to Captain Joseph Tolson in £272 10s 8d, void on payment of £136 5s with 6 per cent interest.²²⁴¹ In November 1756 Gabriel Isaac gave Captain George Mead of the Denham a bond in £200 for £100 by quarterly instalments.²²⁴² On default Mead might enter his houses and take his cattle and "his two slave men Phillip and Somsour".²²⁴³ Isaac paid £100 and £9 2s interest in August 1758, "reckoned at five pounds for every hundred by the year".²²⁴⁴ Notes of hand served smaller sums. Lieutenant Thomas Cason's will of 1740 assigned debts of £54 and £51 owed to him on notes of 1735 and 1736.²²⁴⁵ In 1747 Nathan Sample secured £100 to Matthew Mudge by note, on pain of forfeiting the house and land where he lived.²²⁴⁶

The stated rates fell into three bands. A Company loan of £50 in store credit in February 1714 carried the usual interest of 8 per cent.²²⁴⁷ Private mortgages from 1722 to 1747 ran mostly at 6 per cent. Lending by the Company, the Council and the parish ran at 5 per cent, and private bonds came down to 5 per cent in the 1750s.

Rates as written in the deeds and accounts. The 1740 loan was redeemable at £750 for £700 lent.

Lending was also done by the Company to ships. In August 1745 Captain Benjamin Mason paid £900 into the treasury, borrowed of the Company at respondentia on the Queen Caroline.²²⁴⁸ Captain Edmund Smith of the Oxford had been lent £1,360 on his cargo, and in 1746 the Council took 4,614 dollars from him against it.²²⁴⁹ In July 1746 £75 came in from the late Captain Westcott's effects towards money lent him on respondentia.²²⁵⁰ The Company also borrowed. In September 1731 the Council certified £1,600 due to Captain Thomas Cason, continued at interest under the general letter.²²⁵¹

Bonds secured conduct as well as debt. Gabriel Powell entered a recognisance of £100 in 1711 over an alarm near his house.²²⁵² Richard Beale, freeman, was bound in £100 with two sureties in October 1742 to behave peaceably until 1750.²²⁵³ From 1763 magistrates bound prosecutors in £50 or £100 and witnesses in £20 or £30 to attend the next gaol delivery.²²⁵⁴ Company servants gave fidelity bonds with two sureties, £1,000 for a factor and £500 for a writer.²²⁵⁵ An island-born writer in 1763 offered island men as sureties, having no friends outside it.²²⁵⁶

High interest was punished when it fell on the poor. In April 1759 John Jacks admitted taking 300 pieces of eight from Stephen Willoughby for small sums lent, and the Council fined him for extortion.²²⁵⁷ The soldier John Langbridge was held for removal in January 1758 as "being a kind of usurer".²²⁵⁸ A clerk had pawned stolen rings with him and with a punch-house keeper at a very high premium.²²⁵⁹ From December 1759 no one was to take anything in pledge from a soldier or a slave without written leave, on pain of £5.²²⁶⁰

Orphans' Money and the Bradley Loan ↑

Orphans' estates were the island's largest pool of idle money. In April 1701 London undertook to repay any orphans' money paid into its cash, with interest from the date it was credited.²²⁶¹ The rule was restated in 1705 as an encouragement to the inhabitants.²²⁶² Henry Francis's will of August 1722 ordered his whole estate sold and the proceeds placed with the Company at the interest it allowed.²²⁶³ His three portions were payable at age or marriage.

Private guardians also lent or used orphans' money. In 1714 Richard Swallow took three slaves and 10 bonds in return for raising the orphan Margaret Bagley and paying her £130 at majority.²²⁶⁴ In 1746 Seale was allowed the interest of Sarah Hayes's fortune of about £18 for the 27 months she lived with him.²²⁶⁵ Benjamin Mason kept the Harding orphans in 1756 "in consideration of his having the use of their fortunes".²²⁶⁶ Swaite's estate owed £160 to the orphans of Griffith in 1756.²²⁶⁷ In 1718 Frances Carne bound herself to the Company in £500 to pay George Carne's two children £120 each.²²⁶⁸

The Bradley loan shows the Council itself lending such money. On 16 June 1747 the Bradley orphans' money lay idle without interest in the Company's cash.²²⁶⁹ The Council lent £70 of it at 5 per cent to Robert Wright, councillor and overseer, "he giving seven and a quarter acres of land in Sandy Bay for security".²²⁷⁰ The assignment of Wright's two leasehold parcels, 1½ and 5¾ acres, was entered in the lease register on 23 June.²²⁷¹ The register copy gives £20 and interest at 2 per cent, and a later deed dates the mortgage 1737.²²⁷² The acreage and the day agree with the consultation, so the copies are probably miscopied for £70 and 1747. The earlier edition's account of a 1737 mortgage repaid with 14 years' interest should be corrected accordingly.

Wright died within a year, and his estate account listed a mortgage bond to the Governor and Council for £70 at 5 per cent.²²⁷³ His leasehold pasture and planting land, not yet sold, stood against it.²²⁷⁴ In December 1749 London ordered the land sold to repay the debt with interest, any surplus to go only to a person entitled by probate or administration.²²⁷⁵ The same letter told the Council to "never lend the Company's money, or any lodged in its cash, on any pretence or security whatever".²²⁷⁶ The Council answered in April 1750 that it had never lent such money and never would.²²⁷⁷

The land was sold for £70 in June 1750. With three years' interest at 5 per cent the orphans were credited with £80 10s.²²⁷⁸ The buyer was John Boland, perhaps the master mason John Bland.²²⁷⁹ The ban of 1749 ended the Council's short career as a lender on land. Orphans' money thereafter went into the Company's cash and to England by bill. In 1749 the executors of Charles Steward swore that £200 paid in was held for Steward's orphan before bills were drawn.²²⁸⁰

The Poor's Stock and the Widows' Fund ↑

The parish became a lender in the 1750s. Its poor's stock, fed by communion money, hog fines and gifts, was lent to planters on notes of hand at 5 per cent.²²⁸¹ On 27 March 1760 it held notes on Thomas Colgrave's estate (£29 1s), James Torbett (£20), Francis Wrangham junior (£18 13s 11d) and William Moore (£44 14s 5d).²²⁸² It also held "John Jacks, a mortgage bond for £20 0s 0d at 5%".²²⁸³ A bond of £30 16s 9d on Orlando Bagley junior and an interest-free note of £12 on Sarah Fudge completed the list.²²⁸⁴ With £37 5s 1¾d in cash the stock came to £212 11s 2¾d.²²⁸⁵ Most of the notes dated from 1757.²²⁸⁶

The churchwardens relent the money as it came back. Captain Onesiphorus Beale borrowed £40 in June 1760, Richard Goodwin £40 in 1761 and £25 in 1768, and William Wrangham £60 in 1764.²²⁸⁷ Moore paid £2 4s 8½d a year on his £44 14s 5d until 1768 and then the principal, £62 12s 1d in all.²²⁸⁸ The securities handed between wardens rose from £250 15s 10d in 1761 to £346 12s 2d in 1767.²²⁸⁹ In 1769 a vestry voted £450 of the poor fund for a rent-free school house.²²⁹⁰ The loans were called in during 1770 and 1771, and a house valued at £730 then stood in the parish account.²²⁹¹ The stock had lent to about a dozen leading families for some 14 years.

The Widows and Orphans Fund began on 1 April 1766. Married Company servants paid £5 a year and unmarried men £2, and a widow drew £30 a year while she remained a widow.²²⁹² The payments were to be invested by the managers, and subscriptions came to £106 a year at first.²²⁹³ The fund was soon lending on land. In September 1770 its treasurer Henry Bazett had a mortgage bond held by the fund registered with the Council.²²⁹⁴

The fund's later history is given here only as later context. By 1789 interest and subscriptions no longer covered the pensions, and part of Worrall's bond was called in.²²⁹⁵ In 1793 the members ruled that no money be lent below 7 per cent.²²⁹⁶ In 1811 the rate rose to 10 per cent, and "the society would lend money only on the security of freehold land or of leases held for lives".²²⁹⁷ By 1825 some estates were mortgaged for more than they would fetch.²²⁹⁸ The inquiry of 1837 found that "Many of the mortgages lacked the title deeds to the land and houses pledged".²²⁹⁹ Bonds of £11,807 10s at 7½ per cent were due to yield £885 11s 3d a year.²³⁰⁰ The managers would not foreclose, because such property could not be sold and was hard to let.²³⁰¹

Bills of Exchange and the Remittance of Fortunes ↑

Bills on London were both the island's best money and its road home. In February 1690 Joseph Trapp sold 10 acres, a slave and eight hogs for £35, payable in bills on the commanders of returning ships.²³⁰² In October 1706 Richard Gurling sold 50 acres, yams and goats for £500 in bills payable in England.²³⁰³ Captains who sold goods ashore took store credit and were paid by bills, £432 2s 10½d in June 1716.²³⁰⁴ George Gabriel Powell's whole estate passed to Governor Goodwin in 1739 for £1,539 6s 4d, paid mostly in bills on the Company.²³⁰⁵

Inhabitants paid coin into the treasury and took bills at 90 days' sight. In May 1716 Mrs Mary Bright carried home "for a part of her fortune, a bill for £100 0s 0d".²³⁰⁶ By 1745 private money paid in drew bills of exchange, while money owed to the Company drew only certificates.²³⁰⁷ Executors had to swear whose money it was.²³⁰⁸ In December 1757 London ordered bills made payable to those "whose property the money really was" and forbade terms shorter than 90 days.²³⁰⁹ In wartime no one would take bills at 90 days, and the Council had issued them at 30, 40 and 60 days.²³¹⁰

The sums grew large after 1760. Captain John Clark remitted £1,000 in 1760, £2,000 in 1761 and £1,500 on leaving in 1762.²³¹¹ From 1766 to 1772 the Council granted 196 sets of bills, about £55,670 in all.²³¹² The councillors led, Matthew Purling with 17 sets worth £8,474 10s 11d, mostly payable to John Purling.²³¹³ Purling took bills for £4,150 when he sailed in June 1774, and his attorneys remitted further sums each year after.²³¹⁴ Planters remitted too. Thomas Greentree paid in £1,578 16s for a bill to Helena Harrold in July 1766.²³¹⁵ Edwin Alcock, a native of the island, "had sold his possessions and had no other way to send his money to England".²³¹⁶

The remittances turned the treasury into a reservoir of coin. In August 1768 the Council sent £2,000 to Fort Marlborough, expecting money paid in for bills to meet the island's costs.²³¹⁷ In 1778 it reported that remittance money had swelled the treasury far beyond the island's yearly needs.²³¹⁸ In October 1779 £16,000 in silver went to Fort Marlborough.²³¹⁹ The Company also lent its cash to passing ships against bills on London. It advanced £100 to Danish supercargoes in March 1749 against bills for £130.²³²⁰ General Lally's bill for £100 was refused in Paris, and London forbade further advances to French officers.²³²¹

Debtors' Estates, Insolvency and Enforcement ↑

The law of debt was mild on the person. A law of March 1681 forbade imprisonment for a private debt without a warrant stating the cause.²³²² The real check was on departure. In June 1740 Manlove might sail "provided no inhabitant had any claim against him".²³²³ In 1742 the Council declared that no one would leave until he had satisfied his creditors.²³²⁴ Two time-served soldiers were twice refused their discharge in 1743 for debts to Goodwin's estate.²³²⁵ From January 1761 covenanted servants had to give 12 months' public notice of leaving and others one month.²³²⁶ Debtors still slipped away. In 1745 two craftsmen ran off in a Dutch ship, and the Council divided their salaries among their creditors.²³²⁷ William Jenkins left secretly in 1777, owing large sums and leaving his family in hardship.²³²⁸

The Council seized the estates of debtors to the Company. In September 1722 it sold the absent Thomas Southern's James Valley house to Samuel Jefsey for £138.²³²⁹ A Company rule ordered land seized for debt to be sold for the most it would yield, any surplus returned to the debtor.²³³⁰ In 1742 the Council sold 141½ acres of the late Governor Goodwin's freehold to meet his debt to the Company.²³³¹ Governor Powell bought 16 acres for £205 and 69 acres for £835, the second a holding he had sold Goodwin in 1739.²³³² The crossed-out draft of the second deed reads £8,035, a misreading of £835.²³³³ The Company bought Goodwin's mortgaged town house in 1744, allowing £500 against his debt.²³³⁴

Private creditors came second, and often came short. Goodwin's son withdrew his own claim in 1754 so that no creditor should suffer.²³³⁵ Claims of £254 15s 4½d were admitted, and £141 10s 11½d was divided "in proportion to their respective claims".²³³⁶ The creditors thus received about 11s in the pound. Robert Wright's estate was smaller and as tangled. Its effects were not nearly enough to pay his debts.²³³⁷ An English bond of £240 with interest from 1741 competed with island creditors, and the Council asked London which should rank first.²³³⁸ Wright's balance of £288 11s 2½d was credited to his estate in London for his representatives.²³³⁹

Smaller insolvencies were settled on the island. Jonathan Higham died intestate in 1743 owing the Company £21 12s 3d.²³⁴⁰ His goods, three slaves, stock and a 4-acre lease sold for £65 4s 8d, the Company taking its debt first.²³⁴¹ Lieutenant Samuel Price's effects and pay yielded £31 4s 2d in 1764 for about 20 creditors.²³⁴² "Each payment amounted to 3s 11d for every pound owed, the share of Price's estate on the island that fell to them".²³⁴³ The shares of two creditors in England were paid through the London account.²³⁴⁴ The estate of a Desfountain son in 1760 held two slaves, yams and goats worth £160 16s 6d against debts of £174 13s 4d.²³⁴⁵

Debts were also assets, and estate accounts show how much wealth lay in them. Powell's estate sold in 1739 included £124 6s 2¾d of debts owed by 10 planters.²³⁴⁶ Jonathan Doveton's executors in 1744 listed £855 5s 4½d of debts owed to him, about a fifth of his estate.²³⁴⁷ A shopkeeper's estate of 1754 held £110 14s 6d of debts marked very bad, a third of the whole.²³⁴⁸ The earlier edition held that debts due were the largest asset in the Doveton estate; the inventory puts them at a fifth.

Interpretations ↑

The evidence suggested two credit systems running side by side. The Company's store gave book credit to almost everyone and recovered it in cattle, yams, labour and land. Its preference over all conveyances made the Company the senior creditor on every estate. Private credit grew beneath it, on bonds and mortgages copied from English forms.

The mortgage forms were English in every particular. The short demise, the conditional bill of sale and the 99-year term at a peppercorn were the conveyancer's standard devices. The release of 1756 shows that the island understood the equity of redemption as property. The scarcity of stamped paper and lawyers did not stop men from drafting such deeds with some care.

The rates probably reflected the island's shortage of coin rather than any risk peculiar to land. Rates of 6 and 8 per cent were higher than English rates, but the security was often a house in James Valley or improved land near it. The fall to 5 per cent in the 1750s came as remittances filled the treasury with coin. The Company's own 5 per cent loans and the parish's 5 per cent notes probably set the standard for private bonds.

The Bradley case revealed the hazard in a small council acting as trustee, lender and borrower at once. A councillor borrowed orphans' money from the board on which he sat. London's response was to forbid lending altogether rather than to regulate it. The island's idle money then went to England by bill, and island borrowers turned to the parish and later to the Widows' Fund.

Comparisons ↑

In England the mortgage by demise for a long term and the mortgage by conditional conveyance were both in use in the later seventeenth century.²³⁴⁹ Chancery protected the mortgagor's equity of redemption after the day for repayment had passed. The St Helena release of 1756 used the same language of claims "at law or in equity". English land returned about 4.20 per cent on its price in 1725-1729, 3.84 per cent in 1750-1754 and 3.03 per cent in 1770-1774.²³⁵⁰ In 1691 Locke reckoned land at 20 years' purchase while legal interest stood at 6 per cent.²³⁵¹ St Helena's private mortgages at 6 and 8 per cent thus paid two to four points more than English land yielded. Its 5 per cent loans of the 1740s and 1750s came close to English practice.

In Virginia and the Chesapeake, planters drew credit from British merchants and their stores and paid in tobacco and bills on London.²³⁵² Barbados sugar planters borrowed heavily from London merchants on the security of land and slaves.²³⁵³ St Helena differed in having its proprietor as its storekeeper and senior creditor. Its bills of exchange were drawn on the Company itself rather than on merchants.

At the Cape the Orphan Chamber, the Weeskamer, administered the estates of the dead and lent orphans' inheritances to farmers on mortgage bonds.²³⁵⁴ It became one of the colony's main sources of credit on land. St Helena's Council began on the same path with the Bradley loan of 1747. London closed it in 1749, so the island had no public lender on land until the parish and the Widows' Fund took up the role.

In Company India servants sent their fortunes home by bills on the Company, by diamonds and by the bills of foreign companies.²³⁵⁵ Respondentia loans on cargoes were common in the eastern trade. St Helena's councillors and planters used the same channel on a smaller scale, some £55,670 in six years after 1766.

13. Wills and Testamentary Practice ↑

The registers of wills ↑

The island kept its wills in two registers. The first ran from 1681 to 1745 and the second from 1745 to 1793. The earliest dated will was Richard Harding's of 28 December 1681, copied in ahead of the first regular entry.²³⁵⁶ The first will in order was James Eastens's of 22 February 1682. He left his goods, land and cattle to his three children "once the Company's debt was settled".²³⁵⁷ The first register closed with Lieutenant Daniel Owen's will of 7 December 1745, and its last leaves were left blank.²³⁵⁸ The second register held about 168 wills, from soldiers' one-line bequests to settlements running over several sheets. Its last entries were copied in 1793.²³⁵⁹

Entry in a register was part of the law of land from the start. An order of 26 March 1679 required land passing at a planter's death "by inheritance or otherwise" to be registered within one month.²³⁶⁰ From August 1683 an unregistered division of land was void against the inheritor.²³⁶¹ Wills were also copied into the consultation books when they were proved. Later testators' wills therefore often survive twice.²³⁶²

The registers were not always well kept. About 1710 the Court of Directors was astonished that "other public registers of wills were to be so much destroyed and damaged by rats, moth, or wet".²³⁶³ It ordered all leases, wills and surveys entered in books and the originals lodged in one place.²³⁶⁴ A schedule of the registers of wills was drawn up in 1714/15 and the old books guarded from rats and mice.²³⁶⁵ Copies were sometimes checked. In May 1715 E. C. Povey found Edward Crosby's will "agreeable to the original in words, though not in spelling".²³⁶⁶

A finding list made in the Secretary's Office in March 1744 named 71 wills and codicils on file. At least a dozen were women's, among them Grace Coulson, Bridget Bates, Mary Powell and Margaret Bagley.²³⁶⁷ The same office kept no register of inventories until February 1745, when the council ordered a book for them.²³⁶⁸ The Company's small law library of 1744 held Swinburne on wills, Nelson on wills and two works on the office of executors.²³⁶⁹

The testators ↑

Planters made most of the wills. A planter's will commonly named his widow, his children by name and his land by valley and acreage. Women also made wills from the first year of the register. Sarah Younge signed her own will in October 1682, five weeks after her husband's, and confirmed his 10 acres to her daughters.²³⁷⁰ Rebecca Charlesworth, Katherine Fensdale, Ann Fuller and the widow Sich all disposed of land, houses and slaves between 1697 and 1719.²³⁷¹ Later women testators included Frances Carne, Mary Powell, Penelope Isaack and Elizabeth Greentree.²³⁷² A married woman could will her own property only under a husband's deed or a settlement. Mary Dixon made her will in 1696 "by the power and authority of a deed of gift earlier executed in her favour by her husband".²³⁷³ Married women's property is treated in section 16.

Soldiers made many of the shorter wills. In July 1682 Samuel Holland left his pay owing from the Company and his goods and cattle to his friend and executor Robert Dogarny.²³⁷⁴ Isaac Bothway, soldier, left "all the money due to him in the Company's stores" to his friend Septha Fowler in 1710.²³⁷⁵ John Norton left his red chest and clothes to two comrades in 1749.²³⁷⁶ Edward Jennings, matross, divided his shirts, shoes and coats among 14 comrades in 1763.²³⁷⁷ Within a week in October 1760 two soldiers, Edward Archer and William Cross, each left all they had to William Wells.²³⁷⁸ Some soldiers held real property. George Edwards left a house and 30 acres of freehold to his godson in 1724.²³⁷⁹ Augustine Balls left £200 to his children in England in 1754 and lands, bonds and arrears of rent to his officer John Clark.²³⁸⁰

Seamen and marines made wills when landed sick. Richard Eddis, put ashore from the Scipio Africanus, left "all the wages due to him aboard the Scipio Africanus" to a brother and sister in England in 1682.²³⁸¹ William Harvey made one will for his island effects and a separate will for his English property in 1694.²³⁸² Thomas Wright of HMS Cumberland left his wages, prize money and short allowance money to a soldier in 1762.²³⁸³ Alexander Hoar divided his wages between four shipmates of one ship in 1768.²³⁸⁴ In 1782 Lawrence Magher, marine of HMS Romney, left his pay and prize money to a friend.²³⁸⁵ James Cheeseman, marine of HMS Worcester, left his wages and prize money to his parents at Tunbridge Wells.²³⁸⁶

Governors and Company servants passing through also used the register. Governor Stephen Poirier, a refugee from France, wrote in 1707 that the laws of England made second husbands masters of a widow's portion.²³⁸⁷ Governor Benjamin Boucher had his goods sold at public auction in 1713 and the balance remitted to London for his children.²³⁸⁸ William Coals of the Bencoolen council left Spanish dollars, a slave boy and 30 acres of island freehold in 1743.²³⁸⁹ The supercargo William Harrison left £5,000 to his mother in 1774, though nothing he owned lay on the island.²³⁹⁰

Making a will: marks, spoken wills and defects ↑

Many testators could not write. James Eastens signed by mark in 1682, and marks recur in the wills of planters, widows and soldiers throughout.²³⁹¹ Mary Dixon's hand had to be guided. The witnesses swore that "Because she had no use of her hands" she had her hand guided and acknowledged the marks.²³⁹² In September 1732 the Governor asked why the corporal George White, who wrote a good hand, had made only faint scratches. The witnesses answered "he was so weak and faint that he was not able to write his name".²³⁹³

Spoken wills were accepted on the oaths of witnesses. William Bishop's deathbed gift of 10 acres at the head of Deep Valley was reduced to writing in 1687 by two men who signed by mark.²³⁹⁴ Witnesses swore to Josiah Charlesworth's deathbed division of his allotted and purchased land in January 1693.²³⁹⁵ A memorandum of April 1690 swore that John Draper had named his executors three days before his death.²³⁹⁶ In 1713 Ann Fuller gave effect to her late husband's verbal will, whose witnesses were all dead.²³⁹⁷ George Bryner's informal deathbed paper of 1718 was judged equivalent to a verbal will though not in proper form.²³⁹⁸ In March 1760 two soldiers swore that David Miles and Sergeant John Fleming had agreed "whichever of them outlived the other should have the other's effects". The council gave Fleming possession.²³⁹⁹ A French prisoner, John Laroze, made a spoken will in hospital in 1763 leaving an old chest to a private soldier.²⁴⁰⁰

No stamped paper was to be had on the island. From 1713 the copies note that "no stamped paper was available on the island", and the note runs through wills and deeds into the 1770s.²⁴⁰¹ Wills on plain paper were proved all the same.²⁴⁰²

The council looked to the testator's intention more than to form. It proved Robert Wright's unwitnessed will in 1748 on belief in his handwriting.²⁴⁰³ A witness who had written another man's name by mistake corrected it on oath at probate in 1718.²⁴⁰⁴ John Marsh swore that his brother had added the words "if at age" to one clause, and the will was proved with that addition.²⁴⁰⁵ Edward Arnold's will was admitted in 1751 although he had not signed against the seal.²⁴⁰⁶ In 1772 the council gave two sheep to a godson whom a will had misnamed, on the word of the man who wrote it.²⁴⁰⁷ Where a will was badly made the council could set it aside. John Dove's defective will was put aside in 1754 so that his widow "could by that means be certain of the amount of his effects".²⁴⁰⁸ An undated will was proved in January 1786 on the oath of its witnesses before Governor Daniel Corneille.²⁴⁰⁹

Proof, administration and executors ↑

The Governor and Council were the island's probate court. Henry Francis's will was proved before them on 29 May 1684, the copy "examined against the original by Henry Blackmore Junior, register".²⁴¹⁰ Proof rested on the witnesses' oaths. Mary Dixon's will was proved on the oaths of Matthew Bazett and Thomas Earls in October 1696.²⁴¹¹ William Hague's was proved on the oaths of three witnesses, with copies to be given on demand.²⁴¹² Joshua Johnson's will was proved in August 1745 on the oaths of two witnesses, the third being sick.²⁴¹³ Mary Screws's was proved in 1743 on the oath of "the only living witness to it", himself a legatee.²⁴¹⁴

Probate brought an inventory. When William Duston's will was approved in July 1707, his widow was sworn to give a true inventory and appraisers were named.²⁴¹⁵ Where a widow took the whole estate, as under James Easthope's will, no inventory was required.²⁴¹⁶ From the 1740s the widow swore she had produced every article and the appraisers swore to their valuation.²⁴¹⁷ Inventories and appraisal are treated more fully elsewhere.

Administration with the will annexed appears in 1733. John Knipe senior had directed that no child's share be paid until his youngest daughter was 16. The Governor held this contrary to law. Since the debts nearly equalled the personal estate, the executors were made administrators "without regard to the paper called John Knipe's will".²⁴¹⁸ Letters of administration with an inventory annexed were already in use in 1700.²⁴¹⁹ The chaplain's widow Margaret Alcock was granted administration of her intestate husband's goods in March 1746.²⁴²⁰ Later administrators gave bond with a surety.²⁴²¹

Executors could refuse office. When John Worrall's will was read on 7 October 1735, Captain John Goodwin renounced the executorship and the other two were admitted by order of the Governor and Council.²⁴²² Thomas Greentree, being ill, declined in 1743.²⁴²³ Mary Wright and Matthew Purling refused the executorship of Robert Wright's will in 1748.²⁴²⁴ Where no kin would act, the council took the estate in hand itself, as with the overseer Richard Gorling's tangled affairs in 1754.²⁴²⁵

Probate granted in England was also copied into the island register. Letters under the seal of the Prerogative Court of Canterbury recorded that Jonathan Doveton's will was proved in London on 9 February 1792. Administration went to Henry Bazett and Frederick Doveton on oath "to make a true inventory of all the goods, chattels and credits".²⁴²⁶ It was the only English probate in the register. Doubt about the force of English probate over island effects appeared earlier. In 1752 the council held Nicholas Cleather's effects in the Company's cash until the Court decided whether his English probate gave his executor title.²⁴²⁷

Overseers watched executors in the early wills. Robert Orchard named three men in 1682 to see his children "not wronged in their persons or in their cattle".²⁴²⁸ Rebecca Charlesworth's overseer Henry Coales could call her four sons-in-law to account if they "sold, transferred or embezzled any part of the estate".²⁴²⁹ Matthew Bazett named John Goodwin, James Greentree and Jonathan Doveton overseers in 1719.²⁴³⁰ The Governor could stand as reserve executor. John Sich made Governor Stephen Poirier executor if his widow remarried or died.²⁴³¹ William Turner named "the Governor and Council for the time being" executors and guardians of his heir in 1757.²⁴³² Sarah Farrell did the same in 1775.²⁴³³

Sons often became executors before full age. Gabriel Powell's sons were not to act until 17 and 19.²⁴³⁴ Samuel Knipe's son was to act at 19, Gabriel Harper's at 18 and Robert Gurling's at 16.²⁴³⁵ Wealthy men named many executors. Thomas Greentree named his widow and six of the island's leading men in 1766.²⁴³⁶ Executors themselves sometimes bought from the estates they ran, as Matthew Bazett bought 20 acres called Easthope in 1750.²⁴³⁷ In 1791 the council publicly reprimanded the executors of Julio Fabiano. They had not followed "the procedures the law prescribed to guard against embezzlement of the estate".²⁴³⁸

Dividing the land among the children ↑

Island law left land free to devise once it was held in freehold. The code of about 1707 let a single planter's land go to his heir or to whom he named by will.²⁴³⁹ In 1742 the judge at a jury trial told the planters "their land estates on the island were their own, and they could lawfully dispose of them by will or otherwise".²⁴⁴⁰ Widows' customary shares limited that freedom and are treated in section 14.

The earliest wills divided estates among all the children. Francis Moore gave his eldest son "five shillings to buy a ring" in 1682 and the rest equally to his other five children.²⁴⁴¹ John Younge split the 20 acres allotted him by the Company between his eldest son and two daughters.²⁴⁴² John Greentree gave 30 acres to one son and 20 to another in 1683. His Chapel Valley house went to all six children, with a buy-out at valuation. A child leaving the island to marry was to sell his share of the cattle and movables to the others "at half the appraised value".²⁴⁴³

Testators soon devised ways to keep land whole while treating children equally. John Sich ordered his land, goods and cattle appraised by two impartial men in 1703: "Each child's portion was to be received in kind, allocated by lot".²⁴⁴⁴ John Cleaverlee counted his specific gifts against equal shares on valuation in 1696.²⁴⁴⁵ Samuel Desfontaines gave his eldest son in 1707 "the option of buying out the shares of his four siblings in the land". The price was set by two indifferent men, and each child in turn had the same refusal.²⁴⁴⁶ Richard Swallow gave his son the refusal of his siblings' shares at a value set by two honest men in 1718.²⁴⁴⁷ John Nichols senior let two children take 15 and 23 acres at appraisal in 1719. "Any value above Robert's equal share of the estate was to be paid by Robert to his siblings".²⁴⁴⁸

The refusal at valuation became the normal pattern of the 1730s and 1740s. Samuel Jessey ordered his 20 acres of freehold and 12½ of leasehold valued within three months in 1734. His son might take them by paying each of four sisters a fifth. Failing him each daughter had the option in order of seniority, and failing all "the executors were to sell the lands at public outcry".²⁴⁴⁹ Joseph Harding gave the refusal to a son, then to the eldest daughter at 21, then to any daughter marrying first.²⁴⁵⁰ John Young's son William had the refusal "at a valuation by two indifferent men".²⁴⁵¹ The reason was stated plainly by Matthew Bazett in 1742: "his lands, being divided among his children, would come too little to settle upon them".²⁴⁵² Gabriel Harper wrote in 1747 "His land being too little to divide among all his children".²⁴⁵³

Some wills divided the land by named parcels. John Twaits, writing in April 1755, found that his land would not divide among a son and five daughters. John had the Cabbage Tree lands, 9 acres of freehold and 17 of leasehold. Temperance had 13½ acres of leasehold called Easthopes and Mary the dwelling ground and Highams, 8 acres of leasehold. Each was to account to the others.²⁴⁵⁴ Richard Goodwin's will of December 1747 divided freeholds called Crawford's, Samuel Taylor's, Fuller's and the Plain between his widow and sons. Whoever held more than a fair share was to equalise with the others.²⁴⁵⁵ Samuel Doveton wrote in 1749 "To prevent disputes in the future over the division of his lands among his children". He drew the line between two sons' land from a lemon tree in a gut to the head of a watercourse.²⁴⁵⁶

Water had to be shared between the new parcels. Powell wrote in 1729: "The children were not to molest or hinder one another in the passage of the water courses."²⁴⁵⁷ Goodwin directed "whoever held his lands should have an equal share of the water from the springs".²⁴⁵⁸ Richard Mason ordered "the water be kept running in the lower trenches as it then ran and always had".²⁴⁵⁹ Edward Heath used a spring that issued from a rock behind his house as the boundary between two heirs in 1706.²⁴⁶⁰

By the 1750s valuations were written into wills acre by acre. Francis Wrangham senior split his residue in four in February 1759. His son Francis took 43 acres called Long's and Beale's "charged to him at £16 0s 0d per acre". The other freeholds were priced at £10 to £20 an acre and the leaseholds at £2 to £8.²⁴⁶¹ His advances to children, £1,823 5s 10d in all, were charged against their shares.²⁴⁶² Richard Bagley offered Captain Bazett 10 acres called Harpers in 1774 "he paying £20 0s 0d an acre for it".²⁴⁶³ William Young in 1778 set freehold at £15 an acre and leasehold at £5 for his eldest son, and pasture freehold at £18 for another son.²⁴⁶⁴ James Cotgrave valued the freeholds Vices and Sextons at £28 an acre in 1792, the highest in the register.²⁴⁶⁵

Heirs who took no land were bought out, and sometimes they sold to one another. John Harding bought his three siblings' and a brother-in-law's shares in their father's 19 acres at Sandy Bay for £100 in 1720.²⁴⁶⁶ John Bazett bought his brothers' and sisters' eighths of Matthew Bazett's house and 15 acres in Chapel Valley at £25 each in January 1738.²⁴⁶⁷ Where heirs disagreed, a jury divided the land, as it divided Mary Dixon's 20 acres.²⁴⁶⁸

Not every testator divided equally. A shilling cut off a child. Sutton Isaac senior left his daughter and son-in-law 1s each in 1713, "disinheriting her from any further share in his estate".²⁴⁶⁹ James Corbett gave his eldest son one shilling only in 1765, and William Seale senior cut off two married daughters with a shilling each in 1776.²⁴⁷⁰ Married daughters already portioned took little more. James Greentree's married daughters, given £400 each at marriage, had £25 more and no further claim.²⁴⁷¹ Testators who wished to override custom said so. Governor George Hodgkinson ordered an equal division "notwithstanding any law, custom or usage to the contrary".²⁴⁷²

The eldest son's claim to the freehold was raised only in intestacy. In April 1753 Thomas French appealed to "the law and custom of the place time out of mind". By it, he said, the eldest son took the freehold and shared the personal estate with his sisters.²⁴⁷³ The council replied that "it could find no such by-law or custom on the island as he mentioned".²⁴⁷⁴ It did not, however, disturb French's claim to the freehold. An intestate's land went to the heir at law, and in 1749 William Worrall's brother took his real estate while his sisters shared the personalty.²⁴⁷⁵ Orphans' estates and guardians are treated in section 15.

The following table sets out a selection of wills that show these patterns.

Dates are those of the will, not of probate. Acre values are those the testators set.

Houses, livestock and goat ranges ↑

Town houses in Chapel Valley, later James Valley, passed by will from the first year. Richard Harding left his widow a house in Chapel Valley as well as his country house in 1681.²⁴⁷⁶ John Bartlee left his wife a two-room house in Chapel Valley near Fort James.²⁴⁷⁷ Benjamin Seale left his widow "one stone house, situated opposite the burying place in Chapel Valley" in 1693.²⁴⁷⁸ William Price left two stone houses there to two little girls.²⁴⁷⁹ Henry Coales divided his Fort James house in 1700 between a son and a daughter by rooms and storeys. A stone wall was to be built where the weatherboards stood, three quarters at the son's cost and one quarter at the daughter's.²⁴⁸⁰

Houses divided among daughters were usually bought in by one heir. The executors of Richard Alexander sold the children's two thirds of his James Valley house for £43 6s 8d to the son-in-law who held the other third.²⁴⁸¹ Jonathan Doveton left his James Valley house in thirds to three daughters in 1745. Lieutenant James Scott bought two thirds at £56 13s 4d each and sold the whole the same day for £170.²⁴⁸² Mary Hague left her house in 1723 to two grandsons "as tenants in common and not as joint tenants".²⁴⁸³ Later wills dealt in rents. John Price's daughter had two let houses whose rents were to pay off the price of one and the cost of building the other.²⁴⁸⁴ James Pavell divided a yard between two houses and reserved a passage to his own.²⁴⁸⁵

Cattle were left by name in the early wills. Richard Harding gave each child cows and heifers called Crumple, Coppin, Cole, Old and Tadigall in 1681, with cattle grazing at Sandy Bay and the Peak.²⁴⁸⁶ John Younge gave each child a named heifer and the unborn child the next heifer calf.²⁴⁸⁷ Gilbert Colgrave put the cows Browney, Merrygold and White Apron into a separate marked stock for his children in 1711.²⁴⁸⁸ Children owned stock in a parent's lifetime under their own marks.²⁴⁸⁹ A heifer was worth "about 40s" in 1732.²⁴⁹⁰ Goats, yams and timber appeared as bequests in their own right. Michael Morris left his daughter 10 goats and "10,000 yams and the suckers growing in the bottom of Degarnees' ground".²⁴⁹¹ John Goodwin left his son 50 goats and "40,000 yams and suckers to the value of £30 0s 0d".²⁴⁹² William Bowman divided the timber on 60 acres apart from the land on which it stood.²⁴⁹³

Goat ranges on the common became heritable property in the 1740s. In October 1742 the inhabitants agreed that a range might be sold to only one person. "After his death, if he had but one range, it descended to his eldest son", a second to the second son and more to the daughters by seniority.²⁴⁹⁴ John Long sold a range on Banks Ridge in Rupert's Valley inherited from his mother for £5 in 1738.²⁴⁹⁵ In 1751 the executors of William Desfountain advertised a range his son claimed as his own. The vestry declared that "the range should descend to his heir and not be sold to meet his debts, provided other effects were sufficient". Ranges were not to be valued against a child's share.²⁴⁹⁶ Testators gave ranges outside the division. Jonathan Doveton's two ranges went one each to two sons "not to be reckoned" in their portions.²⁴⁹⁷ William Burnham's range at Stone Top was to be delivered to his son at 15 or 16.²⁴⁹⁸ Thomas Greentree left two ranges bought at public auction to his nieces in 1766.²⁴⁹⁹ Slaves bequeathed in wills are treated in section 19.

Debts, piety and the poor ↑

Debts came before legacies. James Eastens's children were to inherit only after the Company's claim.²⁵⁰⁰ Richard Harding set aside a bullock to pay his debt to the Company in 1681.²⁵⁰¹ Thomas Free assigned sums owed to him to his own creditors in 1726.²⁵⁰² Thomas Hodgkinson gave his expected inheritance to his creditor in 1728, with a house and land not yet paid for.²⁵⁰³ The council let Simpson's executor sell a freehold house in 1746, "It appearing by the testator's will that his debts were to be first paid".²⁵⁰⁴ Legacies abated where an estate fell short.²⁵⁰⁵ The Company's own claim on Governor Goodwin's estate had to be satisfied before Eleanor Worrall's legacy.²⁵⁰⁶ Goodwin's estate proved insolvent. The Court ordered the executors to "divide that £141 10s 11½d among the several claimants in proportion to their respective claims", against claims of £254 15s 4½d.²⁵⁰⁷

The register copies were usually abridged and left out most of the religious preambles. Traces of them remain. A drummer who died aged 102 left "all his whole estate that it had pleased God to bestow upon him".²⁵⁰⁸ Edward Jennings "cancelled every earlier will he had made and declared this one alone to express his final wishes."²⁵⁰⁹ Funeral directions were practical. Eustace White left £1 1s to the chaplain to carry his body to church and 10s 6d to the parish clerk in 1767.²⁵¹⁰ A sick quartermaster charged his legatee with a coffin burial and a headstone.²⁵¹¹ A Portuguese seaman from Terceira allowed some of his wages to go to priests for prayers.²⁵¹² Mourning rings went to governors, councillors and kin.²⁵¹³

Bequests to the poor began with transients. Thomas Phillips left £50 "to the poor of Wirksworth in Derbyshire" in 1698.²⁵¹⁴ John Sich left 12s to the island's poor in 1703.²⁵¹⁵ William Penny, soldier, directed in 1723 that "The remaining part of his estate was to go to the poor of the island".²⁵¹⁶ The churchwardens received "a legacy left to the poor of this island by William Coats" of £50 about 1726.²⁵¹⁷ The widow Sich left 20s to the minister and 20s to superannuated poor.²⁵¹⁸ James Crafford left any surplus from the sale of his wife's freehold to the poor of St Helena.²⁵¹⁹ Later planters' gifts grew larger. Thomas Greentree left £25 to "the honest and industrious poor of the island" in 1766.²⁵²⁰ Richard Bagley left £50 and his widow £30.²⁵²¹ Churchwardens sometimes held legacies for poor relations at their own discretion.²⁵²²

The largest gift came from India. Mary Hunt, widow of Major Hunt, left her estate for life to the orphan Charles Palmer and then to the island. Her will was proved in the Mayor's Court of Calcutta.²⁵²³ A copy was entered in the island's register in 1770.²⁵²⁴ In September 1777 the churchwardens sought a legacy of £1,000. "Mary Hunt, late of Bengal, had left this sum in her will to the poor of St Helena."²⁵²⁵ A council minute of June 1778 named the testatrix as Mary Short of Bengal, who "bequeathed the sum of £1,000 for the benefit of the poor widows and orphans". The council called for lists of widows and orphans with their ages and circumstances.²⁵²⁶ Both entries name Sir Charles Raymond as executor, and they probably describe one legacy. In August 1778 the council drew £1,000 from the treasury and shared it among the poor widows and orphans it judged most deserving.²⁵²⁷

Interpretations ↑

The evidence suggested a settled preference for partible inheritance among the island's planters. The eldest son's right to the freehold was asserted only once and only for an intestate. Testators almost always divided land, goods and cattle among all their children. The scarcity of land told against this preference. Holdings of 20 to 60 acres could not be split six or eight ways without ruin, and testators said so in nearly the same words. The refusal at valuation by two indifferent men reconciled the two aims. It kept the land whole in one child's hands and turned the other children's shares into money. The device appeared in 1707 and was common by the 1730s. It probably owed something to the Greentree and Desfontaines families, whose wills set the form for their neighbours.

The council's work as a probate court was flexible rather than formal. It had no ecclesiastical court beside it and few trained lawyers. It accepted marks, spoken words, unstamped paper and an unwitnessed holograph, and it read wills by the testator's intention. The firmer English forms arrived late. Executors' oaths, administration bonds and counsel's opinions from London became common only after about 1745. The leasehold ruling of 1754 and the representation ruling of 1753 marked the same shift towards English law.

The soldiers' wills pointed to a world apart from the planters'. A soldier's pay, chest and clothes went to a comrade, a landlady or the man who nursed him far more often than to kin. These wills read as a means of paying for care in the last illness. The many wills left to "his friend" probably reflected agreements made in barracks and sick quarters.

Comparisons ↑

English testators of the period made wills in much the same form. A religious preamble, specific bequests, a residue and named executors were usual among yeomen and husbandmen.²⁵²⁸ English wills were proved in the church courts, not before a governor and council. Blackstone described the requirements of witnesses and probate that the island council followed in a simpler way. The Statute of Distributions of 1670 shared an intestate's personal estate a third to the widow and the rest to the children.²⁵²⁹ The island's rule of 1679 matched it, and an Act of Charles II was read to Thomas French in 1753.²⁵³⁰

In England primogeniture governed the land of intestates and the settlements of the gentry. Many yeomen nonetheless provided for younger sons and daughters by charges and portions.²⁵³¹ Partible custom survived in Kent as gavelkind. The Company's library on the island held Somner on gavelkind.^25322533 The St Helena planter's will stood closer to the yeoman's partible practice than to the gentry's strict settlement.

Barbados planters faced a different problem. A sugar estate was worth thousands of pounds and could not be divided without destroying its mill and works.²⁵³⁴ A model 100-acre Barbados plantation was costed at "£5,625" in 1690.²⁵³⁵ Sugar planters therefore tended to leave the estate whole to one son, with money portions for the rest. St Helena's yam and cattle holdings were far smaller, so the island's testators divided them more freely.

At the Cape, Roman-Dutch law gave husband and wife community of property. Spouses commonly made joint wills, and the survivor kept the joint estate.²⁵³⁶ Children were entitled to a legitimate portion that a parent could not will away. Estates were commonly sold at auction to settle the children's shares.²⁵³⁷ Cape probate inventories show average household movables of Rds 1,578.7, of which slaves made Rds 554.9.²⁵³⁸ Slaves at Cape estate auctions fetched a median of Rds 112.²⁵³⁹ St Helena had no joint wills and no fixed legitimate portion. Its testators could cut a child off with a shilling, which a Cape testator could not do.

In Company India, servants' wills were proved in the Mayor's Courts of Madras, Bombay and Calcutta. Fortunes were sent home by bills on the Company.²⁵⁴⁰ St Helena's executors used the same channel. Charles Steward's executors paid £500 into the Company's cash for bills on London in 1746 on oath that it belonged to his estate.²⁵⁴¹ Mary Hunt's legacy shows the reverse flow, with an Indian fortune returning to the island's poor through a Calcutta probate.²⁵⁴²

14. Widows and the Widow's Share ↑

The rule of half and a third ↑

The island's first law of descent gave the widow more than English common law did. When a married planter died, "one half went to his wife for her lifetime", and the other half, with the reversion of hers, went by his will or to his next heir.²⁵⁴³ Goods he had not disposed of went one third to the widow and two thirds equally to his children on the island. Without children she took half and his brothers and sisters on the island the rest, or the whole if there were none.²⁵⁴⁴ The rule appeared among the laws entered under 26 March 1679 and was restated in the law abstract of 1680.²⁵⁴⁵ It was carried into the consolidated code of about 1707, which added that an estate with no kin on the island was to be inventoried and kept for an administrator in England.²⁵⁴⁶ Every share was limited to kin living on the island, and an absent son who failed to return within two years forfeited his land.²⁵⁴⁷

The rule was tested early and in plain terms. In 1680 the gunner Andrew Phillips, who had married the widow Mary Powell, asked the Council to say what rights in land and livestock she brought him, since the Company's instructions were silent.²⁵⁴⁸ A dispute of about 1707 turned on which 10 of a husband's 20 acres the widow should take, she refusing the upper ground.²⁵⁴⁹ The widow's half was a life interest in land, not ownership, and it could be divided on the ground like any other share.

Testators in the 1680s and 1690s used the rule as a floor rather than a formula. John Knipe left his wife one third of the rest of his estate and his children two thirds in 1695, the intestacy rule in his own words.²⁵⁵⁰ Jonathan Beale gave his widow one third of the whole except the country house in 1699.²⁵⁵¹ John Cleaverlee gave his wife the house and land for life "in addition to her shares under the law if she chose to claim them", which treated the legal share as a right she could elect to take.²⁵⁵² William Dufton went the other way in 1707 and left his wife "only what the law allowed her and nothing more".²⁵⁵³

The language of the early wills mixed English and local law. Samuel Maxwell gave his widow her thirds of the personal estate "according to the laws of England" in 1703.²⁵⁵⁴ Richard Alexander in 1710 gave his wife a third "according to the laws of England and the customs of the place".²⁵⁵⁵ Charles Steward in 1714 let his widow take her third in kind "according to the general custom of the island" or a third of the auction proceeds.²⁵⁵⁶ A few men overrode the shares outright. Gilbert Colgrave left the residue to his wife "notwithstanding any law or custom to the contrary" in 1711, and Governor Hodgkinson used the same words in 1724 to divide his estate equally between his widow and children.²⁵⁵⁷ David Greville gave his widow only a fourth in 1737.²⁵⁵⁸

The custom of the island ↑

By 1719 the double share had a name. Matthew Bazett, second in council, left his wife Bridget the residue while she remained unmarried. On remarriage she was to have one third of the personal estate and half the real estate for life "according to the custom of the island".²⁵⁵⁹ In 1722 John Coulson sold his mother Grace the house in James Valley that she held for life during widowhood "under the laws and constitutions of the island".²⁵⁶⁰ In 1726 John and Elizabeth Lacy conveyed the interest she held as Charles Steward's widow in 14½ acres and parts of two houses. She held it "under the laws and custom of the island, to be held during her widowhood for her life and no longer".²⁵⁶¹

From the late 1720s the custom settled into a standard formula: half the real estate for life and a third of the personal estate for ever. Gabriel Powell, the richest planter of his day, gave his widow a third of the personal estate and half the freehold and leasehold for life in 1729.²⁵⁶² John Worrall, Edmond Nichols and Solomon Pawling wrote the same terms in 1733 and 1735.²⁵⁶³ John Bradley, Joseph Harding, Sutton Isacke and John Pawling followed in 1737 and 1738.²⁵⁶⁴ John Seale, James Ryder, Charles Steward, John Bazett and Robert Gurling did so in 1741 and 1742.²⁵⁶⁵ The pattern held for Joseph Desfountain in 1749, John Bagley in 1754, John Twaits and William Burnham in 1755, Samuel Knipe in 1762 and John Worrall in 1763.²⁵⁶⁶

The custom shaped the way land was sold and divided. In 1738 the executors of John Burling and his widow bought Bush Farm, 21½ acres, for £180 in trust. The widow was "to take the use of one half of the land during her natural life" and the whole then to pass to the three sons.²⁵⁶⁷ In 1761 Matthew Bazett bought about 20 acres called Seales for £120 down and a further £120 on the death of the widow Mary Seale, who held the other half for life.²⁵⁶⁸ George Carne's son took one third of his father's town mansion at once and the other two thirds only on the death of the widow.²⁵⁶⁹ Elder daughters in William Burnham's family were to be paid from the personal estate because they "could make no demand on the half of the freehold" until the widow died.²⁵⁷⁰

The Company applied the custom to its own leasehold when it reissued leases in 1738. It let land to executors in trust, one third for the widow "for as long as she lived within the term of the lease" and two thirds for the children.²⁵⁷¹ The series is set out in the table below.

All were 21-year leases at 5s an acre. The last was granted on 9 November 1742; the rest were sealed on 30 September 1738.

In these leases the widow took a third of the leasehold, not a half. The Company was treating its own land as part of the personal estate long before the law on the point was settled. The Council itself took the opposite view in 1753. It reported that "it had been the custom of the island for widows to enjoy one half of their husbands' real estate during life, that leasehold land had generally been considered to be such".²⁵⁷²

Renouncing the half for a child's share ↑

Not every husband or wife accepted the custom. The clearest case is Samuel Doveton's family in 1749. On 22 March 1749 (1748 in the old style) his wife Margaret signed a written obligation before witnesses accepting his division of the estate.²⁵⁷³ In place of half the freehold for life she took an equal share with the children, half in money and half in goods, with leave to live on the undivided estate.²⁵⁷⁴ The paper stated the rule plainly: "By the law of the island a widow was entitled to half of the freehold or real estate for her lifetime".²⁵⁷⁵

Doveton's will of 28 July 1749 explained the reason. He thought the custom injurious to the children where many had to be supported, and he divided the estate in equal sixths between his wife and five children.²⁵⁷⁶ Before division she had furniture, the slave girl Sarah, a cow and £10 for plate, and five acres of Sandy Bay leasehold held for 99 years, valued as part of her share.²⁵⁷⁷ She was to keep half the mansion house and act as executrix only while a widow.²⁵⁷⁸ Doveton died on 8 September 1749 and at probate she declared she had no objection.²⁵⁷⁹

A child's part was an old alternative to the customary half. Matthew Mudge declared his whole estate personal and gave his wife a child's part "notwithstanding her coverture" in 1747.²⁵⁸⁰ Captain William Kennedy and Onesiphorus Beale each left their estates equally between their wives and children in 1760.²⁵⁸¹ Richard Mason gave his aged wife the provision "as the island's laws provided for widows" but left the whole estate in her hands for life with her agreement.²⁵⁸²

Renunciation had to be the widow's own act. In the Harper case the Court of Directors held that a husband could not take away the customary provision by his will. He could only limit further gifts to the period of widowhood.²⁵⁸³ Margaret Doveton's signed paper was therefore the proper instrument for giving the half away.

Widowhood, remarriage and the second husband ↑

Most gifts to widows beyond the legal share lasted only while the widow stayed single. John Younge left his wife the slave Antony in 1682, but if she remarried "Antony was not to be at their disposal but was to remain with his wife" until the daughters came of age.²⁵⁸⁴ John Bartlee let his widow live in his house "for as long as she remained a widow" in 1684.²⁵⁸⁵ Robert Orchard ordered the children's cattle separated from his widow's if she remarried.²⁵⁸⁶ William Hayes in 1705 cut his widow from the whole estate to a third on remarriage, and Edward Bagley in 1706 directed half his lands to be let for the children if she married again.²⁵⁸⁷ Richard Leach's will gave his widow no share at all if she remarried.²⁵⁸⁸

The Council stated the principle in a letter of about 1716. Land was to descend to the children, and a widow was to have no part of it any longer than she remained unmarried.²⁵⁸⁹ The improving lease for lives of 1717 built this in. Widows with children were to hold only during widowhood so that land would not pass with a remarrying mother and be "embezzled".²⁵⁹⁰

The same device ran through the later wills. John Bazett gave his widow the living of the mansion house in 1742, half only if she remarried.²⁵⁹¹ Martin Harper in 1754 left his wife the country house and all his land while his widow, but only half the house and half the real estate for life if she remarried.²⁵⁹² Thomas Cotgrave in 1759 and Thomas Greentree in 1766 wrote similar terms, Greentree's widow to "keep only a half share of the house in the valley" if she married again.²⁵⁹³ Lieutenant John Shortley in 1776 gave his wife everything while a widow, but on remarriage the estate was to be sold and she was to take only "her dower or third of the whole estate".²⁵⁹⁴ Some husbands also made the widow executrix only while unmarried.²⁵⁹⁵

Testators feared the second husband more than the widow. Governor Stephen Poirier wrote in 1707 that "The laws of England made second husbands the absolute masters of a widow's portion" and that orphans were ruined by stepfathers.²⁵⁹⁶ James Rider in 1704 declared that no second husband was to gain any right in his widow's life interests.²⁵⁹⁷ Gilbert Colgrave let his executors remove the children and their property if a new husband proved severe.²⁵⁹⁸

From 1704 the usual remedy was security from the new husband. Onesiphorus Steward required a second husband to give security and keep both houses in repair.²⁵⁹⁹ Paul Charles, Richard Harding and Erasmus Purling wrote the same condition in 1706, and Thomas Bagley in 1711.²⁶⁰⁰ Robert Leech let his executors take the children and estate if a new husband refused.²⁶⁰¹ Thomas Harper's will kept his estate together until his widow remarried, when a new inventory was to be taken and her new husband to give bond.²⁶⁰²

The largest bonds came with the richest widow. On 14 February 1713 George Carne, merchant, bound himself before marrying the widow Frances Goodwin to pay each Goodwin child £100 at marriage or majority, pledging his own goods up to £500.²⁶⁰³ After Carne's death Frances bound herself to the Company in £500 to pay his two children £120 each.²⁶⁰⁴ In 1741 John Swindles took the estate of the widow he married on terms of keeping the four Griffith orphans and paying each £20.²⁶⁰⁵ In 1743 the Bradley orphans, whose stepmother was about to remarry, had the Council value the estate, deliver her thirds and lodge the rest in the treasury.²⁶⁰⁶

Second husbands claimed through their wives. Gabriel Powell, married to Beale's widow, claimed a third of her estate by the courtesy of England in 1710, and held 30 acres "in right of his wife".²⁶⁰⁷ Scott, who had married Joseph Hayes's widow, complained in 1742 that her third was £17 short because no one would take out letters of administration.²⁶⁰⁸ In 1747 a jury found that the sergeant William Kennedy was "entitled to the full third part of the whole of John Scott's estate, both real and personal" through his dead wife, Scott's widow.²⁶⁰⁹

Leasehold and the Harper case ↑

Leasehold had passed by will like freehold since the 1700s. Thomas Harper left his wife "one half of the leased land for her lifetime" in 1715, and Ensign Thomas Harper gave his widow half his leasehold for the remaining terms of his leases in 1737.²⁶¹⁰ Gabriel Harper made his will in March 1748 and died that month.²⁶¹¹ He left his wife Bridget half his freehold and leased lands and houses for as long as she stayed his widow and a third of his personal estate, including the slave Cornwell.²⁶¹² She later married Richard Goodwin.²⁶¹³

On 25 June 1753 Goodwin asked the Council to make Harper's executors give him, in right of his wife, a third of Harper's leasehold land or its value.²⁶¹⁴ The executors Richard Beale, James Powell, Martin Harper and Benjamin Mason refused. At probate the widow had said she "had answered that she was satisfied and contented and had no objection", and the will showed that Harper had not treated his leasehold as personal estate.²⁶¹⁵ Payment, they argued, would injure the orphans.²⁶¹⁶

The Council sent three questions to London in August 1753. It asked whether a will could limit the customary half to widowhood, whether the widow's consent barred her new husband, and whether leasehold was personal estate.²⁶¹⁷ The Court found no island law on the point. Counsel C. Yorke found no law or custom making leasehold descend, answer for debts or pass like freehold, and advised that "the safest course was to follow English law, which treated leasehold as personal property".²⁶¹⁸

The answer settled both questions. The widow had elected before the Governor and Council to take under the will rather than half the freehold by custom.²⁶¹⁹ On her remarriage her half of the leasehold fell into the personal estate, so Goodwin was entitled through her to a third of the leasehold. He had to repay any income received above that third since the marriage.²⁶²⁰ On 8 April 1754 the Council told Goodwin that he had a just demand, since "leasehold lands were by the law of England deemed personal estate", and ordered the third paid.²⁶²¹ The Court directed the Council to decide such cases itself in future and to send only agreed cases to counsel at the parties' expense.²⁶²²

The ruling was meant to give widows a third of leasehold. In practice testators wrote leasehold out of the widow's third. Martin Harper, in a will made in June 1754 just before his death, gave his widow on remarriage only "a third of the personal estate except leasehold lands".²⁶²³ Thomas Harper and Samuel Knipe used the same exclusion in 1762, and Orlando Bagley in 1769.²⁶²⁴ In 1770 the Council held that Bagley's widow had no claim beyond one third of the personal estate, excluding the leasehold land.²⁶²⁵ John Seale in 1777 gave his widow the use of half his freehold but only a third of his leasehold.²⁶²⁶

Widows who already held under the old wills did apply the ruling. Mary Swaite recited in 1757 that her third of her husband's personal estate included a third of his leasehold, the Company having settled that leasehold counted as personal estate though it was not so understood when he wrote.²⁶²⁷ She passed that third to the three children named in his will.²⁶²⁸ The Gawling case of 1754 shows the Council guarding a widow's provision by other means. A deed of gift of 1751 to Gawling's daughter was struck down in September 1754 because it had never been registered and leasehold could not be given without leave, "since otherwise the widow would have lost her jointure".²⁶²⁹

Dower, thirds and jointure ↑

The English words dower and thirds came into general use in the wills after 1755. In 1756 Francis Wrangham the elder bound himself to pay his son's wife Margaret £30 a year for her separate use "in place of any dower right she might claim". The son conveyed him a house with about 38 acres as security.²⁶³⁰ James Corbett, cooper, gave his wife in 1765 "her right and property as to dower, being a third part of his estate", with the free use of his house for life.²⁶³¹ William Hayes senior gave his wife Penelope in 1776 "her dower and thirds" and half his lands for life or widowhood.²⁶³² Gabriel Isaacs directed in 1780 that "the dower or one third becoming the property of his wife at his death be vested in her as her own absolute property for ever".²⁶³³

The English third did not wholly replace the island half. Hayes's will joined the two, giving dower and thirds and half the lands besides.²⁶³⁴ John Bagley in 1785 still gave his widow half the Peak Gut house and half its 60 acres for life if she remarried.²⁶³⁵ Benjamin Seale in 1786 gave his wife half his dwelling house and land for life.²⁶³⁶ Lieutenant Robert Gurling, by contrast, gave his widow a third of his real and personal estate for ever in the same year.²⁶³⁷ Wives also sealed their husbands' deeds of sale in the 1730s and 1740s, perhaps to bar any claim on the land sold.²⁶³⁸

Some widows had a power over their share. Thomas Greentree in 1766 let his widow Elizabeth will £400 to her own heirs out of the reversion of his lands if she died his widow.²⁶³⁹ She used the power in April 1769, appointing £100 each to her nephews Richard and John Goodwin and smaller sums to others.²⁶⁴⁰ Her husband had also declared a mahogany bureau she had bought "already her own property".²⁶⁴¹ Elizabeth Ryder left a slave boy "whom she had purchased with her own money" in 1744, and her residue was her third of her husband's personal estate.²⁶⁴²

Widows as executrices, lessees and landholders ↑

Widows administered estates and held land in their own names from the first decades. Grace Coulson, widow of an executed man, kept 30 acres and a house in Rappot Valley in March 1688 at £6 and £2 a year.²⁶⁴³ The Company confirmed 40 acres to her as "widow, freeholder" in June 1711 and leased her five more.²⁶⁴⁴ In the census of 1721 she held 159¾ acres and 64 cattle, the second largest holding on the island.²⁶⁴⁵ In 1722 she paid her son £200 for the fee simple of the house she held for life.²⁶⁴⁶

The resurvey of 1711-1713 confirmed land to many widows. Margaret Sich had 70 acres, Frances Goodwin 89, Elizabeth Johnson 50, Mary Hoskison 86, Elizabeth Allis 27 and Dorothy Hayes 20.²⁶⁴⁷ Mary Conaway leased 30 acres in Dogwood Valley in December 1713 at 4s an acre and 1s duty, "making five shillings per acre in all".²⁶⁴⁸ About 1717 the Council held that it could not stop a widow who was administratrix from selling her estate. Only a buyer keeping a white man to every 20 acres might purchase it.²⁶⁴⁹ Elizabeth Haswell sold 10 acres with a house in Sandy Bay for £480 in 1719, and Mary Swallow sold 17 acres for £100 in 1721.²⁶⁵⁰

Widows swore to the inventories of their husbands' estates. The widows of Richard Goodwin and Gabriel Harper each swore in November 1748 "she had produced every article belonging to the deceased to the best of her knowledge".²⁶⁵¹ The same oath recurs through the 1750s and 1760s.²⁶⁵² Administratrices gave bond from 1758, Ann Leech with her brother Richard Harper as surety.²⁶⁵³ Some widows refused the burden. Elizabeth Gorling wrote in June 1754 that her husband's affairs were "much involved, it was very inconvenient and beyond her power to manage or transact them herself".²⁶⁵⁴

Margaret Alcock shows a widow building a holding over 30 years. Her husband, the chaplain Edwin Alcock, took a lease for lives in 1743 on his own life, hers and their daughter's.²⁶⁵⁵ He died intestate early in 1746, and she was granted letters of administration in March.²⁶⁵⁶ She swore to his inventory in January 1747 and remitted £120 to England by Company bill that year.²⁶⁵⁷ In 1751 she replaced a dead life in her lease on the usual fine of half a year's rent, 10s.²⁶⁵⁸ Her father Francis Wrangham left her in trust 40 acres of freehold, 59 acres of leasehold and a house in James Valley, valued together at £1,147, for her son David at 21.²⁶⁵⁹ She sought more Company waste beside her land at Sandy Bay in 1768 and 1769, held 30 acres free and 32½ leased on the 1769 roll, and renewed leases in trust for her two sons in 1771.²⁶⁶⁰

Other widows held land as trustees for their children. Lydia Harper and her son Richard took leases of 11¼ and 1½ acres in January 1747.²⁶⁶¹ Susanna Pledger took 11 acres for herself and the Pledger orphans in 1755, and Susannah Worrall 42 acres in trust for the Worrall children in 1764.²⁶⁶² Mary Seale asked in 1757 to renew 7½ acres improved by her husband, "it being the greatest support of herself and her five children".²⁶⁶³ Women's names appear on every rent roll of the period. Mary Alexander held 156½ acres in 1742, and nine of about 70 holdings in 1745 stood in women's names.²⁶⁶⁴

Pensions, poverty and the Widows' Fund ↑

Widows without land or kin fell on the parish or the Company. In 1715 Mercy Gargen asked the Council to take her husband's whole estate for his Company debt but save a small part for her four children.²⁶⁶⁵ In 1718 Jane Mudge said long sickness had left her plantation "to run to ruin and lie waste for several months" and gave her whole estate to a neighbour in return for lifelong maintenance.²⁶⁶⁶ Sarah Bazett petitioned in 1744 "on behalf of herself and six children" over store debts left by her dismissed husband.²⁶⁶⁷ Sarah Funge had to sell her house for her husband's debts and asked in 1752 for an acre of waste at the Writing Stones to set a house on.²⁶⁶⁸

Company relief was discretionary for most of the period. Governor Lambert's widow and three daughters were kept at the Company's table in 1742 and housed at a guinea a week until they could sail.²⁶⁶⁹ Margaret Goodwin, widow of Governor John Goodwin, drew £15 a quarter until her death on 23 January 1745.²⁶⁷⁰ When the chaplain Alcock died, the Council found that "no precedent appeared of any pension or allowance settled in such cases except by the express order of the Court of Directors".²⁶⁷¹ Governor Dunbar advanced Margaret Alcock £10 a quarter meanwhile.²⁶⁷² The Court refused a pension in December 1746, saying it "had no fund for the support of its decayed servants either at home or abroad", and charged her father with keeping her until she remarried.²⁶⁷³ It gave Robert Wright's widow £50 in 1749 because he had left his family in necessitous circumstances.²⁶⁷⁴

Fixed pensions came in the 1760s. In February 1760 the Court allowed the widow of John Goodwin, left "in very reduced circumstances" after his removal to Fort Marlborough and Batavia, £50 a year from the island's cash.²⁶⁷⁵ Mrs Goodwin received it from June 1760, and a Mary Goodwin was carried as a pensioner until her death on 29 August 1762.²⁶⁷⁶ In 1768 the Council withdrew all five public-house licences held by women, judging them "quite unable to maintain the order such houses needed".²⁶⁷⁷ Among them were the widows of Captains Beale and Kennedy, left with young children in great poverty.²⁶⁷⁸ The Court's letter allowed each £20 a year, though the Council told them in April 1769 that the Court had settled £30 a year on each.²⁶⁷⁹ Mary Beale and Elizabeth Kennedy were on the pension list in 1770.²⁶⁸⁰ Elizabeth Powell, widow of the storekeeper, had up to £25 in 1773 and £25 a year from 1774.²⁶⁸¹

The Company's servants then provided for themselves. On 1 April 1766 they founded a fund for the widows and orphans of subscribers, married men paying £5 a year and single men £2.²⁶⁸² Each widow was to have £30 a year while she remained a widow; "If she married again, she lost her right to the pension".²⁶⁸³ The rules were signed by 34 founders, and subscriptions came to £106 a year.²⁶⁸⁴ The Court approved the scheme in December 1766.²⁶⁸⁵ From 1768 a remarried widow's pension passed to her children by the subscriber.²⁶⁸⁶ The fund lent its stock on mortgage bond, and subscriptions reached £165 in 1772 and £192 in 1782.²⁶⁸⁷ In 1774 new members' widows were to earn the £30 by years paid, beginning at £10 after one year.²⁶⁸⁸

Officers' widows also had the fund agreed with Lord Clive, whose deed of covenants reached the island in 1770.²⁶⁸⁹ It paid only where neither the officer nor anyone in trust for him "died possessed of real and personal estate worth £1,000".²⁶⁹⁰ Elizabeth Caldwell, Eleanor Shortley and Mary Bazett were admitted in 1776 and 1777 on affidavit and marriage certificate.²⁶⁹¹ The schoolmaster's widow Ann Congreve, outside both funds, lived on money "collected for her by the inhabitants and by visitors from passing ships" until given passage home in 1778.²⁶⁹² In the same year Mary Short of Bengal left £1,000 for the poor widows and orphans of St Helena, which the Council shared among those it judged most deserving.²⁶⁹³ As later context, the fund paid 10 widows in 1786 and cut all pensions by a third in 1794.²⁶⁹⁴

Interpretations ↑

The island rule of 1679 was probably a settler's adaptation rather than a borrowing of English law. Half the land for life gave a widow on a small holding enough ground to live on and keep the children. A third of land would have been too little where most lots were of 10 or 20 acres. The rule fitted a colony where land was granted to families, and where the Company wanted widows to stay and keep the land in use.

The evidence suggested that the half was always a default that testators bargained around. Husbands gave more while the widow stayed single and less on remarriage. The protection of the children against a stepfather counted for more than the widow's own security. Margaret Doveton's renunciation and the Court's ruling in 1754 showed both sides of the same view. The half belonged to the widow, and only she could give it up.

The Harper case probably mattered more for leasehold than for widows. By 1753 nearly half the land on the rent roll was leasehold, and the custom had treated it as real estate.²⁶⁹⁵ The ruling made it personal estate, so that it passed to executors and bore the widow's third. Testators answered by writing leasehold out of the third, so the ruling may have narrowed widows' shares in practice. The shift to the words dower and thirds after 1755 followed the same anglicising course, though the island half persisted in wills to the 1780s.

The widows' fund of 1766 marked a change from charity to insurance among the Company's servants. It replaced the Court's case-by-case grants with a fixed £30 a year, still ended by remarriage. Planters' widows outside the Company's service gained nothing from it and still depended on land, kin and the parish.

Comparisons ↑

In England the common-law widow took dower, a life interest in one third of her husband's freehold. On intestacy the Statute of Distributions of 1670 gave her a third of the personal estate where there were children and half where there were none.²⁶⁹⁶ The island's intestacy rule for goods matched the statute closely. Its half of the land was nearer to some English local customs, such as freebench on copyhold and the Kentish gavelkind rule giving a widow half the land for widowhood.²⁶⁹⁷ Erickson found that ordinary English testators commonly left widows more than their legal thirds, often for widowhood only, which is the pattern of the island wills.²⁶⁹⁸

Among the English propertied classes dower was declining in the period. Families settled a fixed jointure on the bride before marriage in place of dower, as Wrangham did on a small scale in 1756.²⁶⁹⁹ Staves traced how jointure and separate-use trusts replaced dower in law and practice in this period.²⁷⁰⁰ The island trusts for a married daughter's separate use and the occasional jointure were the same instruments in a small society.

In Virginia and Maryland the widow's thirds in land and personal estate were the legal standard. Many Chesapeake husbands left their widows more than the thirds, often the whole estate for life or widowhood, in a society of high mortality and young children.²⁷⁰¹ Remarriage clauses and security from stepfathers were common there too. The St Helena pattern of generous gifts limited to widowhood was therefore typical of English colonies with small family holdings.

At the Cape the Dutch East India Company's settlers married in community of property under Roman-Dutch law. On a husband's death the widow took half the joint estate outright, and the Orphan Chamber secured the children's half.²⁷⁰² The Cape widow's half was ownership, not a life interest, and it did not end on remarriage.²⁷⁰³ The island custom of half thus resembled the Cape figure but not its substance.

In Company India, servants' estates were mostly in money and goods, and widows depended on what could be remitted home.²⁷⁰⁴ The fund agreed with Lord Clive in 1770 for invalid officers and soldiers and the widows of those who died in service was a Bengal creation extended to St Helena. The island's own subscription fund of 1766 came four years earlier.

15. Orphans, Guardians and Absentees ↑

The Governor and Council as Guardians ↑

The founding laws of 1679 already anticipated estates without a resident owner. Where no kin lived on the island, a dead man's estate was to be kept for anyone in England "admitted to administer it".²⁷⁰⁵ The early wills show the Council drawn in from the start. In April 1683 John Greentree asked the Governor to oversee his six children, leaving him 20s for a ring.²⁷⁰⁶ Rebecca Charlesworth's will of 1697 gave her overseer power to call the executors to account and asked the Governor and Council to name a replacement if he died.²⁷⁰⁷ John Sich named Governor Stephen Poirier as reserve executor in 1703, should the widow remarry or die.²⁷⁰⁸

The standing orders made the rule general: "The Governor and council were to be guardians of orphans and to take care that no injustice was done them."²⁷⁰⁹ The abstract dates the order to 1706, but its companion letters belong to 1714, and London approved the appointment of a guardian of orphans in February 1714.²⁷¹⁰ By the 1720s the Council heard yearly accounts of orphans' estates. The Steward and Harding accounts, with their livestock, came before it on 29 March 1721, and Robert Addes's orphans' account followed in March 1722.²⁷¹¹ The inventory of Draper's orphans, with land, slaves and stock, was examined in October 1728.²⁷¹²

The Council also filled gaps when executors died. Stephen Lufkin, the Young orphans' last executor, died on 8 May 1744 with their books and cash in his chest. The Council named John Goodwin and Martin Harper trustees, noting that "it was customary in that place for the government to appoint trustees to orphans left without anyone to manage their effects".²⁷¹³ Benjamin Pledger acted as trustee appointed by the Council for the heirs of the intestate Joseph Hayes and sold his town house for £75 in January 1740.²⁷¹⁴ Testators could name the Council outright. In September 1757 William Turner made the Governor and Council his executors and the "guardians and trustees for James Pritchard until he reached the age of twenty-one".²⁷¹⁵

The Council's oversight could turn against an executor. Joshua Johnson pressed a long complaint in 1730 against Mary Powell, executrix of Gabriel Powell, over the estate and the ward Thomas Hodgkinson.²⁷¹⁶ On 15 November 1737 the Governor argued at length for children whose father's will had been withheld from the Secretary's office.²⁷¹⁷ In 1744 the Company's books on the island included "Swinburne on Wills", The Orphan's Legacy, The Infant's Lawyer and two works on the office of executors.²⁷¹⁸ The Council thus judged guardianship with English handbooks at its elbow.

Orphans' Money in the Company's Cash ↑

The Company offered its cash as a depository. In April 1701 London undertook to pay money from Thomas Attwell's estate to those lawfully empowered, "allowing interest from the date it was credited".²⁷¹⁹ The order of 16 April 1705 made this general: orphans' money paid into Company funds bore interest from receipt, "as an encouragement to the inhabitants".²⁷²⁰ Henry Francis used the facility by will in August 1722. He ordered his whole estate sold and the proceeds placed "into the Honourable Company at the interest that the Company allowed" for his daughters and granddaughter.²⁷²¹

The Bradley orphans show the system from start to finish. John Bradley, soldier, left a widow who married John Spencer, and children. In February 1743 the orphans themselves asked the Council to act, since their stepmother was to remarry and their affairs might be neglected.²⁷²² The Council had the widow's thirds set out and the rest sold at outcry. The sale fetched £84 2s 3d. It included a woman slave at £9 1s and a girl at £4, besides 34,100 yams and suckers. Samuel Semple bought 7 acres of freehold with half the house for £25.²⁷²³ "The children's money was to be secured in the Honourable Company's treasury."²⁷²⁴ In August 1743 £88 11s 6d lay in the treasury for them after Spencer's allowance for keeping one child.²⁷²⁵

The fund was then drawn on child by child. William Davis had £4 1s for two years' keep of Mary Bradley at 6d a week, her sickness and her funeral.²⁷²⁶ The surgeon Pickering was paid £1 3s 8d for bleeding and dosing her, "the Company having money in its cash belonging to the orphans".²⁷²⁷ In August 1746 Davis took Arthur Bradley for £6 a year "until the Company's age". He was to find the boy meat, drink, washing, lodging and clothes and teach him reading and writing.²⁷²⁸ Arthur died on 30 May 1747, and the fund paid his last keep and the coffins and graves of Arthur and Mary.²⁷²⁹ The survivor, Naomi, married William Doveton, who drew the balance "in right of his wife" in March 1754.²⁷³⁰ The consultation gives £14 19s 8d and the cash book £74 19s 8d, so one figure is wrong.²⁷³¹

The danger lay in lending. In June 1747 the Council lent £70 of the idle Bradley money to the councillor Robert Wright at 5 per cent. The loan was made on his "giving seven and a quarter acres of land in Sandy Bay for security".²⁷³² The register entry of the same month gives the loan as £20.²⁷³³ Wright died insolvent in 1748, with island creditors and an English bond for £240 against his estate.²⁷³⁴ London's reply of December 1749 was emphatic. The Council was to "never lend the Company's money, or any lodged in its cash, on any pretence or security whatever".²⁷³⁵ The land was sold in 1750 for the £70 and three years' interest, £80 10s in all, which went to the orphans' credit.²⁷³⁶ The earlier edition placed the mortgage in 1737; the dates in the register show it was made in 1747.²⁷³⁷

Money paid home was guarded by oath. Under the general letter of 10 January 1745, executors swore to whose account the money belonged before bills were drawn.²⁷³⁸ Charles Steward's executors paid in £500 in May 1746 and £200 in June 1749 on oath that it was held "for the account of the orphan of the late Charles Steward".²⁷³⁹ John Whitchurch remitted £325 6s 3d in 1769 and £313 6s 4d in 1770 for the orphans of the mason John Bland, who had left for England.²⁷⁴⁰ In December 1759 the Council held £1,000 paid in by Captain Mears for the representatives of dead men. The sum was "deposited at the risk of the heirs of the deceased and expressly for bills of exchange".²⁷⁴¹

Orphans' money held privately ran other risks. In 1756 John Swaite's estate owed £160 to the orphans of Griffith, by far its largest debt.²⁷⁴² Thomas Greentree, guardian of Helena Ryder, lent £300 of her money in 1753 to the adjutant Francis Mowatt at 8 per cent on 27⅘ acres in Sandy Bay.²⁷⁴³ Mowatt sold the same land to Francis Wrangham in 1756 with a slave, a house and 50,000 yams.²⁷⁴⁴ The Governor's own books proved a hazard. Governor John Goodwin had kept Sarah Francis's share of her father's estate in his hands as co-executor, and Wrangham was made to pay it by a jury on 19 September 1741.²⁷⁴⁵ Goodwin also held back Eleanor Worrall's legacy against her Company debt and never credited it.²⁷⁴⁶

Later context shows the same habits after 1782. In 1799 the churchwardens relent the Broadway orphans' capital, a Council bond of £122, on planters' bonds at 7 per cent.²⁷⁴⁷ The capital came from the auction of their father's effects.²⁷⁴⁸ The Price orphans' money was likewise held by the churchwardens and spent on their clothing.²⁷⁴⁹

Orphans' Land: Trust Leases, Lettings and Sales ↑

Orphans' land was at first let until the heir came of age. In September 1684 John Draper took the orphan Robert Orchard's land for seven years at £3 a year. He was to leave 2,000 yams planted and build the orphan a house of 24ft by 14ft.²⁷⁵⁰ Edward Heath's will of 1706 let his executors sell the estate "or let it for a term of years" if the widow died before the daughters came of age.²⁷⁵¹ In May 1722 Frances Wrangham, guardian of the orphan Elizabeth Sich, let her 20 acres called Cleeve's Land to James Rider at £12 a year until she came of age or married.²⁷⁵² The tenant was allowed time to take off his crops "according to the usual custom of the island", reckoned at 18 months.²⁷⁵³ In 1740 John Young's executors let Prior's Estate, 40 acres of freehold and 9 acres of leasehold, to John Brown at £16 a year for five years and two lives.²⁷⁵⁴

From 1738 the Company granted its leases to executors in trust. On 30 September 1738 nine trust leases were sealed for widows and children. The families were those of John Burling, James Greentree, John Alexander, Thomas Harper, Sutton Isaac, Joseph Hayes and Joseph Harding.²⁷⁵⁵ The standard form gave the widow a third "for as long as she lived within the term of the lease" and the children two thirds.²⁷⁵⁶ The three Alexander leases put 55 acres of Company land in trust for one family.²⁷⁵⁷ The trustees bore the fence, wood and alienation covenants. Later leases ran "in trust nevertheless and to the use of the children of John Bazett deceased".²⁷⁵⁸ The form lasted through the renewals of 1759 and the leases of the 1770s.²⁷⁵⁹

Orphans' land could be sold only with leave, usually by auction. Executors sold a house for John Defountaine's orphans for £50 in 1725 and 22 acres for Thomas Burnham's orphans for £42 in 1726.²⁷⁶⁰ Leave was granted to sell 13 acres of Robert Gurling's leasehold at public auction in October 1746.²⁷⁶¹ Samuel Doveton's executors sold 16½ acres to John Desfountain and about 12 acres "called the Brewer, to the best bidder" in 1750.²⁷⁶² Thomas Greentree sold Helena Ryder's 29 acres of leasehold called Swan's Valley at auction in August 1753.²⁷⁶³ In 1758 John Bazett's executor had leave to sell 23½ acres of leasehold "for the benefit of the orphans".²⁷⁶⁴ In 1761 the guardians of Elizabeth Scott sold her James Valley house for £50 with the Council's leave of the same day.²⁷⁶⁵

Sales sometimes favoured the sellers. In 1725 the executors of Henry Francis sold the orphans' 10 acres of pasture to John Smith for £60. Smith reassigned them the same day to Francis Wrangham, one of the executors, for £23.²⁷⁶⁶ Matthew Purling sold a parcel to himself and his co-executors in trust for Bazett's children in 1748.²⁷⁶⁷ Thomas French, Matthew Bazett and John Desfountain sold 20 acres of Joseph Desfountain's estate to Bazett himself in 1750.²⁷⁶⁸ The Company itself bought 1⅔ acres from the Whaley orphans for £3 in 1755 to give its cattle a way to water.²⁷⁶⁹

Orphans' estates were a fixed feature of the rent rolls. In October 1742 four holdings stood in orphans' names, and from 1743 the rolls carried between nine and 17 such entries a year.²⁷⁷⁰ Some were among the largest holdings. John Darling's orphans held 185 acres in 1742, and Charles Steward's orphans paid the second-largest rent in 1750.²⁷⁷¹ In 1753 orphans' estates held about a fifth of the planters' cattle, Samuel Doveton's orphans returning 86 head.²⁷⁷²

Counts as given in the rolls. The roll of 1750 groups orphans with the estates of the dead (18 lines) and is omitted.

Keepers, Apprentices and Wards Who Chose ↑

Orphans were boarded out at a price from the first years. In 1682 the Council placed the Moore children and their stock with keepers at 2s 6d a week for a child's keep.²⁷⁷³ In 1707 William Doveton's executors placed his daughter Elizabeth with Hugh Bodley, paying £11 from her portion for her bringing up. Bodley was to teach her to "read and to work with her needle".²⁷⁷⁴ Her sister Susanna went to Robert Leech in 1708 with £5, a cow and calf and "the service of a black boy named Peter during the term".²⁷⁷⁵ In 1714 Antipas Tovey handed Richard Swallow three slave men and 10 bonds. In return Swallow was to raise the infant Margaret Bagley and pay her £130 at majority.²⁷⁷⁶

Some bargains turned land into keep. In January 1724 Richard Gurling sold Captain John Goodwin 20 acres of freehold and a leasehold for £300. Goodwin and his wife Margaret were to bring up Gurling's daughters Sarah and Rebekah until 21 or marriage. They were to teach them "such needlework as was usually done or practised by women on the island".²⁷⁷⁷ In 1756 Benjamin Mason kept the orphans of Joseph Harding "in consideration of his having the use of their fortunes".²⁷⁷⁸ A wronged ward could complain. Sarah Hayes told the Council in November 1746 that William Seale had "greatly misused" her and left her without clothes, though paid £5 for them.²⁷⁷⁹ The Council let her leave but allowed Seale the interest of her fortune of about £18 for her 27 months with him.²⁷⁸⁰

Apprenticeship disposed of poorer orphans. In March 1716 Robert Leech's executors bound his son to Giles Smith, joiner, until 21 with a premium of £15.²⁷⁸¹ In 1725 the churchwardens bound William Dufton to a stone cutter with a £25 premium, £10 to be refunded if the boy died before 17. The master was to teach him "to cypher as far as the rule of three, both direct and inverse".²⁷⁸² In 1739 the chapel wardens bound Thomas Tendon, a poor child, until 21 with "a double set of apparel of all sorts, good and new" at the end.²⁷⁸³ In 1745 the Council applied the same custom to three children of a dead soldier claimed as free. They were to serve Richard Goodwin "without wages until they severally reached the age of twenty-one, when they would be free and at liberty".²⁷⁸⁴

From 1752 minors of about 16 and over chose their own guardians. Rachel Alexander thought herself "of age to choose" and named Richard Beale in March 1752.²⁷⁸⁵ Benjamin Pledger, "being about eighteen months short of full age", chose a guardian in August 1753.²⁷⁸⁶ On 30 April 1754 John and Mary Seale chose their uncle Thomas French, "placing great confidence in the good management and care of their uncle". Margaret Seale chose her aunt Sarah French.²⁷⁸⁷ In July 1755 William and George Seale, whose father's executors had died, chose their mother Mary.²⁷⁸⁸ The practice continued with Thomas Harper junior and Isaac Doveton in November 1758.²⁷⁸⁹ John and Elizabeth Scott, "both aged 16 or more", replaced their father's executor with Isaac Knipe in February 1759.²⁷⁹⁰ Simon Whaley, about 16, chose a master carpenter "in place of his two guardians" in May 1759.²⁷⁹¹ The Twaits minors named William Wrangham and Henry Bazett in April 1767.²⁷⁹² In every case the choice took effect only on the Council's approval.

Stepfathers, Executors and Accounts ↑

The stepfather was the danger most often named. Governor Poirier, a French refugee, wrote in 1707 that "The laws of England made second husbands the absolute masters of a widow's portion".²⁷⁹³ He ordered his executor to remove the children from a harsh stepfather. Gilbert Cotgrave's will of 1711 let the executors take the children and their property if a new husband was severe.²⁷⁹⁴ Most wills required a new husband to give security, and several let the executors take the estate if he refused.²⁷⁹⁵ When George Carne married the widow Frances Goodwin in 1713 he bound himself to pay each Goodwin child £100 at marriage or majority, up to £500.²⁷⁹⁶ In 1718 Frances bound herself to the Company in £500 to pay Carne's two children £120 each.²⁷⁹⁷

The risks were real. In 1709 Joseph Fox and his wife mortgaged goods "belonging and appurtaining to the children of the late Thomas Earle", her first husband.²⁷⁹⁸ In 1718 Lucas Mason, in right of his wife, assigned the Wrangham orphans' 10 acres of freehold and 2 acres of leasehold to his brothers-in-law.²⁷⁹⁹ In January 1717 a stepfather demanded that land writings made in his predecessor's children's names be redrawn in his own. The Council refused, the writings having been made "in his children's names, as usual".²⁸⁰⁰ In 1755 James Hinds, a widow's last husband, was ordered to account for legacies paid into her hands.²⁸⁰¹

The executor bore the duty of account. From the 1740s widows and executors brought in inventories appraised on oath, and the widow swore she had produced every article.²⁸⁰² The Secretary's office listed 51 inventories and accounts of sales on file in 1744.²⁸⁰³ An administrator gave bond with a surety, as Ann Leech did with her brother Richard Harper in October 1758.²⁸⁰⁴ On 5 December 1768 the Council ordered "all executors to submit accurate and properly attested accounts" to the Secretary's Office.²⁸⁰⁵ The same day it required every executor who had sold an orphan's property to "send a true account of every sale, properly witnessed, to the Secretary's Office".²⁸⁰⁶ The aim was that every orphan coming of age would have the fullest account of what had been left.²⁸⁰⁷

Intestates and Strangers ↑

The intestacy rule of 1679 limited every share to kin on the island. Moveables went a third to the widow and two thirds to the children, or half to siblings on the island where there were none.²⁸⁰⁸ The version of about 1707 added that, failing kin, "the estate was to be inventoried and preserved for anyone in England who was admitted to administer it".²⁸⁰⁹ From 1702 the Council was to collect the effects of anyone whose estate "belonged to people in England" and pay the produce into Company cash.²⁸¹⁰ Dead servants' effects were paid into the cash so that legatees could be paid in London.²⁸¹¹

The procedure was settled by the 1740s. When Fremans Nichols, chief mate of the Halifax, died in September 1742, the Secretary sealed his chests and took an inventory on oath.²⁸¹² The Company's order was that "the effects belonging to all deceased persons, except Mr Pyke's, must be sold at auction".²⁸¹³ Debts on the island were paid first and the balance written to the London account. Carrying sale money to London had been usual, the Council said in 1751, only "when any person died intestate".²⁸¹⁴ Family keepsakes might be spared. At Fazakerley's sale in 1740 a ring and snuff box found no bidder, "being family matters", and were allowed to his children.²⁸¹⁵

Balances as stated in the accounts of sale. Several cash-book entries differ slightly from the accounts.

The accounts show the work in detail. De Laune's 106 lots in 1768 included a silver watch at £1 15s 6d, books by Rapin, Swift and Locke and gold-laced coats.²⁸¹⁶ Against them stood the funeral, the sexton's fees and "Washing the bed and blanket on which he died, £0 2s 6d".²⁸¹⁷ Mary Smith, wife of Bashaw Smith of Bencoolen, died in May 1761. The Council kept back "a ring set with eight diamond sparks" until her husband could be heard from.²⁸¹⁸ Hogg's estate in 1772 included £22 15s from John Preston "for a slave woman", and the balance was held for relatives said to be in Aberdeen.²⁸¹⁹ Falconer's house was sold to the lieutenant governor John Adamson, a member of the selling Council, for £291.²⁸²⁰ The balance of Falconer's estate was credited to his brother and heir Alexander in London.²⁸²¹

Island intestacies were heavier. Richard Gorling, the Company's overseer, died on 6 June 1754 with affairs "much involved". His widow refused to administer, and so did his kin.²⁸²² The Council took the estate in hand, valued it at £887 6s 6d and sold part at auction for £539 13s 2d.²⁸²³ It set aside an unregistered deed of gift to his daughter, which would have cost the widow her jointure and the creditors their debts.²⁸²⁴ The Council itself sold his 10 acres called Vaughans to the councillor John Clark for £164 15s.²⁸²⁵

The Council also judged who the heirs were. Where no lawful heir existed, the balance went into the Company's cash, as with Simpson's estate in 1746.²⁸²⁶ The heirs at law of Martha Lufkin drew her £22 2s 9½d in 1748 only after advertisement, each binding himself "to discharge any claim that might hereafter be lawfully made".²⁸²⁷ In 1753 the Council held that the grandchildren of the intestate John French had "an undoubted right" to a child's share through their dead mothers.²⁸²⁸ Thomas French paid £122 13s 0¾d into the cash for James Du Bois's daughter, and his nieces the Seales chose their guardians from the same estate.²⁸²⁹

Absent Heirs and Attorneys ↑

The law of 1679 bound absent heirs to the soil. An heir off the island had to come within two years and reside, or have the land kept "so that every twenty acres carried at least two people and two cows".²⁸³⁰ Otherwise the Council could resume it for the Company. The version of 1680 required absent sons to return within two years and crop 20 acres a year.²⁸³¹ The rule was invoked a century later. If Anthony Beale was heir to his uncle Richard Beale, "he would have to ensure that every 20 acres of the land carried two inhabitants and two cows".²⁸³² In practice absent heirs were protected more often than dispossessed. The freehold confirmations of 1713 named John Bryan, "absent from the island", as heir, the allegiance condition binding whichever heir lived there.²⁸³³ In 1724 the Cleveless orphans' freehold was confirmed to them "whether then on the island or absent".²⁸³⁴

Wills made absence a condition. Andrew Wilson left £12 to a son in Scotland in 1697, only if he came to the island to claim it.²⁸³⁵ John Pawling's brothers might buy out a son at sea in 1738 at a price set by appraisers.²⁸³⁶ James Powell's will of 1772 gave his long-silent son John a share only "If John was still living, came to the island in person and proved that he was Pavell's son".²⁸³⁷ Long absence could be treated as death. John Huntly, long unheard of overseas, was judged dead on sworn evidence and his wife allowed to remarry.²⁸³⁸

Attorneys managed the property of absentees. Elizabeth Rhodes, "lawful wife and attorney of William Rhodes", let his 10 acres for 99 years at a peppercorn in 1687.²⁸³⁹ John Bazett and Francis Wrangham, attorneys for Thomas Mostyn "of Angingo on the Malabar Coast", sold 30 acres in Great Bottom for £410 in 1740.²⁸⁴⁰ Joseph Coles of Sumatra sold 28 acres through his attorney in 1742 to William Coles, also of Sumatra.²⁸⁴¹ The attorneys of the island-born Gabriel Steward sold his land in 1754 and remitted £550 of his fortune by bill.²⁸⁴² After Matthew Purling sailed in June 1774 with bills for £4,150, his attorneys remitted further sums to him almost every year to 1778.²⁸⁴³

The Council kept attorneys within their powers. In June 1747 it refused to enlarge Joshua Worrall's power for his absent brother "beyond what the letter of attorney warranted".²⁸⁴⁴ When William and Ann Worrall had sailed from Bombay and not been heard of for 18 months, it deferred their heirs' claim until legal authority appeared.²⁸⁴⁵ When William Pladden absconded in 1759, the Council noted that "no one had been appointed to act as his attorney".²⁸⁴⁶ The insane were treated like absentees. In November 1774 the estate of Captain Richard Beale was handed to keepers, who valued it at no more than £1,309 5s.²⁸⁴⁷

Interpretations ↑

The evidence suggested that the Council's guardianship was real but uneven. It intervened most firmly where it held the money, as in the Bradley case and the estates of strangers. It was weakest where councillors were themselves executors, trustees and buyers. The loan of the Bradley money to a sitting councillor fell into that gap. So did the resale of the Francis orphans' pasture at £23 and the sales of Falconer's house and Gorling's land to members of the selling board. London's ban of 1749 on lending lodged money and the orders of 1768 on attested accounts were probably responses to such cases rather than to any single scandal.

The choice of guardians at 16 probably reflected the small size of the island. Most guardians were uncles, aunts, mothers or neighbours who already held the children's stock and land beside their own. Letting the ward choose spread the burden among kin and gave the Council a ready check on an unsuitable trustee. The trust lease of 1738 served a similar end on the land. It kept a dead tenant's family on the Company's ground under named trustees who answered for the covenants.

The treatment of intestates and strangers pointed the other way. The island's rules were made for a settler population whose heirs lived on the spot. For the transient servants, mates and officers who died there, the Council acted as a probate office for distant heirs. The balances were small but frequent, and the London account became the channel by which island property reached England.

Comparisons ↑

England had abolished feudal wardship in 1660, when the Tenures Abolition Act ended the Court of Wards and its sale of wardships.²⁸⁴⁸ Guardianship thereafter rested on testamentary guardians, guardians in socage and the Court of Chancery. Blackstone noted that guardianship in socage ended at 14, when the infant might choose his own guardian.²⁸⁴⁹ The earlier edition held that the St Helena practice had no English equivalent. The island's rule of choice at about 16 in fact echoed the English rule at 14, applied by the Council in place of Chancery.

The City of London's Court of Orphans offers the closest institutional parallel. It took custody of freemen's orphans' portions and paid interest on them, but by 1683 the City had spent the money and defaulted. Parliament set up an Orphans' Fund in 1694 to repay it.²⁸⁵⁰ The Company's cash at St Helena played the same role on a small scale from 1701. London's ban of 1749 on lending lodged money suggested an awareness of exactly that risk.

The Chesapeake colonies created orphans' courts in the 17th century. Their justices bound out poor orphans, took security from guardians, inspected estates yearly and let older orphans choose their guardians.²⁸⁵¹ High mortality made stepfathers common there, as on St Helena.²⁸⁵² The St Helena Council combined these functions with those of governor and landlord in one body.

At the Cape the Dutch East India Company set up an Orphan Chamber (Weeskamer) in 1673. It administered intestate and minors' estates, held their capital and lent it at interest.²⁸⁵³ Its auction rolls survive in quantity. They give a median price of Rds 112 for slaves sold at estate auctions in the 18th century.²⁸⁵⁴ That is about £22 at the rate of 1795, an indicative figure only, close to the £28 5s and £39 5s paid for two adult slaves at the Gorling auction of 1754.²⁸⁵⁵ The Cape chamber was a specialist board, whereas St Helena relied on the Council and the Company's cash.

In Company India the Mayor's Courts created in 1726 granted probate and administration to the Company's servants and the free inhabitants.²⁸⁵⁶ Fortunes made in India passed home through Company bills, as island estates did through the London account.²⁸⁵⁷ St Helena's Council acted on the same model for the strangers who died there, without a separate court.

16. Marriage Settlements and Women's Property ↑

Marriage, Coverture and Land in Right of a Wife ↑

Marriage was a ground for a grant of land from the first years of settled rule. In March 1680 the Company ordered that a single man marrying on the island should receive 10 acres more and a cow.²⁸⁵⁸ A free planter's son who married an English woman was to take 20 acres and a cow, or 10 acres if his father had died.²⁸⁵⁹ John Duffield, four years on the island without land or cattle, received 10 acres and a cow on his marriage in December 1678.²⁸⁶⁰ William Doveton made the same request a month later, and John Hemmings added 10 acres at Woody Ridge to his single man's lot on marrying.²⁸⁶¹ An early rule also let land and cattle descend through a married woman to her sons, if they were able to maintain the property.²⁸⁶²

Once married, a woman's land passed under her husband's hand. The jury register of September 1682 entered several holdings as held by men "in right of" their wives. John Duffield and John Hemmons each had a 10-acre parcel in Pleasant Valley in right of his wife, and both exchanged them with Henry Coales.²⁸⁶³ Richard Leach kept part of an allotment in Deep Valley "which he had for his wife".²⁸⁶⁴ Henry Francis held 10 acres of Francis Wrangham's lot "by his marrying with the widow".²⁸⁶⁵ Robert Addis held 20 acres by marriage, once Anne Whitey's. In 1692 he exchanged them with the Company for land in Sandy Bay.²⁸⁶⁶ When Andrew Phillips, a gunner, married the widow Mary Powell in October 1680, he had to ask the council what rights he now had in her land and stock.²⁸⁶⁷

Gabriel Powell built the island's largest fortune partly in this way. In 1711 he asked the Company to confirm the land he held "in right of his wife, Mr Beale's widow", and the question went to a jury of freeholders.²⁸⁶⁸ His confirmation of 4 August 1713 rested on a trial at a court of judicature of 11 October 1711, the only grant of that run founded on a court verdict.²⁸⁶⁹ He later married the widow Margaret Beale, who died without issue by him, and claimed a third of her estate "under the courtesy of England".²⁸⁷⁰ George Carne disputed the claim. In 1717 the council described Powell as the wealthiest planter, with about 300 acres and a great stock got partly by marrying several wives.²⁸⁷¹

Husbands sold their wives' inheritances in their own names. In March 1701 William Bidott, a surgeon, sold for £25 a house in Fort James Valley that William Price's will had left to his wife Elizabeth.²⁸⁷² In 1708 Thomas Bevian sold part of Thomas Box's land together with any right he might gain by the future death of his wife's brothers or sisters.²⁸⁷³ In November 1725 Richard Goodwin sold 40 acres for £200 and 20 acres for £130, both held in right of his wife, the daughter of Benjamin Sich.²⁸⁷⁴ Two sons-in-law of Richard Harding sold their wives' shares of 19 acres at Sandy Bay to their brother-in-law in 1720.²⁸⁷⁵ James Crafford, a ship's surgeon, directed in 1736 that his wife's freehold be sold. It was "All freehold estate that had come to him by virtue of his marriage", and £100 of the proceeds was to be remitted to his wife in England.²⁸⁷⁶

Some deeds show the wife's part in a sale. Thomas Toster sold a house for £26 in April 1709 "with the consent of his wife Mary, who also sealed".²⁸⁷⁷ Mary Long sealed her husband's sale of 20 acres for £220 in October 1738, perhaps to bar her dower.²⁸⁷⁸ Sarah Powell joined in sealing a sale of 10 acres at Lemon Valley for £200 in June 1744.²⁸⁷⁹ George Gabriel Powell sold his whole estate to Governor Goodwin in 1739 "free of dower and all charges".²⁸⁸⁰ No privy examination of a wife was recorded in any of these deeds.

The council understood the general rule of coverture and sometimes stated it. Governor Stephen Poirier, a French refugee, wrote in his will of 1707 that "the laws of England made second husbands the absolute masters of a widow's portion".²⁸⁸¹ James Rider in 1704 barred any second husband from gaining a right in his widow's life interests.²⁸⁸² In 1717 the council secured Mr Greville's Company debt by bond because he had married the wealthy widow of Secretary Griffith and wasted her estate.²⁸⁸³ Matthew Mudge's will of 1747 gave his wife a child's share of his estate "notwithstanding her coverture".²⁸⁸⁴ By the 1750s a husband was taken to hold his wife's land, leasehold and legacies in her right, with power to sell them. Property not settled on trustees became his on marriage.²⁸⁸⁵

A wife's money due from outside the island also fell to her husband. William Gaa's will of 1731 treated the rest of his wife Helen's marriage portion, still owed by her brother in County Cavan, as a debt due to his estate.²⁸⁸⁶ In March 1754 William Doveton, newly married to the orphan Naomi Bradley, took £14 19s 8d from the Company's cash "belonging to him in right of his wife".²⁸⁸⁷ Yet a bill of exchange drawn in a wife's name could not pass to her husband without her endorsement. When Lieutenant James Scott lost two bills for £30 payable to his wife Martha, the Court paid him only on security, and Mrs Scott had to endorse the third bill to him.²⁸⁸⁸

Marriage Bonds and Settlements ↑

The earliest protective device was a bond given by an incoming husband. On 14 February 1713 the merchant George Carne gave a bond on the articles for his marriage to the widow Frances Goodwin. The obligee was John Goodwin, surviving executor of Captain Thomas Goodwin.²⁸⁸⁹ She was Thomas Goodwin's sole heir and executrix, and was described as "having resolved to alter her condition".²⁸⁹⁰ Carne was to pay each Goodwin child £100 at marriage or majority and bring them up as his own. He was also to make good the plate and linen in Frances's hands and pledge his own estate against any shortfall of up to £500.²⁸⁹¹ On the same day Frances gave her son John her interest in his late uncle's real estate.²⁸⁹² In September 1723 John Goodwin released Carne's son from the bond, in a penal sum of £200 conditioned for £600.²⁸⁹³ After Carne's death Frances in turn bound herself to the Company in £500 to pay his two children £120 each, "their full portion and more than an equivalent share".²⁸⁹⁴

A trust before marriage appeared a year later. In April 1714 Samuel Algate, a corporal about to marry Mary Earle, spinster, made over her 18 acres and a house in James Valley to Orlando Bagley and Charles Steward.²⁸⁹⁵ The purpose was "to prevent any mischief or ill consequence to Mary Earle through disposal of the property".²⁸⁹⁶ After the marriage and a licence to leave the island he was to have the land back to sell it for her maintenance. A month later he sold it to Charles Steward, one of the trustees, for £170, of which £140 was paid in Company store credit.²⁸⁹⁷

Other settlements matched the contributions of the two families. A settlement of 1714 set £91 in cash from the bride's side against 10 acres of land and a slave from the groom's.²⁸⁹⁸ Henry Francis settled four named slaves on his daughter in 1719, to be delivered to her on her wedding day.²⁸⁹⁹ Articles of agreement concerning George and Ann Hodgkinson were registered in a consultation book of about 1716.²⁹⁰⁰ In 1722 Ripin Wills settled his house, 40 acres, a slave man named Dick and stock on his granddaughter Mary and her husband John Defountaine and the heirs of Mary's body.²⁹⁰¹ In return the couple were to keep Wills and his wife for life.²⁹⁰²

Fathers-in-law also gave written promises of a child's share at a daughter's marriage. Richard Beale gave Samuel Bazett such a writing on his marriage to Beale's daughter Margaret, and Beale's will of 1764 honoured it.²⁹⁰³ Samuel Doveton's will of 1749 recited a similar instrument from his own father-in-law, Richard Beale.²⁹⁰⁴ Such promises could be contested. In 1743 Francis Wrangham had a paper entered denying that he had ever promised to make his son-in-law Charles Steward equal with his own children.²⁹⁰⁵ The absence of any settlement could leave a wife's family exposed. John French refused James Du Bois any share of his estate, and no marriage settlement had been made on Du Bois's wife.²⁹⁰⁶

A jointure in lieu of dower was settled in 1756. Francis Wrangham the elder had bound himself to pay his son's wife Margaret £30 a year to her separate use for his lifetime. The payment stood "in place of any dower right she might claim".²⁹⁰⁷ The son conveyed his father a house at the head of Chapel Valley with about 38 acres, and a house in James Valley, to secure the payment. A marginal note later recorded the deed void, Margaret being dead.²⁹⁰⁸ Two years earlier the council had set aside an unregistered deed of gift by Richard Gawling partly because, if it had stood, "the widow would have lost her jointure".²⁹⁰⁹

The fullest settlement in the register was made by a visitor. On 8 August 1758 Elizabeth Buchanan, widow of Captain Andrew Buchanan, settled £1,000 before her marriage to Captain Lieutenant Edward Whitmore of the Royal Artillery.²⁹¹⁰ The money was owed on bond by Samuel Hough. It was placed in the hands of two London trustees, the apothecary James Traile and the spinster Jane Nevill. Elizabeth was to have the interest for life and might pass the capital to her daughter Frances Jane from the age of 15. The money went to the daughter if the mother died first and to Whitmore if both died. Elizabeth took it outright if she survived them both. The trustees had "full power to prevent Whitmore and Elizabeth Buchanan from receiving or taking up any part".²⁹¹¹ A further £500 was settled on her mother Elizabeth Hyde for life. The deed closed by giving Whitmore all her other money, lands and securities not excepted.²⁹¹² Whitmore had the marriage articles registered in council 10 days later.²⁹¹³

A settlement could also reserve a wife's power to make a will. Sarah Farrell, wife of the surgeon's mate James Farrell, made her will in July 1775. She acted "by the power and authority given her by an instrument in writing before marriage", dated 2 December 1774.²⁹¹⁴ She left £150 each to her Pritchard brothers and a sister-in-law, £200 each to two nieces and £5 each to her slaves Pett and Betty. She named the Governor and Council as her executors. As later context, Lydia Denty of Berhampore in Bengal bequeathed in 1790 a sum of 2,000 rupees held under a deed of settlement of 1789.²⁹¹⁵

Separate Use and Property Kept from Husbands ↑

A married woman's own property was recognised long before trusts for separate use appear. Mary Dixon, wife of the soldier Thomas Dixon, made her will in July 1696 "by the power and authority of a deed of gift earlier executed in her favour by her husband".²⁹¹⁶ She left half of a 20-acre parcel, cattle and the slave Gamallas to her widowed daughter, and £20 to her husband. Brigett Bates, wife of Joseph Bates, devised in 1733 30 acres of freehold that she held by a deed of free gift from Joseph Coles dated 1731.²⁹¹⁷ Arthur Bradley's will of 1727 spoke of "her own personal estate" when providing for his wife Sarah.²⁹¹⁸

Women could hold slaves bought with their own money. The widow Elizabeth Ryder, also called Griffith, left her daughter Helena "the black boy Cupidore, whom she had purchased with her own money".²⁹¹⁹ When her husband's estate was inventoried in 1744, a boy named Cupid at £12 and a silver watch were noted separately as the widow's own property.²⁹²⁰ Thomas Greentree's will of 1766 declared that a mahogany bureau his wife Elizabeth had bought from George Gabriel Powell was "already her own property" and no part of his estate.²⁹²¹ Lieutenant Thomas Easthope declared in 1751 that £100 and the slaves Gilford, Hannah and Hannah's children belonged to his daughter Mary, "being her property and not part of his estate".²⁹²² Richard Beale's will of 1764 gave his wife the 10 acres called Stewards, which she had held before the marriage.²⁹²³

Gifts "for the sole use" of a married daughter began in the 1730s. Robert Wallington directed in 1738 that his house and goods be sold and the money remitted to his daughter Elizabeth, wife of Benjamin Orchard, for her sole use.²⁹²⁴ Robert Wright, factor, left the residue of his estate in October 1745 to his wife Mary "for her own separate use".²⁹²⁵ The version proved in 1748 read "for her own sole and separate use".²⁹²⁶ After Robert Meacock's death the Court ordered in 1751 that his widow be given power to receive "an annuity that was hers in her own right before marriage".²⁹²⁷

The fullest trust for separate use was Mary Goodwin's. Her will of 16 July 1762 left the residue of her estate to Matthew Purling and Thomas Greentree in trust for her daughter Margaret, wife of Randolph Marriott.²⁹²⁸ The property was to be free of her husband's control, "so that the same might not be liable to the control or intermeddling of the debts or engagements of her husband".²⁹²⁹ Margaret could give receipts in her own name and dispose of the property by will or by a writing sealed before witnesses.²⁹³⁰ In September 1762 Margaret Marriott stood on the rent roll in her own name.²⁹³¹

Thomas Greentree used the same device for his nieces in 1766. He left £50 to Sarah Desfountain and £150 to Margaret Mowett, both free of their husbands' control and debts.²⁹³² Sarah Desfountain's £50 was to be wholly hers, "with no control or interference from her husband".²⁹³³ His widow Elizabeth carried the practice on. Her will of 1769 left £50 to her married niece Margaret Marriott "for her own separate use", not subject to her husband's control, her own receipt being a full discharge.²⁹³⁴ The will was proved on the witnesses' oaths in May 1769.²⁹³⁵

A legacy could also be kept from a girl's father. In October 1771 the widow Mary Harper left £10 to be invested for Sarah Pledger. She directed that "her father, Benjamin Pledger, should at no time have any control over the money".²⁹³⁶ William Seale senior gave his daughter Elizabeth Jenkins £30 in 1776, "not to be in the power of her husband William Jenkins to receive".²⁹³⁷ The next year Jenkins absconded from the island, leaving his wife and family in severe hardship.²⁹³⁸ William Hayes's will of 1780 gave his widow, on remarriage, a third of the goods "for her sole and separate use for ever".²⁹³⁹ George Bird, cabinet maker, left the residue of his estate to his wife Elizabeth for her sole use in the same year.²⁹⁴⁰

Women as Landholders and Lessees ↑

Widows took land in their own names from the 1680s. Grace Coulson, widow of an executed man, kept 30 acres and a house in Rappot Valley in March 1688 at rents of £6 and £2 a year.²⁹⁴¹ In June 1711 the Company confirmed her as a freeholder of 30 acres and a further 10 acres, and leased her 5 acres of gumwood land.²⁹⁴² The census of 1721 credited her with 64 head of cattle and 159.75 acres, the second-largest holding on the island.²⁹⁴³ In 1722 her son John Coulson conveyed to her for £200 the house she held for life during widowhood, turning her life estate into a fee simple.²⁹⁴⁴

The confirmations of 1713 placed many women among the freeholders. Elizabeth Johnson was confirmed in 50 acres in Broad Bottom and Frances Goodwin in 89 acres in Lemon Valley.²⁹⁴⁵ Mary Hoskison held 86 acres in three parcels and Margaret Sich 70 acres.²⁹⁴⁶ Elizabeth Bowman, an unmarried daughter, was confirmed in 75 acres in two parcels.²⁹⁴⁷ The same women took Company leases alongside their freeholds. Mary Hoskison leased 38 acres at the head of Lemon Valley, and Mary Conaway, widow, 30 acres at the head of Dogwood Valley "making five shillings per acre in all".²⁹⁴⁸ Margaret Bagley, an orphan, held a Company lease of 26 acres through her executor.²⁹⁴⁹ Widows, spinsters and orphans could all take grants and leases in their own names.²⁹⁵⁰

The Company's leases of 1738 show women as lessees in several capacities. Mary Nicholls, described as a planter, leased 25 acres next to her own ground.²⁹⁵¹ Frances Carne leased a town plot behind her house and held 40 acres jointly with her son Richard Goodwin.²⁹⁵² Several leases were drawn in trust for a widow's third and her children's two thirds, among them those for the widows of John Burling, James Greentree, John Alexander and Thomas Harper.²⁹⁵³ Married daughters of Samuel Desfountain held a lease of 15 acres in common with their brothers.²⁹⁵⁴ Edmond Nichols and his unmarried sister Mary had earlier taken 2 acres "jointly and equally between them".²⁹⁵⁵

Single women continued as lessees in later decades. Grace Bates took about an acre of waste beside her own land in 1744, and in January 1745 gave up 14 acres in Rupert's Valley "which was of no use to her".²⁹⁵⁶ Sarah Junge, widow, leased an acre at the Writing Stones in 1757 to build a house, and 4 acres more in 1758.²⁹⁵⁷ In 1767 Mary Twaits, an unmarried woman, had her rent cut to 1s an acre because the land was the most barren the Lieutenant Governor had seen.²⁹⁵⁸ Margaret Alcock renewed three leases in 1771 as trustee for her sons David and Edwin.²⁹⁵⁹

The rent rolls of 1742 to 1772 entered between five and 14 women each year in their own names. The table gives the numbers stated or listed in the rolls beside the number of holders in the checked series.

Counts of women include holders of town ground rent only; orphans' and executors' entries are excluded. Holders are from the checked rent-roll series.

Most of these women were widows, and their holdings were usually small. In 1742 Mary Alexander held 156½ acres and stood fifth on the roll.²⁹⁶⁰ By 1763 Margaret Alcock was the largest woman holder, with 40 acres of freehold and 60½ of leasehold at £17 14s 6d, the highest rate on the roll.²⁹⁶¹ Others, such as Eleanor Leech, Martha Scott and Jane Wilson, paid ground rent for town plots only.²⁹⁶²

Buyers, Sellers, Attorneys and Traders ↑

Wives acted for absent husbands under letters of attorney. In October 1687 Elizabeth Rhodes let her absent husband's 10-acre plantation at the head of Sharks Valley to John Cotgrave. She acted as "lawful wife and attorney of William Rhodes", and the term was 99 years at a peppercorn for £10.²⁹⁶³ In 1694 Prudence Sherwin, wife and attorney of the absent Thomas Sherwin, sold a town house for £26 and gave a letter of attorney for the sale of 10 acres for £20.²⁹⁶⁴ Mary Carne, attorney of George Carne, bought 15 acres near the head of Fryer Valley for £25 in January 1705. In 1709 she received the papers for another purchase because George was absent.²⁹⁶⁵ In 1747 Martha Scott, "wife of and attorney for Lieutenant James Scott", assigned his lease to Samuel Doveton for £60 and sold a plot of town ground.²⁹⁶⁶

Women bought and sold land and houses on their own account. Elizabeth Johnson, widow, bought 20 acres in Lemon Valley in April 1698 for £20 paid as credit in the Company's stores.²⁹⁶⁷ Elinor Cotgrave, widow, sold 70 acres in Youngs Valley to John Alexander for £90 in 1712.²⁹⁶⁸ Elizabeth Haswell sold 10 acres in Sandy Bay with a house for £480 in May 1719.²⁹⁶⁹ Mary Swallow, widow, sold her right in 17 acres for £100 in 1721, and 10 acres for £60 in 1723.²⁹⁷⁰ Elizabeth Marsh bought two houses in Southwark Street for £80 each in 1723.²⁹⁷¹ Frances Wrangham, described as a freeholder, bought a life estate in 24 acres and a town house for £130 in June 1723.²⁹⁷² Margaret Goodwin, widow, bought 30 acres from George Gabriel Powell for £300 in 1742, paying with a bill of exchange for £200 and £100 in cash.²⁹⁷³ Sarah French bought a house in James Valley for £50 in 1754 and assigned it for £160 two years later.²⁹⁷⁴ Mary Burnham bought the house she occupied for £87 3s in 1759.²⁹⁷⁵

Unmarried daughters sold their inherited shares as freely as their brothers. Lydea Harding, spinster, sold her share of 19 acres on the Green Hill to her brother for £25 in 1720.²⁹⁷⁶ Sarah Bazett, spinster, sold her eighth of her father's house and 15 acres to her brother John for £25 in 1738.²⁹⁷⁷ In 1770 Elizabeth Desfountain had leave to sell 25½ acres of her freehold at public auction.²⁹⁷⁸

Frances Carne's dealings show how far a widow could manage a large estate. George Carne's estate was auctioned in November 1717 to pay his debts, and her son John Goodwin bought it. He leased it back to her and in April 1718 released it to her for £530 sterling.²⁹⁷⁹ He declared her "true and lawful owner of the lands, houses and tenements formerly belonging to the deceased George Carne".²⁹⁸⁰ In 1723 she leased 35 acres at the head of Sarah's Valley from the Company in her own name.²⁹⁸¹ About June 1725 she made a deed in her lifetime giving her son Richard Goodwin half her estate real and personal, with an option on the other half at appraisement.²⁹⁸² In the same year she gave John Goodwin "all manner of dower, right and title, whatever, which she ever had".²⁹⁸³ Her will of 1735, with a codicil of 1739, gave effect to the lifetime deed and divided freehold, 43 acres of leasehold and four slaves among her children.²⁹⁸⁴

Women traded in their own right. In 1717 the parson's understorehouse dealt in liquor, "though it was his wife and not he himself".²⁹⁸⁵ Sarah Newland held a punch house licence in 1745 at £5 10s.²⁹⁸⁶ In June 1768 the council found that Mrs Burnham held a licence and let it to her son at £40 a year.²⁹⁸⁷ The next month it confined the trade of publican "entirely to men" and recalled the five licences held by women.²⁹⁸⁸ The council judged women "quite unable to maintain the order such houses needed".²⁹⁸⁹ The widows of Captain Beale and Captain Kennedy had kept their families on their licences. The council recommended them for pensions, and the Court granted each £30 a year from June 1768.²⁹⁹⁰ In 1773 Martha Merchant asked the council to continue applying half the profits of her late husband's punch house licence to the orphans.²⁹⁹¹

Women also sold produce and remitted money through the Company's bills. Elizabeth Greentree sold the Company 10 goats, a bullock and 1,450 lemons in 1742.²⁹⁹² In the first quarter of 1766 Elizabeth Lamb, Margaret Alcock and Mary Seale supplied 32,700 yams for the Company's slaves.²⁹⁹³ In May 1716 Mary Bright went home carrying "for a part of her fortune, a bill for £100".²⁹⁹⁴ Governor Lambert's widow paid £317 into the treasury in 1743 for bills on the Company.²⁹⁹⁵ Margaret Alcock took bills for £120 in 1747, and Martha Scott paid in £30 in 1750 "to remit to her husband in England".²⁹⁹⁶ Miss Helena Griffith took bills for £90 payable to herself in 1757.²⁹⁹⁷ Elizabeth Purling stood as one of three sureties for a Company debt of £1,145 0s 9½d in 1742.²⁹⁹⁸

Spinsters' and Widows' Wills ↑

Women made nearly 30 of the wills copied into the first register of wills, from Sarah Younge's of 1682 to Margaret Goodwin's of 1744.²⁹⁹⁹ A finding list of March 1744 named at least a dozen women among 71 testators whose wills were on file.³⁰⁰⁰ About 22 women's wills appear in the later register, from 1757 to the 1790s.³⁰⁰¹

Spinsters' wills were small but show property held in their own right. Damaris Nichols, single woman, left her unpaid portion under her father's will to her sisters in 1729.³⁰⁰² Anne Jane Greentree left two heifers "worth about 40s" each and her whole portion to her mother in 1732.³⁰⁰³ Martha Frances, spinster, left a slave girl named Hannah and her money and book debts in 1734.³⁰⁰⁴ Mary Kniper, about to sail for Bencoolen in 1743, left her residue to her brother and sister.³⁰⁰⁵

Widows' wills disposed of land, houses and slaves. Ann Fuller left 20 acres of settled land and 10 acres of purchased land to her daughter and the heirs of her body in 1713.³⁰⁰⁶ The widow Sich left the country house and 20 acres she had bought after her husband's death to her granddaughter in 1719.³⁰⁰⁷ Mary Hague left her town house to two grandsons "as tenants in common and not as joint tenants" in 1723.³⁰⁰⁸ Grace Coulson's will of 1726 ordered her James Valley house sold at outcry and the proceeds divided among her widowed daughters and a granddaughter.³⁰⁰⁹ Mary Powell, widow of Gabriel Powell, left freehold that included about 1½ acres "which she had lately bought".³⁰¹⁰

Several women freed slaves by will. The widow Sich freed "a woman named Sue" in 1719.³⁰¹¹ Elizabeth Davis, widow, freed her slave Eleanor at her death in 1759.³⁰¹² Elizabeth Greentree in 1769 freed Lucy at her death and Lucy's daughter Margaret at once, with £50 at interest.³⁰¹³ She ordered that "none of her slaves, man, woman, boy or girl, be put up at auction or sold in any public manner".³⁰¹⁴ Jane Bagley freed Abigail and her son James in 1775 and left cash to nine other slaves.³⁰¹⁵ Martha Beale left her slave woman Sue to Isaac Doveton "should Sue choose to live with him".³⁰¹⁶

A widow given a power over part of her husband's estate could exercise it by will. Thomas Greentree allowed his widow to appoint £400 from the reversion if she died his widow.³⁰¹⁷ Elizabeth Greentree appointed it in 1769, "by virtue of a power given to her", to her Goodwin nephews and others.³⁰¹⁸ Widows' shares under their husbands' wills are treated in section 14. Margaret Doveton's written release in 1748 of her customary half of the freehold, in exchange for a child's share, belongs there too.³⁰¹⁹

Women in Disputes over Property ↑

Women went to law to defend land they claimed. Margaret Fagnald, widow and guardian of her children, entered a protest in the register in 1704 against a sale and gift of ground. They "should do no harm or prejudice to her children's lawful right to the ground".³⁰²⁰ Mercy Alexander, widow, petitioned the Company over the seizure of her husband Richard Alexander's lands, and in April 1711 it was content to grant her a lease of them.³⁰²¹ The next year London heard that Bagley had held the land and been turned out, and that the woman, since remarried, had been set on by others.³⁰²² Bagley was to be allowed his charges for fencing and planting.³⁰²³ In January 1718 Mercy and her second husband George Sanders sold her life interest in a James Valley house with a slave man named Peter for £50.³⁰²⁴

Antipas Tovey claimed in 1714 "a plantation which he claimed as belonging to his wife", from which Boucher had turned him out.³⁰²⁵ The Company ordered the case tried impartially. If he was restored he might sell the plantation so that his wife could keep the family.³⁰²⁶ Sarah Southern, by contrast, refused in 1722 to own the debt her absent husband had run up with the Company, and the council seized and sold his house for £138.³⁰²⁷

Margaret Alcock's claim to the Sandy Bay common was a long contest. In February 1768 she asked to lease Company waste next to her enclosed land there.³⁰²⁸ Samuel Alexander objected that the inhabitants "had planted the waste land and brought it into grass themselves", and that a lease would hem in his holding and the Harper orphans'.³⁰²⁹ The council made no grant and referred the question to the Court of Directors. The Court directed the council to settle such cases itself, for the general benefit of the inhabitants.³⁰³⁰ In September 1769 she pressed again, and the council sent the Lieutenant Governor and Purling to see where the common lay.³⁰³¹

The council protected women against fraud and against their husbands' creditors. In February 1759 it set aside an agreement by which a discharged sergeant named Langhorne would have taken control of the aged widow Susannah Pledger's land and slaves.³⁰³² It found that he had "drawn the widow Pledger to sign an agreement of which she was entirely ignorant".³⁰³³ In 1743 Priscilla Higham proved that a heifer her father had sold came from a cow her grandfather had given her, and the council ordered it returned to her.³⁰³⁴ In 1754 it voided Richard Gawling's unregistered deed of gift to his daughter, which his third wife had been told before the marriage would never take effect.³⁰³⁵

Interpretations ↑

The evidence suggested that the island received English coverture as a settled assumption rather than as a written code. Husbands sold their wives' land in their own names, and no deed recorded a wife's privy examination. Yet wives sealed sales, held bills in their own names and acted as attorneys. The register of 1682 treated land "in right of a wife" as a normal way of holding, and Gabriel Powell's career showed how marriage to widows could build an estate.

Protective devices appeared in a clear order. A bond from the incoming husband came first, in 1713, to secure the children of a first marriage. A trust before marriage followed in 1714, and wills giving a wife's or a daughter's property "for her sole and separate use" from the late 1730s. The jointure of 1756 and the Buchanan settlement of 1758 brought the English forms of the gentry to the island, the second through a visitor with London trustees. The pattern probably reflected the influence of officers and Company servants who knew English conveyancing, and of richer island families such as the Goodwins, Greentrees and Wranghams.

The separate-use clauses clustered in a few connected families. Mary Goodwin, Thomas Greentree and Elizabeth Greentree were related by marriage, and their clauses repeated the same words. This suggested a drafting habit passed among executors and witnesses rather than a general practice. Most testators still gave property to married daughters without any such protection.

Women's holding on the rent rolls was steady but small. Widows held most of it, often as trustees for children. It rarely passed to a second generation of women in their own names. The withdrawal of women's licences in 1768 showed that the council would close a source of women's income on grounds of order alone. It then sought pensions for two of the widows it had displaced.

Comparisons ↑

In England the strict settlement had become the usual form among landed families by the early eighteenth century. It provided a jointure for the wife and portions for younger children through trustees.³⁰³⁶ Nothing on St Helena resembled the strict settlement. Portions, jointures and trusts appeared one at a time, in bonds, deeds of gift and wills.

Amy Erickson found that marriage settlements in England reached well below the gentry, often in the simple form of a bond given by the husband before marriage.³⁰³⁷ George Carne's bond of 1713 for the Goodwin children was of this kind. Susan Staves traced the growth of separate-use trusts and of jointures given in place of dower in the equity courts of the same century.³⁰³⁸ The island had no court of equity, so the council enforced such trusts through its probate and registration powers.

In Virginia a wife's separate estate depended on equity in the same way, and the courts examined a wife privately before she gave up her dower in land sold.³⁰³⁹ Virginia widows managed plantations and acted for absent husbands much as Frances Carne, Elizabeth Rhodes and Martha Scott did on the island.³⁰⁴⁰ In Barbados widows likewise held and managed sugar estates under English law.³⁰⁴¹

At the Cape, Roman-Dutch law presumed marriage in community of property, and a surviving spouse took half the joint estate. An antenuptial contract registered before marriage could exclude the community and preserve a wife's own property.³⁰⁴² Cape wives and widows held and bequeathed slaves within this regime of shared estates.³⁰⁴³ St Helena's custom of a widow's half came near the Cape rule in its result, but its marriage settlements followed English rather than Dutch forms.

In Company India fortunes moved home by bills of exchange, and women's estates were proved before the Mayor's Courts.³⁰⁴⁴ In the 1770s Mary Hunt and Mary Short of Bengal left legacies to the island's poor and to its widows and orphans. The sum of £1,000 was distributed in 1778.³⁰⁴⁵ As later context, a government order of 1810 fixed a fee of 20 guineas for a private marriage licence on the island, and the money was paid to the widows' fund.³⁰⁴⁶

17. Inventories and the Value of Estates ↑

Inventories before the Register, 1688-1743 ↑

An inventory fixed what a dead planter owned so that it could be divided among heirs or turned to the payment of creditors. The earliest full appraisals appear in the consultations of the 1680s and 1690s. Thomas Smoutt's estate was appraised in full in June 1688. It held a double house, four parcels of land with houses, cattle, swine, fruit trees and two female slaves.³⁰⁴⁷ On Governor John Blackmore's death in 1690 his slaves, cattle and goods were ordered appraised by Orlando Bagley and others, in the same way as any planter's.³⁰⁴⁸

These early schedules priced land low and slaves high. One estate of the 1690s set 25 acres at £25, a hut at £23 and the slave Roger at £21, with pewter, spoons, a dictionary, pictures and named cattle.³⁰⁴⁹ The household goods in it ran down to a tankard, a china bowl, an old looking glass, three pictures, a dictionary, three knives and 16 spoons, valued together at £4 15s.³⁰⁵⁰ Cows named Tolley, Stanley and Fannys were valued with their calves at about £4 each.³⁰⁵¹ Richard Gannon's schedule of 1697 put 30 acres at £48, the man Pedro at £20 and a woman at £16.³⁰⁵² A bond on the soldier William French's estate in 1702 listed 10 acres at £10 and a man at £20 within a total of £55 12s.³⁰⁵³ In 1714 a single schedule carried 29 slaves at £290, about £10 a head, beside land, stock and effects.³⁰⁵⁴

The sworn inventory was already the rule. Executors brought in Thomas Phillips's inventory on 9 April 1698, and the widow in whose house he had died swore it true.³⁰⁵⁵ Katherine Freisdale's executors presented an inventory of her land and slaves, and £5 of costs was allowed.³⁰⁵⁶ William Duston's will was approved in July 1707. His widow was sworn to give a true inventory, and appraisers were named to value and divide the estate.³⁰⁵⁷ Wills directed the same course. John Sich ordered his land, provisions, goods, money and cattle "appraised by two impartial men" in 1703, the shares to be taken in kind by lot.³⁰⁵⁸ James Rider's executors were to be paid a guinea "before the inventory was taken".³⁰⁵⁹ Where an intestate left no kin on the island, the estate was to be inventoried and kept for an administrator in England.³⁰⁶⁰

Governors' estates went through the same forms. Governor Edward Johnson's will was read and an inventory of his effects begun between 16 and 19 February 1723.³⁰⁶¹ Francis Everest's will and inventory followed in July 1736.³⁰⁶² Thomas Free's household goods alone stood above £177 in the inventory of May 1720, before his stock and land were reckoned.³⁰⁶³ His seized estate was then sold at outcry in November 1721, lot by lot with the buyers named.³⁰⁶⁴ George Gabriel Powell sold his estate to Governor Goodwin in 1739. Its valued schedule set 69 acres of freehold at £10 an acre, a country house at £100 and a Fort Valley house at £60.³⁰⁶⁵ The grand total was written as £5,539 6s 4d, but the deed and the items show about £1,539.³⁰⁶⁶

The Register and the Oath of Appraisal ↑

Until 1745 inventories were filed rather than registered. In March 1744 the Secretary's Office listed 51 inventories and accounts of sales of dead or absent inhabitants.³⁰⁶⁷ They included the estates of Robinson's orphans, Sarah Free, Elizabeth Marsh, Martha Francis, Mary Powell, John Bazett and the surgeon Charles Clarke. Several women's estates were thus inventoried in their own names. The same office held a register of wills and a new lease book but no book of inventories.³⁰⁶⁸

On 12 February 1745 the executors of Jonathan Doveton and of James Ryder delivered their inventories. The appraisers swore that they had valued the goods as near their real value as they could. The council then found that "the inventories of deceased persons effects had until then never been registered".³⁰⁶⁹ It ordered a book kept and every later inventory entered in it. From 1746 the consultations record each delivery in a fixed form. Rebecca Newis brought in the inventory of her husband, a stone blaster, and it was "registered in the book kept for that purpose".³⁰⁷⁰ Pledger's, Corker's and Lindsay's followed within months.³⁰⁷¹

The register itself survives as a volume of 48 inventories taken between 1744 and 1760.³⁰⁷² Its entries range from Samuel Doveton's estate of nearly £4,850 to a sergeant's chest of clothes.³⁰⁷³ Some were left unvalued. William Norris's goods were listed without prices in December 1745 and signed by Rebecca Norris with her mark.³⁰⁷⁴ John Gray's boxes of tea, china, fans and nankeen, probably private trade from the China ships, were likewise listed without values.³⁰⁷⁵

Two to four planters appraised each estate. Four acted on Jonathan Doveton's in 1744: Francis Wrangham senior and junior, Thomas Greentree and Joseph Disfountain.³⁰⁷⁶ Most estates had two or three. The same small circle served again and again: Richard Bagley, Francis Wrangham senior, John Desfountain, Thomas Greentree, Joshua Worrall, Benjamin Mason and Richard Beale.³⁰⁷⁷ Richard Bagley and Benjamin Mason valued John Swaite's estate in 1756 and valued it again on his widow's death in 1758.³⁰⁷⁸ Their figures for the same slaves moved both ways in two years.

Two oaths secured the valuation. The appraisers swore to their prices, and the widow or executor swore that nothing had been held back. When Goodwin's widow produced his inventory in November 1748, she swore "she had produced every article belonging to the deceased to the best of her knowledge".³⁰⁷⁹ The form recurs for Whaley in 1751, Mason in 1755 and Burnham in 1756.³⁰⁸⁰ An administrator of an intestate gave bond with a surety before his inventory was registered. Ann Leech gave bond with her brother Richard Harper in October 1758.³⁰⁸¹ Mary Dowton's surety in December 1758 also acted as one of her appraisers.³⁰⁸² Registration continued through the 1760s and 1770s, for Thomas Greentree in 1767 with three valuers and for Ruth Colgrave in 1772.³⁰⁸³ Later, in 1791, the council found that widows had always sworn to their inventories but that nothing showed executors taking any oath, and it asked London whether one was required.³⁰⁸⁴

Where no heir was at hand the council took the estate in hand itself. The Company ordered in 1742 that "the effects belonging to all deceased persons, except Mr Pyke's, must be sold at auction" and the money paid into its cash.³⁰⁸⁵ The council sealed and inventoried the chests of mates, soldiers and strangers and sold their effects. It paid debts on the island and carried the balance to the London account.³⁰⁸⁶ Richard Gurling died intestate in 1754 with no one to administer, and an inventory was ordered at once.³⁰⁸⁷

Land and Houses in the Inventories ↑

Land was valued parcel by parcel, freehold apart from leasehold, and usually at a rate per acre. Jonathan Doveton's freehold was named by its former holders: Fosters, Coulsons, Ellis, Phillips, Marshes, Hunts and Sandys.³⁰⁸⁸ Each parcel was classed as cabbage tree or gumwood land: "23½ acres Fosters cabbage tree land, freehold, at 10s per acre, £223 5s 0d". The clerks wrote the rates in shillings, but the sums show pounds. In Goddard's inventory 52¾ acres at "10s" came to £525.³⁰⁸⁹

Freehold stood far above leasehold on the same estate. Richard Gurling's freehold at Francis was valued at £11 an acre in 1754, against £1 10s for 42 acres of leasehold nearby.³⁰⁹⁰ His freehold at Vaughan's stood at £9 10s and other leasehold at £3 and £1. Thomas Easthope's freehold was valued at £10 an acre in 1759 and the leasehold adjoining it at £2 and £1.³⁰⁹¹ James Worrall's freehold, formerly Benjamin Seale's, was valued at £8 and £7 in 1756, his leasehold at £2 4s and £2.³⁰⁹² Joseph Disfountain's freehold ran from £10 down to £7 an acre in 1749.³⁰⁹³ The kind of ground mattered too. Ebenezer Gurling's 3 acres of planted freehold were valued at five times the ground about his house.³⁰⁹⁴ William Burnham's cabbage-tree freehold stood at £7 an acre and his "new Stone Top freehold" at £1.³⁰⁹⁵ Giles Smith's leasehold was valued with care for its state: "10 acres of leasehold land, about 3 acres cleared, the other 6 not cleared, £55 0s 0d".³⁰⁹⁶

The rates rose across the period. Land at about £1 an acre in the 1690s stood at £10 or £11 for good freehold in the 1740s and 1750s.³⁰⁹⁷ By 1760 Thomas Colgrave's freehold was valued at about £15 an acre.³⁰⁹⁸ His leasehold, with its dwelling house, was carried at £171 for 30½ acres, far above the shilling rates of the 1740s. Edmund Nicholls's 49 acres had stood at only £95 6s about 1733.³⁰⁹⁹

Houses were valued apart from the land, and the dearest stood in town. Richard Goddard's "house at the fort, £270 0s 0d" was the dearest building in the register.³¹⁰⁰ Jonathan Doveton's dwelling house in James Valley, with its still-room, out-houses and yard, was valued at £250.³¹⁰¹ Samuel Doveton's "1 house in James Valley with the billiard room adjoining, outhouses, yard and appurtenances, £240 0s 0d" came close behind.³¹⁰² Gabriel Harper's house at Fort Valley stood at £220 and Richard Mason's in James Valley at £170.³¹⁰³ John French's two houses in Chapel Valley were carried at £230 together.³¹⁰⁴

Country houses were usually worth much less. Jonathan Doveton's two mansion houses on the Phillips and Coulsons land were valued at £75 and £50.³¹⁰⁵ Gabriel Harper's mansion house stood at £86 and Thomas Easthope's at £80.³¹⁰⁶ Smaller planters' dwelling houses were valued at £15 to £30.³¹⁰⁷ Samuel Doveton's country dwelling house at £300 was the one exception.³¹⁰⁸ For a small man the town house could be nearly the whole estate. William Desfountain's dwelling in James Valley, at £60, made up more than four fifths of his £72 18s 6d.³¹⁰⁹ Edwin Black's 2¼ acres of leasehold in James Valley, with a small house and yams, were valued at £200, nearly £90 an acre.³¹¹⁰ The same estate could be copied two ways. Richard Gurling's house was entered at £70 in the register and at £90 in the consultation, and the totals for house and land differ by £20.³¹¹¹

Slaves, Stock, Crops and Goods ↑

Slaves were named and valued one by one, by sex, age and strength. Their prices belong to section 19. In total, Jonathan Doveton's 16 slaves were valued at £285, Richard Goddard's 20 at £282 10s and Samuel Doveton's 21 at £335.³¹¹² John Disfountain's 16 came to £228 5s, Gabriel Harper's 13 to £236 15s and Martin Harper's 15 to £175 10s.³¹¹³ The register as a whole valued over 220 slaves. A share in a slave was valued like a share in a boat. Mary Alexander's estate in 1749 held "a part of a fisherman, £2 10s 0d".³¹¹⁴ Bequeathed slaves were marked in the margin but still valued within the estate.³¹¹⁵

Neat cattle were counted by kind and valued by the head or by the herd. Samuel Doveton's 72 head were valued at £416 in 1749, and Goddard's 58 at £191 10s.³¹¹⁶ Martin Harper's cows were entered by name: Gentle, Welcome, Lovely and Whiteface.³¹¹⁷ Easthope's herd included Comely, Colly, Brindle, Stately, Damsel and Star.³¹¹⁸ Sheep, goats and hogs followed. Samuel Doveton had 67 sheep, 171 goats and 38 hogs and pigs, Joseph Disfountain 101 goats valued at £32 12s 6d.³¹¹⁹ Horses were few and dear. Goddard's horse and mare were valued at £19, John Newton's three horses at £24 and Easthope's horse and mare at £23.³¹²⁰ A goat range passed with its flock. A range omitted from Governor Goodwin's inventory was later sold for £21 6s.³¹²¹

Standing yams and suckers were counted in thousands and valued as a crop in the ground. Jonathan Doveton had 329,000 yams and suckers valued at £176 11s and Samuel Doveton 394,000 at £226.³¹²² That is about 11s per 1,000. John Disfountain's 300,000 were priced by age, from 5s per 1,000 for the newly planted to 12s and 15s for those of 22 months.³¹²³ Giles Smith's 56,200 lay in three plots, upper, middle and bottom, each priced by age.³¹²⁴ The rate had changed little since 1703, when John Goodwin left his son "40,000 yams and suckers to the value of £30 0s 0d".³¹²⁵

Household goods, plate and stores came last. Goddard's household goods were valued at £351 3s 4d and included a cheese press, a clock and eight pictures.³¹²⁶ Edwin Black's plate, 122 ounces 3 pennyweight at 6s 6d an ounce, came to £39 13s 3d.³¹²⁷ His house also held mahogany bureaus, rattan chairs, seersucker bed curtains, a copper still at £7 and books at £5. Samuel Doveton's goods included 118 gallons of French brandy at £33 12s and a billiard table.³¹²⁸ Goods left out of his inventory were added later, among them a watch "if pinchbeck £4 and if gold £12". John Leech's books in 1750 were a history of the Bible, Pardon's dictionary and seven volumes of the Spectator.³¹²⁹ Captain William Kennedy's apparel was valued at £80 11s 9d in 1760, with 2½ dozen ruffled shirts at £18.³¹³⁰

Shares in boats appear often. Jonathan Doveton held half a boat at £2, and Gabriel Harper "1 quarter part of an old boat, £0 12s 6d".³¹³¹ Stores of building stuff show houses in hand. John Disfountain left 50 bushels of lime, glass, deals and redwood girders.³¹³² John Swaite left 35 double deals, 39 fir joists and door and window cases, valued at £17 6s 4d in 1756.³¹³³ By 1758 his estate held "1 dwelling house, not finished, at £35, £35 0s 0d" and 150 squares of glass.³¹³⁴

The Largest Estates ↑

The register gives the scale of the greatest planters' wealth. Eight estates were appraised at more than £1,100 between 1744 and 1760.

Values are the gross totals as written, before debts owed by the estate. Samuel Doveton's total excludes £24 18s of goods added later.

Below these came a middle band of £600 to £900. Richard Gurling's estate was valued at £887 6s 6d in 1754, Richard Mason's at £768 6s 10d and John Swaite's at £720 7s 2d.³¹³⁵ Most estates in the register were smaller. Thomas Hayes, with no slaves, left 34 acres and an estate of £285 5s 6d.³¹³⁶ Penelope Peach's estate came to £58 0s 7d, though her legacies of slaves and a house held outside it reached £158 12s 6d.³¹³⁷

Three of the largest estates can be taken apart head by head.

Figures as written. In Jonathan Doveton's and Goddard's inventories the clerk's parts do not add to the stated totals.

Land was the heart of each of these estates. In Samuel Doveton's it made up £2,374 10s of £4,841, nearly half.³¹³⁸ In Goddard's it made up £1,987 of £3,213, about three fifths.³¹³⁹ The slaves were a much smaller share, between a twelfth and a fourteenth of each total. Debts due were a large part of Jonathan Doveton's wealth, about a fifth of the whole.³¹⁴⁰

The Company's own inventories of its stores dwarfed these private fortunes. The warehouse was valued at £4,227 14s 9½d in September 1744.³¹⁴¹ Its stock reached £8,830 18s 2½d in 1758, £11,562 3s 9d in 1763 and £18,833 13s 4d in 1771, chiefly salt meat, flour, timber and naval stores.³¹⁴² Even at its lowest point, £2,250 9s 9d in 1746, the stock exceeded all but three private estates in the register.³¹⁴³

Debts, Clear Estates and Insolvency ↑

Every inventory set debts due to the estate among its assets, and most added a second schedule of debts it owed. Jonathan Doveton's estate was owed £855 5s 4½d. Of this Samuel Doveton owed £531 4s 10½d, James Snell £164 18s, and Richard Goodwin with "the orphans of John Booth" £100.³¹⁴⁴ John Disfountain's estate was owed by 24 accounts, the largest the late Governor Goodwin's estate for £109 5s 11d.³¹⁴⁵ It owed that same estate £91 14s 4d.³¹⁴⁶ The island's estates thus stood in a web of book debts, many owed to and by other dead men.

The clean or clear estate was struck once debts were paid. Stephen Lufkin's estate was carried to a clean figure of £171 4s 2½d after debts of £24 6s 6½d.³¹⁴⁷ John Newton's £1,938 6s 6d fell to £1,651 11s 4d, and Thomas Colgrave's £1,402 5s 1d to £1,273 8s 11d.³¹⁴⁸ The arithmetic was not always sound. Benjamin Blackledge's estate was entered at £300 6s 7d whole and "clean estate, £500 5s 0d".³¹⁴⁹ His land items also add to £325, not the £380 stated.

Some estates could not be cleared at all. Joseph Disfountain's appraisers wrote in 1749 that "they could not make this a clear estate", because debts both ways could not be brought to account.³¹⁵⁰ Samuel Doveton's estate was owed £407 18s 6½d but owed £2,110 11s 9¾d, and with legacies the charges reached £2,236 16s 8¾d.³¹⁵¹ The appraisers recorded that "there could be no possibility of making a clear account in this inventory". Mary Pritchard's estate of £493 19s 6d owed Richard Bagley £181 8s 8d.³¹⁵² John Swaite's owed £160 to the orphans of Griffith, orphans' money lent out on credit.³¹⁵³ A third of Augustine Ball's estate lay in "sundry debts, in themselves worth so many, very bad, £110 14s 6d".³¹⁵⁴

Some estates were plainly insolvent. Samuel Desfountain's estate in 1760 was valued at £160 16s 6d but owed £174 13s 4d.³¹⁵⁵ Giles Hayes died insolvent in 1739, and his estate was divided among his creditors.³¹⁵⁶ John Knipe's inventory of 1733 showed the personal estate and the debts almost equal. The governor set aside his will and made the executors administrators "without regard to the paper called John Knipe's will".³¹⁵⁷ Councillor Robert Wright's effects were "not being near sufficient to pay his debts" in 1749.³¹⁵⁸ The council asked London whether a bond of £240 from England should share with the island creditors or wait behind them.

The largest insolvency was Governor John Goodwin's. After his embezzlement his whole estate was sold in 1742 for £3,237 5s 2d.³¹⁵⁹ The council spent the next 12 years gathering in his book debts.³¹⁶⁰ In November 1754 the Court admitted claims of £254 15s 4½d against the estate. The £141 10s 11½d remaining was to be divided "in proportion to their respective claims".³¹⁶¹ The claimants were paid on 24 April 1755.³¹⁶² Lieutenant Samuel Price's estate paid its creditors 3s 11d in the pound in 1764.³¹⁶³

Outcry against Appraisal ↑

A sale at public outcry tested the appraisers' figures. Samuel Fazakerley's goods, appraised at £190 7s 7d, fetched £228 11s at outcry in 1740, about a fifth more.³¹⁶⁴ With 263 taels of silver the estate came to £346 18s. A ring and a snuff box were left unsold, "being family matters no person would bid on them", and the council allowed them to his children. The Secretary's Office kept this account of sales on file in 1744.³¹⁶⁵

Richard Gurling's estate gives the clearest test. His Vaughan's land, valued at £125, sold for £144 15s to the lieutenant governor in September 1754.³¹⁶⁶ The grown slaves sold for a third or more above their valuation, while the girls fetched about theirs. John Goodwin paid £36 for "30 goats in Lemon Valley range and the property to the same". Cows and calves fetched about £10 each. The whole sale raised £539 13s 2d from 35 buyers.

Small estates sold for little. Jonathan Higham died intestate owing the Company £21 12s 3d, and his whole estate was auctioned in February 1744 for £65 4s 8d.³¹⁶⁷ His lease of 4 acres with a house fetched £10 1s, about the price of one slave. His 32,000 yams and suckers fetched £3 2s 8d, about 2s per 1,000. The Bradley orphans' estate brought £84 2s 3d at outcry in 1743.³¹⁶⁸ In it 7 acres and half a quarter of freehold with half the house went for £25. Stephen Lufkin's 22 acres of leasehold were sold "at the desire of the deceased" for £81 in 1744.³¹⁶⁹ His bullocks were sold by weight and the rest of his cattle by the head.

The sale itself cost money. The Reverend John Dobie's goods fetched £177 8s 10½d lot by lot in May 1750, down to "1 dog named Ponto, £1 1s 6d".³¹⁷⁰ Two men were paid for 52 days attending the inventory and the auction, at 1s 6d a day each.³¹⁷¹ Their charge was entered as £8 3s, though 52 days at that rate make £7 16s. The auctioneer Andrew Blinman had 5s a day and John Spencer 2s 6d a day for writing. The balance of £259 11s 7½d went into the Company's cash. "The balance was the amount of the clear estate." Isaac Leech's estate paid the drummer who beat at his auction and the marshal.³¹⁷² Auctions of larger estates gave credit. Samuel Falconer's effects were sold in 1756 with two months' credit.³¹⁷³ His house was sold in 1757 with six months' credit at 5 per cent interest.³¹⁷⁴

The rules of the outcry were enforced. In 1745 James Greentree put a debtor's house up at a private auction, acted as marshal himself and bid it in for himself. The council held that neither seller nor auctioneer might bid.³¹⁷⁵ In 1746 the mason John Bland complained that an executor's friends had bid against him for Johnson's house until it was knocked down at £180.³¹⁷⁶

Interpretations ↑

The inventories suggested that a great St Helena estate was above all an estate in land. Land carried about half of Samuel Doveton's appraised wealth and three fifths of Goddard's. Slaves made up less than a tenth. This pattern probably reflected the high price set on improved freehold rather than any small number of slaves. A planter with 20 slaves was a large holder on the island, yet his slaves were worth less than his town house and his country land together.

The rise in land values within the inventories was steep. Freehold valued at about £1 an acre in the 1690s stood at £10 or more by the 1740s and £15 by 1760. Leasehold moved from shillings to pounds an acre over the same years. The valuations probably followed the market in land, which the sale prices of the period also show. The clerks' habit of writing pounds as shillings was perhaps a survival of the older and lower rates.

The register of 1745 probably came out of the Goodwin affair and the Company's orders on dead men's estates. The council had found how hard it was to trace a governor's goods between inventory and sale. A book of sworn inventories gave heirs, creditors and the Company a fixed account of every estate. The widow's oath was its main check against concealment, and it rested on the widow because she held the goods.

Appraisals seem to have run below market prices for land, grown slaves and goods in demand. Fazakerley's goods and Gurling's land and slaves sold well above their valuation. A low appraisal perhaps served heirs who took their shares in kind. It may also have kept the widow's third and the children's portions within reach of the estate. Where the market was thin, however, the outcry gave less than the appraisers: Higham's yams and lease fetched very little.

The debts in the inventories showed how the island ran on book credit rather than mortgage. Estates owed each other, orphans' money was lent to planters, and a large estate such as Samuel Doveton's could owe two fifths of its value. The appraisers often could not strike a clear estate at all, because the web of debts took years to unwind.

Comparisons ↑

The largest St Helena estates, at £3,000 to £4,850, were small beside the great plantations of the Caribbean. A model 100-acre sugar plantation in Barbados, with 50 slaves, seven white servants, mill, boiling house, equipment and stock, was reckoned at £5,625 in 1690.³¹⁷⁷ Samuel Doveton's estate of 1749, with 21 slaves, fell short of that figure set 60 years earlier. In Jamaica 775 sugar plantations were given an estimated mean value of £19,500 sterling each in 1774.³¹⁷⁸ A median Jamaican sugar estate held 99 slaves in 1741-1745, against 16 to 21 on the largest St Helena estates.³¹⁷⁹

The Cape gives a closer match. Auction rolls there show average household movables, excluding land, of Rds 1,578.7 between 1673 and 1800, of which slaves made Rds 554.9.³¹⁸⁰ The richest group averaged Rds 5,361.4, of which slaves made Rds 2,981. At the 1795 rate of 4s to the rix-dollar these sums equal about £316 and £1,072 (derived, indicative only).³¹⁸¹ Leaving out land and houses, Samuel Doveton's movables, debts due and cash came to about £1,900 (derived).³¹⁸² The great St Helena planter was thus richer in movables than the richest Cape group. Cape households averaged 6.67 slaves in 1741-1745, below the largest island holdings but near those of the middle planters.³¹⁸³

In England Gregory King put a gentleman's yearly income at £280 in 1688 and a greater freeholder's at £84.³¹⁸⁴ Capitalised at about 20 years' purchase, a £280 income implies an estate of about £5,600 (derived). On that reckoning the Dovetons and Goddard stood between the greater freeholder and the lesser gentleman of England. Much of their value, however, lay in stock, crops and debts due rather than in land alone.

In Company India, private fortunes were made in trade and office rather than in land, and on another scale.³¹⁸⁵ The estates of commanders and officers who died at St Helena show the contrast. Captain Cornelius Inglis's estate remitted £1,034 15s by bills in 1768, and Captain John Stone's stood at £915 6s 9¾d in 1778.³¹⁸⁶ A ship's captain who died in passing could leave as much in cash as the island's fifth-richest planter held in land, slaves and stock together.

Part Four: Slaves as Property ↑

Slaves were the most valuable movable property on St Helena and the labour on which its land depended. Part Four treats them as the records did: as stock to be bought, counted, fed, lent, sold, bequeathed and, rarely, set free. It begins with the two kinds of ownership, the Company's and the planters', and how each was managed.

18. Company Slaves and Private Slaves ↑

The Two Kinds of Ownership ↑

Two owners held slaves on the island from the first decade of settlement. The Company held a gang of its own for its plantations, fortifications and stores, and the planters held slaves privately in their households and on their land. In December 1673 any slaves received from Mr Russell that could be spared were to be sold to the planters.³¹⁸⁷ By March 1681 several free planters had been granted the labour of the Company's slaves at 6d a day and had not paid; six of them were charged £1 16s each.³¹⁸⁸

For a short time London forbade the planters to buy slaves at all, fearing that their numbers would outrun the garrison.³¹⁸⁹ The ban was lifted on 1 August 1683. Citing Barbados, where 6,000 whites held 50,000 slaves, the directors allowed free planters to keep slaves on conditions.³¹⁹⁰ A planter who held four slaves was to keep an extra Englishman for alarms, and smaller holders paid watch money, "a slave counting as an acre".³¹⁹¹ The restated law of about 1707 set the scale at 10s a year for one slave, 20s for two and 30s for three, and 40s or an Englishman for four.³¹⁹² The same letter of August 1683 tied the size of the garrison to the number of slaves, so that the charge on slaveholders paid for the island's security.³¹⁹³

The Company also meant to make the planters slaveholders. About 1684 London held that no European plantation between the tropics could thrive without slave labour, and planned to buy six or eight shiploads from the Royal African Company.³¹⁹⁴ Poorer planters were each to receive two slaves on credit, the cost to be repaid to the Company.³¹⁹⁵ Captain Knox's cargo of 1684 was to be sold among the planters at £12 to £14 a head, and the unsold slaves kept for the Company's own cultivation.³¹⁹⁶ The private holding thus grew partly out of the Company's own stock, sold on credit and recorded against the buyers' accounts.³¹⁹⁷

Supplying the Company's Slaves ↑

The Company's gang was replenished from almost every coast its ships touched. In August 1683 every Madagascar ship was to leave with the Governor "one able slave, a man or a woman, at the governor's choice", besides its tonnage duty.³¹⁹⁸ An earlier order allowed the Council, if short of money, to take slaves from Madagascar ships in payment of their arrears.³¹⁹⁹ In 1687, 10 slaves came from Fort St George in the Beaufort at a cost of 1,000 pagodas.³²⁰⁰ During the war of 1702-1713 London could send neither Madagascar nor Guinea slaves.³²⁰¹

Supply quickened after the peace. The council received 43 slaves by the Mercury in about 1714, to be kept at labour, clothed, fed and cared for when sick.³²⁰² About the same time London agreed to pay £21 a head for the slaves Mr Steward was to deliver by contract.³²⁰³ In 1716 the council asked Fort St George, Bombay, Bengal and Bencoolen to send up to 10 able men by each ship.³²⁰⁴ In March 1717 Captain Mackett delivered 11 slaves on the Company's account and the Mary brought seven more; four of the Company's Guinea slaves were exchanged for four judged more useful.³²⁰⁵ By July 1717 the Company's slaves numbered about 200.³²⁰⁶

The Company's own sloop brought the largest single purchase of the middle decades. On 23 November 1743 the Swift arrived from Madagascar and left 60 men and 10 boys for the Company's account.³²⁰⁷ The journal charged them to the blacks account at £1,300, "60 men at £20 each" and the boys at £10.³²⁰⁸ Bencoolen and the Indian presidencies supplied smaller numbers, often of men they wished to be rid of. Three men sent from Fort Marlborough in 1746 for their villainy were thought "equally dangerous" at St Helena.³²⁰⁹ Two Malay convicts arrived in 1754 "inscribed as slaves for life".³²¹⁰ Anjengo sent 10 Malabar men in 1757, and five of those landed hanged themselves within days of being sent into the country.³²¹¹ Of 21 slaves sent from Bombay in 1758, four died on the passage and only eight of the rest were fit for any service.³²¹²

Requests to the presidencies often went unanswered. The council asked in May 1753 for 30 men from Madagascar, its slaves being much reduced by accidents, deaths and age.³²¹³ London ordered Fort St George to send them, but Madras ignored repeated reminders and sent only five, by the Chesterfield, in 1757.³²¹⁴ Soldiers paid extra were set to the works in their place.³²¹⁵

The council then organised its own voyages. In June 1764 the Mercury and the Fly sailed for Madagascar with orders to buy "as many male slaves, men and boys, as the snow could carry in safety", all under 25.³²¹⁶ Their barter cargo of £376 11s 5d was mostly guns, powder and flints, with 24 slave collars, 44 pairs of shackles and 24 pairs of handcuffs.³²¹⁷ The slaves rose on 29 November 1764 and Captain William Harrold was stabbed and died.³²¹⁸ The vessels landed only 16 men and two boys for the Company in January 1765, each given the name of an English town.³²¹⁹ The commanders were paid commission by the head, from 6s 8d to £1, and the surgeon 5s a head for 18 slaves delivered.³²²⁰

London's own venture was larger. The Royal George was ordered in December 1764 to buy 250 slaves at Angola, 100 for St Helena and 150 for Fort Marlborough.³²²¹ She landed 236 on 27 May 1765. "They were made up of 125 men, 45 women, 38 boys, 25 girls and three young children."³²²² The council sent 150 on to Sumatra and kept 86, paying the captain 7s 6d and the mate 2s 6d a head on those kept.³²²³ The general letter of the day before gave 156 landed and 26 kept, figures that did not agree with the consultation.³²²⁴ Many fell ill of the craws soon after landing, and the council judged them "in no way equal to the Madagascar slaves".³²²⁵ London regretted that they had proved "so spiritless and weakly".³²²⁶

Numbers, Births, Deaths and Losses ↑

The Company counted its slaves as it counted its cattle. From about 1714 London wanted a yearly list of the slaves with their ages and employments, signed and set out in columns of men, women and children.³²²⁷ A list entered a child of one called Harry as minding the hogs, calves and poultry, and London refused to believe it.³²²⁸ From 1748 the lists of families, rents and Company slaves went home together every year, taken at 30 September or 11 October.³²²⁹

The counts of 1761-1765 were set out by Corneille in December 1765 to cost the burning of lime.

The roll of 12 March 1744 named 184 Company slaves with their ages and tasks.³²³⁰ Men served as smiths, sawyer, cook, tailor, tanner, butcher, gardeners and fishermen, and as "Milkmen, and to be always about the pastures and fences".³²³¹ Women washed, kept the dairy and nursed, and the oldest listed was Peg, aged 92.³²³² The clothing issues give a rough count in other years: 136 calico shirts for the men in 1746, 112 men in 1747 and 95 men's jackets and trousers in 1754.³²³³ In 1766, after the Angola slaves came, 164 men's and 67 boys' suits were issued.³²³⁴ As later context, 217 of the Company's slaves were taxed for the smallpox account in 1789.³²³⁵

Births and deaths of Company slaves were written at the foot of the monthly livestock return. In October 1742 the return recorded "One girl born, named Mary" below the count of 291 neat cattle.³²³⁶ Births were entered as increase, like calves, and deaths beside the beasts killed or dead.³²³⁷ A child named Mary, aged 18 months, died in February 1746 in the same return as a measly hog given to the slaves.³²³⁸ When the returns became quarterly in 1765 the slaves were still entered between the poultry and the yams.³²³⁹

Mortality was heavy. The council itself reckoned in 1719 that about 10 per cent died each year.³²⁴⁰ A distemper of 1742 killed eight of the best men and two women in three months, with 11 more very ill in the slave house.³²⁴¹ The council noted that "the very best workmen were those that dropped off", and the surgeon opened two bodies to find the cause.³²⁴² In 1757 and 1773 slaves hanged themselves; the Company paid the coroner £1 5s for the inquest on Toby.³²⁴³

The dead were written off at their book value. In December 1743 the journal charged £85 to profit and loss for four men who had died. The first entry read "1 man died, named Short Ears, £25 0s 0d". The other three were Madagascar men at £20 each, dead within weeks of landing.³²⁴⁴ Escapes were written off in the same way. The long boat was lost in March 1744 with 10 men slaves, while the coxswain lay drunk ashore.³²⁴⁵ In February 1747 four Company slaves went off from Sandy Bay in a fishing yacht, and the board struck them off its books.³²⁴⁶ On the night of 3 December 1752, 15 men ran away in a lime boat, and "the Council ordered the slaves and long boat written off the books".³²⁴⁷ London called this "a loss not easily repaired".³²⁴⁸

Single slaves escaped aboard homeward ships. The boy Sharper ran away from the island in June 1743.³²⁴⁹ Jack Defence, useful to the armourer, hid aboard the True Briton in 1752 and reached England, saying he fled the armourer's cruelty.³²⁵⁰ Grewer, a mason, escaped on the Hector and was sent back unpunished in 1761 because a mason was too useful to lose.³²⁵¹ He returned boasting of "the great liberty allowed in England", and London later judged its lenity misplaced.³²⁵²

Keep, Clothing and Housing ↑

The slaves' food came first from the Company's own yam grounds. In January 1743 the Governor raised the allowance "from 40 to 50 a week for each man and woman" to fatten them against the distemper.³²⁵³ In August 1744 salt beef and pork, being too little for all, were given only to the men at labour.³²⁵⁴ When the yams failed the council bought them from the planters at 25s to 35s for 1,000 yams.³²⁵⁵ It bought rice from homeward captains and, in 1766, gave each man three bread days a week.³²⁵⁶ Bengal meat judged unfit for the garrison went to the slaves, with the men's allowance raised from 6 to 10 lb.³²⁵⁷ From July 1768 each man had three drams of arrack a day and each woman and labouring boy two.³²⁵⁸

Clothing was costed by the piece. In 1716 each slave was allowed "one small blanket every year".³²⁵⁹ Coarse serges were sent about 1714 because slaves from hot countries needed warmer clothing.³²⁶⁰ The council asked in 1769 for duffel jackets, breeches and canvas drawers, since the slaves received clothing only once a year.³²⁶¹ Tailors were paid by the suit: Thomas Jarvis had 2s 6d each for 116 suits in 1745.³²⁶² In 1751 the slaves had had no blankets for nearly three years, and 142 were issued.³²⁶³ Only the craftsmen had shoes as a rule, quarter after quarter.³²⁶⁴

Every quarter the storekeeper charged the slaves' stores to a separate head of account. The charge was £253 12s 9d in the quarter to March 1767 and £720 17s 9d in the quarter to December 1772.³²⁶⁵ Corneille reckoned the average keep at £4 2s 3d a head a year, and raised it to £10 to allow for the purchase price.³²⁶⁶ Some items marked the slaves as a disciplined workforce: "Fishing lines, number 2 size, for punishing slaves, 12".³²⁶⁷ Others were customary gifts, such as a bull killed at Christmas "as usual".³²⁶⁸

The Company housed its slaves in a black house in James Valley. It paid Thomas Moslyn £6 a year rent for the ground, and in June 1743 bought the black house outright for £100.³²⁶⁹ The deed of February 1743 conveyed "all that piece or parcel of ground situated in James Valley on which the Company's slaves' house then stood".³²⁷⁰ By January 1744 the houses were so ruinous that the slaves were "safer and better lodged under the furze bushes than in most of those little houses".³²⁷¹ The council bought 1,000 teak boards at 12d each to repair the black houses in the country and at the fort.³²⁷² In 1771 Captain Tippet asked for idle ground once set aside for the slaves; the council refused, since the Company had bought it for £100.³²⁷³

The Company built more quarters as the gang grew. Soldiers were paid £25 7s for 507 days building three rooms for slaves at the Plantation stores in 1759.³²⁷⁴ The house at Deadwood for slaves and poultry was burnt twice that year.³²⁷⁵ In 1765 and 1766 labourers spent 687¾ days and then 982 more on a new slaves' house.³²⁷⁶ From 1766 the quarter in Jamestown was called the Black Square or the slaves' square, with a slave hospital beside it.³²⁷⁷ It was locked, repaired and searched by candlelight: "2 pounds of candles for searching the Blacks' Square".³²⁷⁸ Company slaves also lived at Plantation House Square, at the Maldivia garden and in huts in the Wood.³²⁷⁹

Management, Craft Training and Use by Officials ↑

The Company's husband managed its plantation and its slaves together. From 1752 the Lieutenant Governor was also overseer of the plantations, with houses and "the use of some of the Court's slaves".³²⁸⁰ Lesser overseers were hired at small salaries: Daniel Coakes at £8 a year for the Long Wood in 1753, and Samuel Alexander at £30 for Sandy Bay in 1755.³²⁸¹ On 1 July 1765 the council created a superintendent of slaves on Corneille's advice and appointed John Bazett at £40 a year.³²⁸² "That person would see that they were fed and clothed, assign them to their various daily tasks and hold full responsibility for their care and management."³²⁸³ Hugh Jones succeeded him in 1769, and the post was abolished on London's order in May 1778.³²⁸⁴

The Company trained its own slaves as craftsmen. About 1714 London ordered handicrafts taught and slave children put out to planters for a term of years.³²⁸⁵ In January 1712 the council gave out Company slave children from three years old to any inhabitant who would keep them until the age of 10.³²⁸⁶ It paid £10 in 1714 for teaching two of its black boys to cut stone.³²⁸⁷ The premium on skill was plain early: in 1707 a black carpenter was credited at 2s 6d a day against 2½d for the gang.³²⁸⁸

The great rebuilding of the fortifications after 1765 made the slaves into masons and smiths. Mitchell's return of August 1765 counted 13 slaves trained as masons, carpenters and armourers and 22 slave boys placed as apprentices.³²⁸⁹ In February 1766 two boys were bound to the carpenter John Robinson and two to the mason William Holbrook for five years.³²⁹⁰ By April 1766 the works employed 52 men slaves, 11 slave craftsmen and 26 slave boy apprentices beside 72 white labourers.³²⁹¹ The council refused to send masons to the West Coast, "those handicrafts being extremely useful at present".³²⁹² In 1777 slaves trained by the plumbers were judged able to lay a water pipe themselves.³²⁹³

Officials used Company slaves, sometimes beyond their right. In 1688 the plantation supervisor Cox hired out gangs to planters for his own gain.³²⁹⁴ In 1744 the council found that Governor Powell had used 1,221½ days of Company slave labour on his own building.³²⁹⁵ Company slaves were sent at night for lime and stone and "seldom slept in a house but lain upon the road".³²⁹⁶ The Company later tolerated a measured custom. In May 1778 it sent home a list to show that no one outside its service used its slaves. "The only exception was the Company's own officials, who had long been allowed this privilege by custom."³²⁹⁷

Company slaves could also pass to officials by sale at the value in the general books. In 1744 Wrangham was allowed two girls born to a Company woman at the price they stood at in the books.³²⁹⁸ In April 1751 the Lieutenant Governor David Hunter bought the girl Mary Simon for £10, her book value.³²⁹⁹ In February 1764 Governor Hutchinson bought Jacob, long in his household, at "the price recorded against him in the Company's general books, which was £21 0s 0d".³³⁰⁰ The council sold girls to the chaplain and others in 1742 and 1743 because it held "more of that sex than they knew what to do with".³³⁰¹ An exchange with a private owner needed London's leave and a man of equal quality.³³⁰²

The Company answered for its slaves as any owner did. It paid Desfountain £4 3s 4d for a beast its slaves killed in 1746, and Samuel Bowers £5 5s for the boat they wrecked in 1765.³³⁰³ When Harry Rammer stole a soldier's shirt in 1753, the Company paid 8s under the by-law that "satisfaction be made by the owners of slaves".³³⁰⁴

Private Slaves: Households, Returns and Head Money ↑

Private holdings were small at first and grew unevenly. The yearly list of planters ordered in 1682 had a column for the number of slaves each kept.³³⁰⁵ By 1706 some freemen "kept great herds of their slaves up in the country at their plantations", ill fed and stealing from their neighbours.³³⁰⁶ In January 1717 the council said Powell had "no more than 28, but all healthy slaves", hard driven even on Sundays.³³⁰⁷ A later letter credited him with 273 acres and 16 slaves, while the Company kept 203.³³⁰⁸ The chaplain Thomlinson had 11 slaves and a slave house built for them.³³⁰⁹ The census of May 1721 counted 391 whites and 443 blacks, 16 of them free.³³¹⁰

Governors were the largest holders until London stopped it. Governor Pyke acquired some 40 slaves, and the choicest were bought for the Company in May 1719.³³¹¹ In 1721 London ended the Governor's private holding outright, allowing him only one or two household servants, and bought Governor Johnson's 41 slaves into its own hands.³³¹²

The parish poll rolls of the 1770s show the spread of households. The roll of 1773 charged 1,139 heads, led by Purling with 60, Matthew Bazett with 44 and Richard Bagley with 39.³³¹³ Women householders were charged in their own names, such as Sarah Pritchard with 21.³³¹⁴ As later context, the roll of 1806 entered W. W. Doveton with five whites and 31 blacks.³³¹⁵

From 1757 the Council demanded returns of private slaves by class. In December 1757 every inhabitant was to return his slaves, "distinguishing them according to their respective classifications".³³¹⁶ In 1758 owners were to name their male slaves and boys with their ages, marking those infirm or unfit for labour.³³¹⁷ In February 1760 each was to account for the slaves he owned and those kept for his household under a recent regulation.³³¹⁸ The returns of 1778, 1779 and 1781 asked for male slaves aged 16 to 60, and that of 1788 marked those able to bear arms.³³¹⁹

Slaves were taxed as heads of their owners' households. From 29 September 1684 every master or mistress was to pay "sixpence a head for every person, man or woman, white or slave, above the age of sixteen years" towards the church.³³²⁰ London ordered the duty levied by distress in 1687, without excuses.³³²¹ The head-money roll of 1699-1700 even charged the orphans' clothing account for the black persons it held.³³²² In 1716 the head money on slaves and the 12d an acre made £124 15s 4d.³³²³ By 1727 the duties on free land, lease rents and "yearly payments for cattle and slaves" came to £554.³³²⁴ Every slave also owed one day a year on the highways.³³²⁵

Owners' Duties and the Hire of Private Slaves ↑

The law bound owners to answer for their slaves' conduct and their absence. By "the custom of the island in cases of this kind the owner of a slave made restitution to the person robbed".³³²⁶ In 1742 the owners of two slave women who killed a Company calf were charged under this custom.³³²⁷ A man who kept another's slave from her master's service paid the owner 20s for her labour.³³²⁸ A master whose slave used a firearm with his connivance forfeited the gun.³³²⁹

Owners had to keep their slaves off the ships. From 1760 inhabitants were warned to restrain them and not to expect the Company to bear the cost of recovery.³³³⁰ Runaways were to be returned "though at the expense of the owners whose property they were".³³³¹ The reward for taking up runaways shifted between the public and the owner. A standard reward was set in June 1721.³³³² In 1768 it was £5, a third each from the Company, the parish and the owner.³³³³ It fell to £3 in 1770, the owner paying 10s, and from February 1772 the owner paid the catcher alone.³³³⁴

Passes and curfews bound the slave's movements to the owner's written leave. In 1745 no slave was to carry a load to the valley or a landing place without his master's ticket.³³³⁵ From 1753 no slave was to leave home on Sundays, or be out after eight at night, "without leave in writing from their master or owner".³³³⁶ White people were fined 5s for every slave they employed on a Sunday.³³³⁷ On a double alarm owners had to send their male slaves to assigned posts.³³³⁸

Buying from slaves was forbidden, to protect owners from theft. In April 1753 no one was to buy from blacks "unless the Blacks had a written permission from their masters or owners".³³³⁹ Augustine Balls was fined £5 for giving brandy for empty bottles, and Joseph Long £5 for two fowls bought of a Company slave.³³⁴⁰ The order was renewed in 1759 against buying, receiving or taking in pledge from soldiers or slaves.³³⁴¹ Lieutenant Gifford was fined £5 for buying lemons in 1760.³³⁴²

Hire of private slaves to the Company's works was a large source of planters' income. About 1715 a hired slave earned 18d a day, or £22 10s a year, against a keep of at most £7 10s.³³⁴³ The chaplain Thomlinson was paid 18d a day for each of his seven men.³³⁴⁴ The planters never forgave Governor Roberts for lowering the rate from 18d to 12d.³³⁴⁵ The council reckoned the hire bill at some £2,400 a year before the Company gave notice in May 1717 that it would hire no more after 25 June.³³⁴⁶

Hire returned with each new campaign of building. In 1742 the council offered "the usual allowance of twelvepence a day" for able men whose masters would hire them out.³³⁴⁷ In the quarter to September 1742, 15 owners were paid for 954 days.³³⁴⁸ Orphans' estates hired out their slaves as well: Charles Steward's orphans had £13 9s for 309 days in early 1743.³³⁴⁹ The cooper bought from Goodwin's estate was hired at 2s a day.³³⁵⁰ In 1747 the inhabitants agreed to send a third of their slaves, about 70 hands a day, to Sandy Bay for eight weeks.³³⁵¹ In 1766 owners were paid 1s a day for labourers and 2s 6d for stonelayers.³³⁵² In 1769 the council called 1s a day the fixed rate on the island when one inhabitant hired from another.³³⁵³

Interpretations ↑

The evidence suggested that the Company treated its slaves as plantation stock in the full sense. They were bought at a price, entered in the general books, counted with the cattle and written off at book value when they died or fled. Their births added to the stock as calves did. The management mirrored that of the Company's herds and pasture, under the same husband and overseers.

The private holding probably arose from the Company's wish to shift labour costs onto the planters. The rule of 1683 made the planters pay for the security risk their slaves created. The head money, church rate and watch money then turned slaveholding into a source of revenue.

The hire market suggested that the two kinds of ownership depended on each other. When the Company's own gang was small, it hired the planters' slaves at rates that made a slave yield his master about twice his keep. When the gang grew, the hire bill fell and planters lost an income they had prized. The repeated swing between buying and hiring probably reflected the Company's slow supply and high losses.

The duties laid on owners suggested that the Company used private property to police the slave population. The owner answered for theft, absence and escape, and every white man was barred from trading with another's slave. The cost of recovering runaways moved from the Company to the owner as the Company's finances tightened after 1770.

Comparisons ↑

The nearest parallel to the Company's gang was the Dutch East India Company's Slave Lodge at the Cape. The VOC housed its own slaves in a single Lodge in Cape Town, fed and clothed them from its stores and put them to its public works.³³⁵⁴ Like the St Helena gang, the Lodge slaves were distinct in law and management from the burghers' private slaves.³³⁵⁵ The St Helena black house and Black Square served the same purpose on a smaller scale. Private holdings at the Cape were modest: households averaged 6.67 slaves in 1741-1745 and 5.33 in 1771-1775.³³⁵⁶ The largest St Helena households of the 1770s charged 30 to 60 heads, whites included, which suggested holdings above the Cape average.

Barbados supplied the argument for private slaveholding in 1683, and its scale dwarfed St Helena's.³³⁵⁷ A median Jamaican sugar estate held 99 slaves in 1741-1745 and 204 in 1771-1775.³³⁵⁸ The hire of a male slave in Jamaica was about £20 a year in Jamaica currency about 1774, roughly £14 6s sterling at the stated rate.³³⁵⁹ The St Helena rate of 18d a day, reckoned at £22 10s a year in 1715, was higher, though it fell to 12d soon after.

Bermuda offered the closest English model of small holdings and hired slave labour. Its slaves were held a few to a household and much hired out, chiefly as mariners and craftsmen.³³⁶⁰ St Helena's owners likewise hired out masons, coopers and fishermen to the Company and to one another.

The Company's slaves at Bencoolen formed a gang like St Helena's, and the two were managed as one pool. St Helena shipped its spare slaves to Bencoolen at £4 a head and received troublesome men in return.³³⁶¹ In 1765 the Royal George divided one Angola cargo between the two stations.³³⁶² The movement of slaves and convicts between the Company's settlements reflected its practice of governing its stations as parts of one system.³³⁶³

19. Slaves Bequeathed, Sold, Hired and Valued ↑

Slaves on St Helena were movable property in the full sense. They were bought at outcry, conveyed in the same deeds as land, pledged for debts, left by name in wills and hired out by the day. Appraisers valued them alongside cattle, yams and plate. The parish paid their owners when the law hanged them. This section follows individual slaves held by private owners through these transactions, from the first wills of the 1680s to the parish accounts of the 1820s.

Buying and Selling: Outcry, Bill of Sale and Estate Auction ↑

The first private slaves came from the Company's own cargoes. In April 1684 the Governor was ordered to sell as many of Captain Knox's slaves to the planters as he could, at £12 to £14 a head.³³⁶⁴ At a public sale in May 1689 the Company's men were offered at £10 and its women at £12, each brought forward singly for bidding.³³⁶⁵ Those left unsold were offered for hire at £6 a year.³³⁶⁶ In 1689 Thomas Goodwin, who had hired a boy named Bochumbo, was allowed to buy him "as his slave for life" for £15 paid in four quarterly instalments.³³⁶⁷

Sales between planters were made by written bill of sale. In 1688 Elizabeth Bethorne complained that a slave warranted sound had died of a cough; the written bill showed that no warranty against disease had been given.³³⁶⁸ A bill of sale from Gabriel Lovell senior passed two slaves named Jack and Jone to Richard Gurling in 1698.³³⁶⁹ On 6 September 1733 John Coulson sold John Long a woman named Abigail for £25 in island money, "to dispose of as they saw fit".³³⁷⁰ Creditors could force a sale. Walter Morris, who owed the Company £38 in 1714, had to sell his slave Nick for £25, the balance to be taken in yams.³³⁷¹

Ships from Madagascar brought slaves for sale at outcry. In February 1717 the Drake and her ketch arrived on the Company's account, and the planters "had bought a number at an outcry".³³⁷² To supply all the planters equally the Council had Captain Mackett sell 45 men, women and children by outcry.³³⁷³ They averaged about £21 a head, and the planters paid by transferring credit among themselves and at the Company's stores.³³⁷⁴ The lots were graded by age, sex and condition: four children, four older boys and girls, six able men and four women in one parcel.³³⁷⁵ The secretary Antipas Tovey claimed 2 per cent commission on the sales and refused his signature until it was paid.³³⁷⁶

Estates were turned into money at public auction, and slaves went under the hammer with the rest. Governor John Goodwin's slaves were sold by name in August 1742 to 16 buyers.³³⁷⁷ A man, a woman, a boy, a girl and two children went together to Margaret Goodwin for £85.³³⁷⁸ The man Emmanuel fetched £40 from Gabriel Harper, while "Old Tacky" went for £6 and Old Ebony for £8 10s.³³⁷⁹ Three more were sold later: London for £12 2s, John Frisk for £30 1s and Sapida for £20 1s.³³⁸⁰ The 34 slaves brought £539 14s in all. James Powell bought seven, and one of his purchases, a cooper, was soon hired back to the Company at 2s a day.³³⁸¹

Smaller auctions followed the same pattern. The Bradley orphans' woman slave fetched £9 1s and a girl £4 at outcry in February 1743, both bought by Doctor Alcock.³³⁸² Higham's intestate estate yielded the boy Pompey at £10 and the girls Frances and Bett at £10 and £10 15s.³³⁸³ Councillor Wright's men London and Campo each made £23 in 1748, the woman Moll £12 5s and the girl Mercy £4 5s.³³⁸⁴ At the Gawling sale of September 1754 the man Cieval, valued at £25, sold to Richard Bagley for £39 5s.³³⁸⁵ The woman Sarah, valued at £21, fetched £28 5s, while the girls Patt and Betty went for £7 1s and £6 6s.³³⁸⁶

The parish also sold slaves. On 13 March 1761 the poor's stock received £7 6s for "a slave woman named Flora, sold at public auction", and paid the marshal 1s 6d for crying the sale.³³⁸⁷ In October 1766 the charity gave £1 5s "towards the purchase of a black girl".³³⁸⁸ As later context, the vestry in August 1791 proposed selling at auction a woman and her four children "known by the name of Betty Moore", who belonged to the parish.³³⁸⁹ In 1793 it resolved that Betty Wade and her children be sold.³³⁹⁰

Buying a slave was a recognised object of a legacy. In 1704 James Rider left his brother-in-law Hugh Booley £12 in appraised shipping goods "to help him buy a slave".³³⁹¹ Brigett Bates left her son Mede Joseph "fifteen pounds to buy a black boy" in 1733.³³⁹² In July 1758 the commander of HMS Colchester and three others raised £34 12s 1½d for the distressed family of the planter William Seale.³³⁹³ About £20 of it bought a slave man named Lewis from Thomas Greentree for the aged Seale and his children.³³⁹⁴

Slaves Conveyed with Land, Given, Exchanged and Pledged ↑

Slaves often passed with land and stock in a single deed. On 10 February 1690 Joseph Trapp sold John Goodwin a house and 10 acres at the head of Lemon Valley for £35 sterling. The sale included "a male slave known by the name of Asher" and 8 hogs.³³⁹⁵ In March 1703 Gabriel Powell sold James Greentree 20 acres in Sandy Bay with "a male slave named Oliver and a half-share in a still" for £86.³³⁹⁶ Henry Francis sold Francis Wrangham a James Valley house and a woman called Patt together for £70 in 1715, warranting both against other claims.³³⁹⁷ John Bagley junior sold John Bowers 16 acres in Fryer Valley and a leasehold, with "one Black slave man named Roger, one cow, one heifer, two calves, eight hogs".³³⁹⁸ Francis Mowatt sold Francis Wrangham senior 27⅘ acres in 1756 with the slave man London, a house and 50,000 yams for £340 10s.³³⁹⁹

Slaves moved within families by sale and resale. In November 1717 the widow Frances Carne sold her son John Goodwin nine slaves of her late husband's estate for £200 "in gold and current money".³⁴⁰⁰ Five months later Goodwin sold the same nine back to her with 45 head of cattle for £321.³⁴⁰¹ George Gabriel Powell's estate, sold to Governor Goodwin in 1739, carried a schedule pricing five men slaves at £125 and the woman Christiana at £14.³⁴⁰²

Gifts by deed served as advancements and portions. In February 1712 the widow Mary Jewister gave her grandson Francis Wrangham a man called Ned, keeping "the use and benefit of the black's work" for her life.³⁴⁰³ Possession was given by delivering Ned in the grandson's presence.³⁴⁰⁴ In October 1741 Joseph Bates gave his daughter Margaret four men and two women, with the yams growing on his lands.³⁴⁰⁵ When John Defountaine married Mary Alexander, her grandfather Ripin Wills settled on the couple a house, 40 acres and "one Black slave man named Dick".³⁴⁰⁶ In October 1758 Francis Wrangham the elder conveyed to his son William, for 10s, the house and 27⅘ acres bought from Mowatt with the slave London.³⁴⁰⁷ The whole was to be reckoned against William's share of the estate at £549 10s.³⁴⁰⁸

Slaves were exchanged like any other chattel. In August 1708 Hugh Bodley gave Jonathan Doveton his right in a male slave youth for "a female slave known as Sue".³⁴⁰⁹ Grace Coulson's will of 1726 let her son-in-law Doveton take land "in exchange [...] for a black man named Thomas, at a valuation by two indifferent persons".³⁴¹⁰ In September 1750 Gabriel Isaacke had leave to "assign his right in a slave, in exchange for a parcel of ground in Palmers Valley".³⁴¹¹ Francis Wrangham's slave sent to Bencoolen in 1729 was replaced by one who proved unfit.³⁴¹² Valuers thought Nero "would have sold for more than £30 had he been put up to auction", so the Council paid Wrangham £30 and deals besides.³⁴¹³

Slaves stood as security for debt. On 6 June 1722 Henry Francis bound himself to Captain Joseph Tolson for £136 5s at 6 per cent.³⁴¹⁴ For better security he made over gumwood land, a house and "one Black slave named Hannibal, for the clearing of the land".³⁴¹⁵ In April 1727 John Long sold Francis Swallow and Giles Smith his right in four young slaves for £40.³⁴¹⁶ Long kept the right "to keep and employ the slaves named in such labour and business to which he should appoint them" until March 1728.³⁴¹⁷ On 1 November 1756 Gabriel Isaac gave Captain George Mead of the Denham a bond for £100 sterling in quarterly instalments.³⁴¹⁸ On default Mead might take the rents of his houses, his cattle and "his two slave men Phillip and Somsour".³⁴¹⁹ Debtors' slaves could also be seized. When Mr Delves left the island in debt in 1685 his slave was taken with his other goods and let to Job Jowster at 2s 6d a week.³⁴²⁰

Slaves Bequeathed by Name ↑

The wills registered between 1681 and 1745 name about 80 slaves, and those of 1747 to 1792 about 260. The earliest bequests already treated slaves as portions for each child. On 30 April 1683 John Greentree gave one slave to each of his six children.³⁴²¹ Elizabeth had the man Peter, Ann the woman Kate, John the boy Rufac, James the boy Fitzcrass, Jane the girl Jone and Mary the boy Balazoar.³⁴²² Richard Alexander left "his black slave Jack" to his younger son and Robin to the elder in May 1683.³⁴²³

A slave could pass by inheritance twice in a few weeks. On 9 May 1684 the soldier Hugh Syms gave his brother Ralph "his black boy called Asher", four cows and two calves.³⁴²⁴ On 14 June Ralph Syms, serjeant, left his widow "two black boys named Edward and Asher, and one black maid called Kate".³⁴²⁵ A male slave named Asher was sold with Trapp's 10 acres in 1690, perhaps the same man.³⁴²⁶

Testators shaped the descent of a slave with life interests and conditions. John Younge left his man Antony to his widow in 1682, passing to his daughters if she remarried.³⁴²⁷ Even then "Antony was not to be at their disposal but was to remain with his wife".³⁴²⁸ John Knipe gave his mother the use of his slave George for life while she stayed on the island, George then passing to his children.³⁴²⁹ In 1708 James Sich left the slaves Rice and Soltian to two godsons, both to stay with his mother for her life.³⁴³⁰ Lewis Latour gave his widow a black boy in 1718 on condition that her mother had his service "one day in every week, for her own use and service".³⁴³¹

By the 1740s the larger planters gave each child a slave outside the equal division of the estate. John Bazett left his wife the girl Grace and each of his five children a named slave, "none counted in their shares".³⁴³² Charles Steward gave his widow first choice of all his slave girls, his daughters the next choice and his son the choice of a boy.³⁴³³ John Desfountain's will of July 1747 gave each child a slave girl, Mercy, Patt, Peg and Ellen, "none to be valued to him".³⁴³⁴ His son John's will of 1768 divided 14 slaves.³⁴³⁵ The widow had Jack and Mercy outright and the boy George for life, and each child took four named slaves not counted against his share.³⁴³⁶

Other testators reversed the rule and brought the slaves into account. Isaac Knipe's will of 3 May 1770 left 11 named slaves among his five children.³⁴³⁷ They were "all to be valued so each child had an equal part".³⁴³⁸ Richard Goodwin's will of 1747 gave his wife the woman Abigail and each child a slave, all at valuation.³⁴³⁹ Henry Coales put a money value on a bequest in advance. Any legatee whose slave died before delivery was to have "twenty-five pounds out of the personal estate in compensation".³⁴⁴⁰ William Dufton allowed his son Jonathan to take the slave Dick on paying £30 into the estate.³⁴⁴¹

The largest bequests came late in the period. James Powell, the storekeeper, left 25 slaves in July 1772.³⁴⁴² His widow had Sophia and her daughter Maria, Phillis and Lucinda and 10 others for ever, and "a man slave named Watson for her lifetime only".³⁴⁴³ His son and daughter took four slaves each.³⁴⁴⁴ Martha Beale's will of 1772 let her son-in-law Matthew Bazett buy the boy Stephen for £27, "the price she had paid".³⁴⁴⁵ The woman Sue was to go to Isaac Doveton at her value, "provided Sue chose to live with him".³⁴⁴⁶

Elderly slaves were sometimes kept out of the valuation. Jonathan Doveton's will of January 1744 directed that "His two old women slaves, Peg and France, having been many years in his family" should not be valued.³⁴⁴⁷ They were to live with his two youngest children.³⁴⁴⁸ The widow Elizabeth Greentree forbade in 1769 that any of her slaves be "put up at auction or sold in any public manner".³⁴⁴⁹ Each was to choose a master or mistress, who would buy at a value set by two impartial men.³⁴⁵⁰

A share in a slave could itself be property. Mary Alexander's inventory of March 1749 valued "a part of a fisherman" at £2 10s.³⁴⁵¹ At the Wright auction of 1748 half a share of a fisherman went for £3 10s.³⁴⁵² These were probably shares in a slave who fished for several owners, held like shares in a boat.

Descent, Division and the Separation of Mothers and Children ↑

Slaves descended under the same rules as other personal estate. A widow's third of the movables included slaves. Thomas Greentree's will of 1766 listed "household goods, plate, money, slaves, yams, cattle, horses, sheep, goats, pigs and poultry" in her third.³⁴⁵³ His executors were to sell the other two thirds of the movables, slaves included.³⁴⁵⁴ In 1740 Young's executors raised £30 for his orphans by "the widow's dividend of slaves".³⁴⁵⁵ Intestacy led to sale. Higham's three slaves and Gawling's six were auctioned for creditors.³⁴⁵⁶

Bequests did not always reach the heir. In 1684 Captain Daniell claimed the boy Balasore, whom Greenwood had bequeathed to his daughter Mary.³⁴⁵⁷ In 1710 Sarah Bell asked who should have the woman Doll, valued at £30, left to her son John Pledger who had since died.³⁴⁵⁸ Stephen Lufkin's direction to buy the freedom of Katharine and her child failed because "the heirs would not comply".³⁴⁵⁹

Wills sometimes kept mothers and children together. Thomas Easthope declared in 1751 that the slaves Gilford, Hannah "and her children Frank, Patt and Mary" belonged to his daughter Mary.³⁴⁶⁰ Thomas Greentree left his widow "a woman slave named Lucy together with Lucy's son James and daughter Margaret".³⁴⁶¹ James Powell's widow received Sophia and Phillis with their daughters.³⁴⁶² Ann Seale gave her daughter the maids Dolly and Sisby "and Sisby's child Monimia" in 1792.³⁴⁶³

Other dispositions divided families or disposed of the unborn. Elizabeth Desfountain left Nanny to one granddaughter in 1773 and "the child with which her slave Nanny was then pregnant" to another.³⁴⁶⁴ In 1744 Francis Wrangham asked whether two girls born to a slave woman he had taken from the Company in exchange were his.³⁴⁶⁵ He had fed and clothed them, and "the two girls were actually born of his own slave woman".³⁴⁶⁶ At a trial of December 1765 London, slave of Simon Whaley, was acquitted of killing his daughter Jenny.³⁴⁶⁷ Jenny's mother Dorinda belonged to Joseph Chamberlain, and London had to ask leave of the child's keeper to take her to the fort.³⁴⁶⁸ As later context, the Council refused in 1792 to let a nursing infant be taken from its mother, since "A child still being breastfed could provide no profit or service to anyone".³⁴⁶⁹

Hire of Slaves to Others ↑

Hire let an owner draw income from a slave without parting with him. In 1682 Thomas Crancombe tended the Moore orphans' cattle for a year in return for the use of a man named Satter from their estate.³⁴⁷⁰ John Cannady left John Lufkin "the labour of his black slave Saul" in 1693 until his wife returned to the island.³⁴⁷¹ William Doveton's executors placed his daughter with Robert Leech in 1708, paying from her portion "The service of a black boy named Peter".³⁴⁷²

The Company was the largest hirer. It paid 18d a day for planters' slaves until Governor Roberts cut the rate to 12d.³⁴⁷³ By 1715 the planters said he would have been an honest man but for this cut.³⁴⁷⁴ The Council reckoned that at 18d a day a hired slave earned £22 10s a year against at most £7 10s for his food and clothes.³⁴⁷⁵ Every slave so hired thus yielded his master some £15 clear a year.³⁴⁷⁶ The chaplain Thomlinson kept seven men slaves for whom the Company paid him "constantly" 3s a week each.³⁴⁷⁷ In January 1716 the plantation overseers had leave to hire 49 slaves for two months to weed against the rains.³⁴⁷⁸ From 25 June 1717 the Company, now supplied with its own slaves, gave owners notice to find other employment for theirs.³⁴⁷⁹

Hire on the fortifications revived in the 1740s at 12d a day. In August 1742 the Council advertised for "any able-bodied men whose masters were willing to hire them out, at the usual allowance of twelvepence per day".³⁴⁸⁰ In July to September 1742 the Company paid 15 owners £49 14s for 954 days.³⁴⁸¹ In the next quarter 17 owners were credited 1,810 days at Banks.³⁴⁸² Orphans' estates figured prominently. Charles Steward's orphans earned £13 9s for 309 days and John Bazett's orphans £13 3s for 303 days in early 1743.³⁴⁸³ The new council dismissed the planters' slaves from the works in March 1744.³⁴⁸⁴

Skilled slaves earned more. A cooper bought from Goodwin's estate was hired at 2s a day in 1742.³⁴⁸⁵ One of Joshua Johnson's slaves cut stone for 22 days in 1745 "at two shillings and sixpence a day".³⁴⁸⁶ In May 1766 the owners of six slave masons refused to release them for less than 2s 6d a day. The men were "too valuable to them to be released for less than the customary rate".³⁴⁸⁷ In August 1766 the planters accepted 1s a day for labourers "although the rate was lower than they charged when hiring labour to each other".³⁴⁸⁸ In 1769 the Council called 1s a day "the fixed rate on the island when one inhabitant hired slaves from another".³⁴⁸⁹ The Company fed the hired slaves with rice and pork while the owners drew the full hire.³⁴⁹⁰

Hire between inhabitants was common enough to be regulated. An advertisement of September 1755 "forbade any person from hiring Blacks on Sundays".³⁴⁹¹ In 1759 Harry, slave of Elisha Ssragan, was "hired by Stephen Young" when he lamed two Company hogs.³⁴⁹² Captain Henry Bazett's slave Caesar was sent out in 1773 "to dig a grave for Mr Dyfell".³⁴⁹³ A person who kept another's slave from service paid for the loss. Archibald Bouge paid John Desfountain 20s in 1756 "for the loss of the slave's labour".³⁴⁹⁴ As later context, the Council reprieved Nelly, slave of Thomas Leech, in 1783 partly because "her master had hired her out to soldiers of the garrison" for a long period.³⁴⁹⁵

Valuations ↑

Appraisers valued slaves by name in the inventories of 1744 to 1760, over 220 of them. Values ran from about £2 for a small child to £31 for a grown man. Jonathan Doveton's 16 slaves were valued at £285 in May 1744, "Stephen £31 down to Moses £5".³⁴⁹⁶ Samuel Doveton's 21 slaves came to £335 in 1749, Stephen, Frank and Great Jack at £30 each down to Handy and Abigail at £4.³⁴⁹⁷ Richard Goddard's 20 slaves were valued at £282 10s, from Will at £28 to Mary at £2 10s.³⁴⁹⁸ The lowest values were for small children. A black girl on a Pleasant Valley holding was valued at £2, the girl Patt, "a Lascar", at £2 and Leah at £1 10s.³⁴⁹⁹

Women were valued below men of the same age, and old slaves lower still. Rydell's man Woodford stood at £26 in 1744 and the girl Phill at £8.³⁵⁰⁰ Gawling's men Cieval and Woodford were £25 each, the woman Sarah £21 and the girls £7 to £10.³⁵⁰¹ In 1759 two old slaves, Bacchus and Betty, were valued at £12 and £15 against £30 for the men Caesar and Jack.³⁵⁰² A mother and child were valued together. Doveton's "Susanna and child" stood at £21, and Pritchard's woman with her female child at £18.³⁵⁰³

Values moved between appraisals of the same slaves. The Swaite estate was valued in 1756 and again in 1758 on the widow's death.³⁵⁰⁴ Dorinda rose from £10 to £19 while Jing fell from £20 to £15.³⁵⁰⁵ Slaves were a large part of a modest estate but a small part of a large one. Samuel Doveton's slaves made under 7 per cent of an estate of £4,841, while a household estate of 1750 owed half its £104 18s 9d to three slaves.³⁵⁰⁶

Company prices stood apart from private values. The Company booked the Madagascar slaves of 1743 at £20 a man and £10 a boy.³⁵⁰⁷ It sold surplus girls to planters at £7 to £16, "having more of that sex than they knew what to do with".³⁵⁰⁸ It sold its slaves at the value entered in its general books, £10 for the girl Mary Simon in 1751 and £21 for Jacob in 1764.³⁵⁰⁹ The table gathers the values stated in the records.

Values are as stated, in island money unless the source says sterling. Inventory values were appraisals; auction and Company figures were prices.

Compensation for Executed Slaves and Partial Verdicts ↑

The owner's loss when a slave was executed was made good by the community. In August 1687 London confirmed as standing law the Council's rule that "satisfaction be levied by poll on all the owners of slaves whose slaves were executed for serious offences".³⁵¹⁰ The same letter scorned a single whipping for some thievish slaves, suspecting it was meant "to save their lives for their masters".³⁵¹¹ In December 1760 the Council described the rule again. After a third conviction a slave might be put to death, "the slave to be valued and the master satisfied according to appraisal, by an assessment on the whole body of inhabitants".³⁵¹²

From 1763 the parish paid the compensation. In April 1763 it paid £35 "on account of the three blacks who were executed".³⁵¹³ In 1765 it paid £15 for Lewis, hanged for strangling a widow's slave woman, and £1 5s for "a pair of chains in which Lewis hangs".³⁵¹⁴ The sum of £15 became the fixed rate. Priscilla Watts received £15 for her executed male slave about 1771, and John Alexander £15 about 1775.³⁵¹⁵ Richard Mason and J. Desfountain had £15 each in 1777, and Elisha Isaacs £15 in 1781.³⁵¹⁶

The word "formerly" marked the owner's loss once a slave was condemned. Will, hanged in October 1762 for rape, was described as "a slave formerly owned by Sarah Knipe, a widow of Prosperous Bay Valley".³⁵¹⁷ When Will and Frank broke prison under sentence of death, both were named as slaves formerly owned.³⁵¹⁸ As later context, from 1794 the parish paid "in line with the valuation made", and from 1803 juries set the sums.³⁵¹⁹ Grand juries awarded between £10 and £34 14s from 1803 to 1830, and the parish held in 1799 that "execution must follow condemnation before an owner could claim on the parish".³⁵²⁰

Juries at the quarterly court often valued stolen goods low enough to spare a slave's life. In August 1762 Cato, boy slave of James Greentree, was tried for taking 12 pagodas worth £4 16s.³⁵²¹ The jury found "theft to the value of £1 19s 0d", and he was branded and returned to his owner.³⁵²² Frank, slave of the surgeon Robert Barclay, took two two-guinea coins in 1765 and was found guilty at 4s 10d.³⁵²³ Lewis, who took two hens worth 3s, was found guilty at 10d and whipped.³⁵²⁴ When the runaway Cupid was tried in 1768, "The bench urged mercy and the jury valued the theft at 4s 10d".³⁵²⁵ Juries did not always relent. Exeter, convicted of taking £6 10s from his master's bedroom, was hanged in February 1763 and the loss "fell on the dead man's estate".³⁵²⁶

Interpretations ↑

The evidence suggested that slaves were the most liquid form of capital on the island. Land changed hands slowly and was often tied by life interests and first refusals. A slave could be sold in a day, pledged for a bond or hired out to raise a weekly income. The pledges of Hannibal, of Long's four slaves and of Phillip and Somsour all left the slaves at work for the debtor, as a mortgage left land with its occupier.

The habit of giving each child a named slave outside the shares probably reflected the domestic place of slaves in planter households. The bequeathed slaves were chiefly boys and girls, and they followed the heir as servants rather than as field hands. Testators who brought slaves into account, as Knipe did, treated them instead as capital to be equalised. The two practices coexisted through the 1760s and 1770s.

The partial verdicts at the quarterly court probably served the owners as much as the slaves. English juries of the period often valued goods below the levels at which a theft became capital, and the island juries followed the same practice.³⁵²⁷ Juries on St Helena were drawn from slave owners, and a hanged slave cost the parish £15 and the owner a labourer. The poll on owners of 1687 and the parish payment after 1763 spread that loss across all holders, much as a mutual insurance would.

Comparisons ↑

Slave prices on St Helena sat close to those of the English Caribbean in the early 18th century. In Barbados in 1708 Governor Crowe reported "the best from £30 to £40 each, and in an average amounts to about £23.8. per head", probably £23 8s.³⁵²⁸ In 1709 separate traders said slaves in Jamaica were "usually sold at from £15 to £26 per head" and "at Virginia for about £25".³⁵²⁹ The Madagascar slaves sold at about £21 in 1717 and the Company's contract price of £21 a head fell within these ranges. Richard Dunn described the same reckoning of purchase price against labour among the Barbados planters.³⁵³⁰

Prices on the mainland rose faster later in the century. South Carolina adult men averaged about £37 in 1722-1729, £33 12s in the 1740s, £37 16s in the 1750s and £55 7s in the 1770s, all derived from dollar figures.³⁵³¹ In Jamaica in 1773 Spanish buyers had "as yet ... offered but £38 sterling, to have the first choice".³⁵³² St Helena valuations of £25 to £31 for grown men in the 1740s and 1750s were well below these later levels, though Cieval's price of £39 5s in 1754 approached them.

Bermuda, a small island like St Helena with household slavery, valued slaves in the same range. A 1714 inventory there valued Robin and Peter at £35 each, Prince at £30, Beck at £25 and Sambo and Ruth at £20 each.³⁵³³ Michael Jarvis described how Bermudian slaves were hired out as mariners and artisans, much as St Helena's masons and fishermen were.³⁵³⁴

At the Cape, estate auctions sold slaves at a median of Rds 112, about £22 at the 1795 rate, an indicative figure only.³⁵³⁵ Slaves there made up 24 per cent of movable wealth in the auction rolls.³⁵³⁶ Cape households averaged 6.67 slaves in 1741-1745, near the holdings of St Helena's middling planters.³⁵³⁷ On the Ile de France the French Company's instructions of the 1720s priced its slaves at "150 a 200 livres par chaque piece d'Inde".³⁵³⁸ No comparable slave prices were found for the Company's Indian settlements.

Hire rates bear comparison with free wages. The St Helena rate of 12d a day for a slave labourer matched the English farm labourer's average day wage of 10.8d in 1740-1744.³⁵³⁹ In Jamaica about 1774 a male slave hired for "about £20" a year in Jamaica currency, about £14 6s sterling at the stated rate.³⁵⁴⁰ At 18d a day a St Helena slave earned his owner £22 10s a year in 1715.

Figures are as given in the sources; sterling equivalents for South Carolina and the Cape are derived and indicative only.

20. Freedom, Land and Status ↑

Free Men and Land in the First Settlement, 1673-1717 ↑

The first settlers held their land on condition of service. The orders of December 1673 required planters to be exercised in arms every two months and to go to their posts on any alarm.³⁵⁴¹ The Company called this "one of the conditions on which the company had granted the planters their lands and other accommodations".³⁵⁴² The Johanna letter of February 1677 repeated the rule and again tied militia duty to the holding of land.³⁵⁴³ A grant of 1684 to Owen Bevan ran to him and his heirs for ever on condition of "true faith and allegiance" to the king and the Company.³⁵⁴⁴ Land was thus a mark of the free settler, and its tenure carried the duties of a free subject.

A former servant could cross into that class. In June 1681 James Dyce, a servant who had gained his freedom, was granted 50 acres rent-free and a cow from the Company's stock, like other new settlers.³⁵⁴⁵ The grant was tied to clearing his arrears with Frith and was entered again in near-identical terms in 1682.³⁵⁴⁶ Free status and the tenure of land were here treated as compatible.

A black man also held land among the first allottees. The jury of 1682 recorded William Fox the younger's 20 acres in Fishers Valley as bounded on the north by Black Oliver.³⁵⁴⁷ Nearby, 20 acres at the head of Sharks Valley adjoined land allotted to Black Slewer, perhaps another free black.³⁵⁴⁸ In 1711 Grace Coulson declared that Oliver and his wife had once been her slaves. Oliver had performed a service successfully, and Munden gave him his freedom in reward, sending the purchase money to his master in Brazil with £5 more than had first been paid.³⁵⁴⁹ Oliver's 20-acre lot passed to his executors, who sold it to Worrall, from whom William Coales's father bought it, the money going to Oliver's orphan.³⁵⁵⁰ By 1707 Coales had held the lot quietly for 14 years.³⁵⁵¹ In August 1713 the Company confirmed it to Ripin Wills as "the lot lands of Ripin Wills of Black Oliver".³⁵⁵² A freed man had held a lot, made a will through executors and left a child provided for from its price.

Other routes out of slavery were narrower. In September 1687 young men over 14 were to be sent to Bombay with their consent, to be paid wages and freed after an agreed term of service.³⁵⁵³ In 1718 Incha Glora, a black boy belonging to Garrett and apprenticed to Rowland Serjeant, was to have his freedom only when his master left him.³⁵⁵⁴ The same year George Bryner, dying, asked Richard Swallow to bring up his child and not to "treat his child as a slave".³⁵⁵⁵ The request implies that a child of uncertain birth might easily slide into slavery.

The line could also be blurred from the other side. In September 1706 Mary Oliver bound herself and her daughters Mary and Elizabeth to serve George Carne and his heirs. Any children yet to be born were bound with them, until the youngest came of age.³⁵⁵⁶ Carne was to clothe and feed them and keep them off the parish.³⁵⁵⁷ A standing order of about 1714 bade any free black who could not maintain himself to hire himself out by the year.³⁵⁵⁸

The clearest early statement of the legal line came in 1717. In winding up George Carne's debts it was held that freed slaves were persons in law and not property. They could not be seized or sold for his creditors.³⁵⁵⁹ Manumission thus placed the freed person beyond the reach of the former owner's debts. Property could be taken in execution, but a person once freed could not.

The Ban of 1723-1725 ↑

The free black presence soon drew opposition. In August or September 1723 the inhabitants petitioned against the freeing of slaves. The case turned on the slave woman Abigail, whom John Coulson had meant to sell to Tom Collier, a free black.³⁵⁶⁰ The Council then enacted that no black was to be made free and that no free black might own or buy a slave.³⁵⁶¹ Abigail was sold instead to John Long, a white buyer.³⁵⁶² The bill of sale, entered among deeds of 1723 though dated 1733, shows Coulson selling her to Long for £25 in island money "to dispose of as they saw fit".³⁵⁶³ On 15 July 1725 the Court of Directors ratified the ban and directed it to be kept as a standing order.³⁵⁶⁴

The order of 1725 had a long life. In January 1813 Caesar, a free black man, won a jury verdict for the slave Susan and her two children against the executors of Ann Seale.³⁵⁶⁵ The Council noted that the Court's orders of 12 February 1725 barred any black person from owning a slave. It added that the slave code allowed no freeing "unless a bond of £100 0s 0d was lodged with the churchwardens".³⁵⁶⁶ Caesar could not give the bond, so the Council asked the Court to declare the three free without it.³⁵⁶⁷ This case lies well after 1782 and is cited only as later context. It shows that the rule of 1725 still bound free black people nearly 90 years on.

The ban of 1723 did not end manumission by will. It changed its form. After 1725 a testator's grant of freedom was more often framed as a request to the Governor and Council than as a gift in his own power.

Freedom by Will, 1688-1781 ↑

The earliest freedom clause in the wills register dates from June 1688. Robert Swallow gave his black boy Philip 3 cows at 21, and his black man Rowly his freedom after the widow's death "if the governor and council thought fit".³⁵⁶⁸ From the start, a slave's freedom by will needed official consent. The widow Sich in July 1719 left all her remaining slaves to her granddaughter, "with the single exception of a woman named Sue, to whom she granted her freedom".³⁵⁶⁹ In February 1722 Thomas Swallow divided allotted, purchased and leased land and four slaves among his family. "To his black man Philip he gave his freedom."³⁵⁷⁰

Some testators added money or passage. In February 1740 Lieutenant Thomas Cason freed his slave boy Thomas at his death with £10, six shirts and a suit.³⁵⁷¹ From the £10 the executors were to pay the storeship's captain for the boy's passage to India.³⁵⁷² John Bazett, of the council, freed his servant 12 months after his death "as he had proved good and faithful".³⁵⁷³ The register copy names the man Jack Hodge.³⁵⁷⁴ The consultation copy of December 1742 names him Jack Pudge, "whom he had found to be honest and faithful to him".³⁵⁷⁵ The two entries are the same will, and the name was read two ways.

Freedom could be deferred behind a widow's life or the life of an heir. Elizabeth Davis, widow, freed her slave Eleanor at her death in May 1759.³⁵⁷⁶ Deleafe then claimed that Eleanor, whom he had bought as a child for £5, had only been lent to Davis for life.³⁵⁷⁷ The Council held that the girl "was properly the property of the widow of Davis", without ruling on the freedom.³⁵⁷⁸ Thomas Greentree in September 1766 left his servant Connor to serve his widow for life and then to be free with £10 to leave the island if he chose.³⁵⁷⁹ John Desfountain in October 1768 left the boy George to his widow "to remain with her as a servant during her natural life, and after her death to have his freedom".³⁵⁸⁰ Mary Seale in March 1772 left the boy Jack to her son George for life, then to "have his free liberty and not be sold as a slave".³⁵⁸¹ Elizabeth Desfountain in February 1773 left Billey to serve her son Charles for life, then to be free.³⁵⁸²

Consent remained a condition through the middle of the century. Francis Wrangham's will of November 1758 freed his slave women Meg and Sukey, of little service through age, "if the Governor and Council of the time were willing to allow it".³⁵⁸³ If a bye-law forbade them to stay free on the island, his nephews were to pay £10 each for their passage off it.³⁵⁸⁴ William Dutton in May 1760 gave his slave woman Anne her clothes, a bed and her freedom "if the Governor and Council were pleased to allow it".³⁵⁸⁵ The Council agreed in June 1760 because he had left "effects sufficient to discharge his debts without her".³⁵⁸⁶ A freed slave was thus an asset withdrawn from the creditors, and the Council guarded the creditors first.

From the 1760s freedom by will came more often with cash, annuities and houses. John Leech in March 1762 freed his slave man Emanuel for past service.³⁵⁸⁷ The register copy gives Emanuel £3, but the consultation directs the executors to pay him £5.³⁵⁸⁸ In April 1769 Elizabeth Greentree, Thomas's widow, gave £5 to Connor, freed by her husband's will.³⁵⁸⁹ She freed her slave Lucy at her death and Lucy's daughter Margaret from the same day.³⁵⁹⁰ Margaret had £50 lodged with Richard Goodwin at interest "while Margaret stayed on the island".³⁵⁹¹ The capital was to be paid out if she left, and to revert to Goodwin if she died on the island.³⁵⁹² The register copy gives the interest as £4 per £100, the consultation copy as 5 per cent.³⁵⁹³ Elizabeth Greentree also directed that none of her slaves be sold "at auction or sold in any public manner". Each might choose a master or mistress who would buy at a valuation by two impartial men.³⁵⁹⁴

Richard Bagley in August 1774 freed his slave Benjamin at his wife's death with £10.³⁵⁹⁵ He freed the girls Christian and Sukey, to be kept by his nephew Edward until 18. Each was to have £5 a year for life, charged on his nephews' legacies of £100 and £300.³⁵⁹⁶ The charge for Christian was still running in 1785, at £2 10s a year on each of two shares of a legacy.³⁵⁹⁷ His widow Jane Bagley in April 1775 freed Abigail and her son James at her death, with £100 at interest for them.³⁵⁹⁸ She left £10 each to her slaves Benjamin and Jane and £5 each to seven others.³⁵⁹⁹ In May 1777 the merchant John Whitchurch left the boy slave Charles to his wife for life. Charles was "then be made free, and be paid the sum of £50 0s 0d".³⁶⁰⁰ Samuel Alexander in September 1779 freed the boy James George at his death with £50 at interest until 20.³⁶⁰¹

The most far-reaching will of the period was Edward Bagley's of August 1781. He freed his woman Pat with £50 with a bed and spoons. He also freed her five natural sons Michael, David, John, James and Robert.³⁶⁰² He declared them no part of his estate and freed Sam, son of the woman Mary.³⁶⁰³ Mary's three other children were to choose masters at a valuation. Their price and the rest of his effects were to be sold for Pat's children.³⁶⁰⁴ A further paper of October 1785 freed another son named William and acknowledged a debt to him of £40.³⁶⁰⁵ Here slaves were sold to provide for freed children, who were probably the testator's own.

The houses came after 1782, and are cited as later context. Julius Fabians in July 1784 freed his slave woman Tillaa and gave her for life the house near the Rut she already held of him.³⁶⁰⁶ She was to hold it with the slave woman Nanny, "on her paying quarterly to his executors the sum of £7 10s 0d each quarter".³⁶⁰⁷ He freed the boy Billy and made him heir to four houses near the bridge and seven slaves.³⁶⁰⁸ A freed slave thus became both a tenant and a slaveholder.

Dates are those of the will where given. Several wills are entered twice, in the register of wills and in the consultations.

The Purchase of Freedom ↑

Freedom could also be bought, by the slave or by another. Stephen Lufkin, planter, in May 1744 deposited £30 with his executors "to purchase the freedom of a maid named Katharine and her child".³⁶⁰⁹ Both belonged to the estate of his late son-in-law John Young.³⁶¹⁰ In August 1744 the executors recorded that "the heirs would not comply with the wish of the deceased Stephen Lufkin".³⁶¹¹ The heirs who owned the slaves could defeat a gift that rested on their consent to sell.

The Company sold its own slaves into freedom at book value. In February 1766 George Butler, captain's steward of the Admiral Stevens, asked to buy the freedom of Grace Tanner. She was a Company slave woman who had saved his life when he was ill on the island.³⁶¹² The Council agreed, since "it held more slave women than it could usefully employ".³⁶¹³ Butler paid £21, the value at which she stood in the general books.³⁶¹⁴ The price of freedom was the price of the person as property.

Self-purchase appears plainly only in the later vestry records, cited here as later context. In 1822 John Chambers kept two infirm free blacks, of whom "the man had bought himself from Mr Henshaw".³⁶¹⁵ In August 1828 Phil, a slave of Major Seale aged over 55, "wished to gain his freedom and could pay for it himself".³⁶¹⁶ The committee waived the usual bond because his wife and daughters, all free, made themselves answerable that he would not become a charge.³⁶¹⁷ A slave's own savings, and a free family's credit, together bought him out.

The Bond, the Parish and the Later Rules ↑

The cost of the old and the sick linked manumission to the parish. Wrangham's provision for Meg and Sukey in 1758 already hinted at a bye-law against freed slaves remaining on the island.³⁶¹⁸ Greentree's gift to Connor of £10 "to leave the island if he wished" points the same way.³⁶¹⁹

The later rules, cited as later context, made the bond explicit. In April 1793 the vestry complained of the many blacks freed in breach of the 37th article of the slave laws, so that they became a burden on the parish.³⁶²⁰ In June 1798 Sarah, formerly Mrs Merriott's slave, showed a deed of freedom signed by Merriott's attorney. The vestry asked whether he should give security that she would not become a charge.³⁶²¹ The Board noted that one slave law allowed every slave "full and free use of any property acquired with the master's consent". Another forbade freeing slaves without security against a charge on the parish.³⁶²² In April 1801 the churchwardens complained of slaves bought by soldiers and others and set free against the slave laws.³⁶²³ The vestry asked that every manumitter give a bond to the parish officers under the 37th article. Without it, "the slaves would be sold at public auction and the proceeds lodged with the churchwardens until claimed by their owners or their heirs".³⁶²⁴ Freedom without security would thus revert to property, and the owner's title would survive in the price.

The Court relaxed the rule in April 1819. An owner might free a slave without bond on certifying faithful service, three years' good character and ability to earn a living. The slave was to be medically examined and no older than 40.³⁶²⁵ Kitty Hamlet, freed by Mrs Robert Leech without a bond, had five children and a slave husband and was in hardship by 1822.³⁶²⁶ The Board ordered that Kitty and her children born before Christmas Day 1818 be supported by Mrs Leech's estate, or that its agent give the bond.³⁶²⁷ Children born after that day were born free and lay outside the owner's liability.³⁶²⁸ In July 1832 a special vestry, with most of the slaves concerned present, agreed "that the 72 slaves on the list be freed", being those aged 55 and over.³⁶²⁹ Several of them were soon on parish relief, still entered under their former owners' names.³⁶³⁰

Free Black People on the Island, 1716-1781 ↑

Free black people formed a distinct and labouring class. In January 1716 the Council, short of Company slaves, had to "set free black labour to work at eighteen pence a day".³⁶³¹ It reckoned that the money spent on hire would buy 120 good slaves outright.³⁶³² In September 1771 Free Moses was paid £2 14s 7d for 19 days 14 hours' work at 2s 6d a day.³⁶³³ In 1745 Mary Bryers, reputed daughter of the soldier John Bryers, complained that Richard Goodwin held her and her mother though they were free.³⁶³⁴ Goodwin claimed £132 8s 1d for the children's keep at £5 a year.³⁶³⁵ The Council ordered the three children to serve him without wages until 21 "when they would be free and at liberty".³⁶³⁶ In January 1757 Billy, a free black lad raised in Thomas Greentree's house, had hired himself to Lieutenant Herbert.³⁶³⁷ The Council ruled that he "continue to serve Thomas Greentree without wages until he was of age", and ordered him 25 lashes.³⁶³⁸

The Company valued this labour more than the Council did. The Council proposed to send the free black women off the island. The Court in February 1749 found no weight in its reasons, "since it was the interest of all communities to have labour cheap".³⁶³⁹ The Council answered in June 1749 that "keeping the free black women upon the island did not thereby make labour cheaper".³⁶⁴⁰ The women stayed.

Free black people were subject to rules made for slaves. In July 1755 two young free black women living with Thomas Greentree were whipped with four slaves for breaking the curfew.³⁶⁴¹ In May 1763 Jason, a free black man drawing wages through a master, was publicly flogged for cursing the Council.³⁶⁴² The fish rules of July 1765 named free blacks with others, but fined a white offender 5s and had "a black man... severely whipped".³⁶⁴³ From May 1756 all free black men aged 16 to 60 were to muster at the main fort on every double alarm.³⁶⁴⁴ In January 1757 all free black men aged 16 and upwards were summoned to the castle.³⁶⁴⁵ The census of September 1769 carried a list of Blacks beside the list of slaves.³⁶⁴⁶ In 1776 free Blacks were to appear in person at the return.³⁶⁴⁷ From September 1778 they were barred from going aboard any ship in the road.³⁶⁴⁸

Freedom did not carry freedom of movement. Emanuel, "a free black man", petitioned in March 1751 "for liberty to leave the island".³⁶⁴⁹ Ellen and Ballow had the same leave in May 1751, and Richard Bowers in August 1757.³⁶⁵⁰ In September 1777 Captain Court took off a free black man named Highgate without permission, a breach the Council recorded beside the escape of a Company slave.³⁶⁵¹

Free black people nonetheless held goods, money and houses. In September 1762 Choir, a free Malay servant, recovered a stolen box of coin and clothes worth £10. "The court handed the items back to her there and then."³⁶⁵² Free Harry kept his own house in the valley, for which he was presented in 1764 as a disorderly house.³⁶⁵³ Dick Hector, charged in March 1765 with taking arrack, offered Henry Harper £5 to drop the complaint.³⁶⁵⁴ Samuel Bowers was ordered in 1759 to pay £4 10s for damask curtains he had cut.³⁶⁵⁵ Free Sarah was a creditor of £4 4s on a dead man's estate in 1770.³⁶⁵⁶ In August 1767 the fencer William Brown left four sixths of a legacy of £300 to "Elizabeth, a free black woman". The rest went to her two sons.³⁶⁵⁷ Thomas Greentree's estate left £5 to Sukey, a free black woman.³⁶⁵⁸

Land holding by free black people is better recorded after 1782, as later context. In December 1792 the directors ordered that Andrew, a free black man, have back the plot he had long cultivated. In their words "it appeared to have been promised to him for life in return for his services".³⁶⁵⁹ They also approved action against Mr Lambe for a debt he owed Andrew.³⁶⁶⁰ The later index of leases shows John Handy, "described as a black", holding 55 feet of Jamestown frontage at 3s, by transfer from a lease of 1789.³⁶⁶¹ James Williams, a free black, held 25 feet from ground sold in 1801 and divided and sold it in four parts.³⁶⁶² Charles Scipio held 3½ acres of country land at 1s an acre.³⁶⁶³ The highway rota of about 1809 lists Susan, "a free woman", with 4 acres and the free man James George with 4 acres.³⁶⁶⁴

The free black population also built on the commons. In May 1787 the Council reported that "the number of free Black people on the island was growing every day".³⁶⁶⁵ The grand jury had complained, and the quarterly court of April 1786 had made resolutions about them.³⁶⁶⁶ In October 1802 the grand jury presented the "free black inhabitants who had built dwellings on the common land" as a nuisance.³⁶⁶⁷ The Council found no proof beyond accusation.³⁶⁶⁸

Land as the Measure of Status ↑

Among free men, land fixed rank and rights. The Company's watch money of 1683 was charged on every 20 acres of freehold, and a slave counted "as an acre" for the rate.³⁶⁶⁹ The original constitution required "a white man" on every 20 acres.³⁶⁷⁰ In January 1717 the Council resolved that planters without their due number of able-bodied men for the militia be barred from further purchases.³⁶⁷¹ The Court required a white man to be kept on every 20 acres "to prevent further engrossing of land".³⁶⁷²

Land also measured the vote. The consolidated laws of about 1707 let free planters nominate churchwardens and highway surveyors at Easter. No slaves, shopkeepers or officers might vote, only free planters settled on their own lands.³⁶⁷³ "No one who had purchased land was to have a vote unless he held at least twenty acres."³⁶⁷⁴ The nominees for sheriff were drawn from the landholders. In April 1764 the vestry named three nominees and the Council chose Richard Bagley.³⁶⁷⁵ In April 1802, as later context, the Governor found that the newly elected sheriff Richard Leech held no land. He cited the English statutes requiring a sheriff to have sufficient lands in the county, but allowed that on the island a house might suffice.³⁶⁷⁶ From July 1769 the sheriff could compel bailiffs "drawn from inhabitants who did not qualify for jury service".³⁶⁷⁷ The free population thus divided into those qualified for juries and those below.

Game, firearms and stock followed the same scale. In February 1753 anyone holding less than 10 acres of free land or 20 acres of lease land was liable to a 40s fine for taking game.³⁶⁷⁸ In October 1768 no one might carry firearms or shoot partridges or doves "unless he held at least 50 acres of land in his own possession".³⁶⁷⁹ The rule was renewed in March 1777, with landed gentlemen in the Company's service exempt.³⁶⁸⁰ In March 1788 it gave way to a written licence.³⁶⁸¹ A regulation of December 1757, republished in October 1768, barred anyone holding less than 10 acres from keeping a horse. The landless might keep no sheep on the commons.³⁶⁸² The stint of September 1779 allowed 2 sheep for every 3 acres held, and only to landholders.³⁶⁸³ A proposal of November 1770 to scale dogs to acreage would have let "no soldier without such property, and no black" keep a dog.³⁶⁸⁴

Landlessness pushed men off the island. In July 1721 William Beale petitioned to become a Company tenant of about 12 acres, having no land of his own.³⁶⁸⁵ In June 1740 Greentree had leave to go to England, "being without a plantation and having no means of getting his living on the island".³⁶⁸⁶ In July 1777 the Council warned that if the Long Wood failed, landowners would guard their fuel and the landless would be in distress.³⁶⁸⁷

Soldiers moved into the landed class through land. In August 1742 James Draper and Orlando Bagley, each with a plantation, were discharged after their contracted years to farm.³⁶⁸⁸ The Council held it right to encourage "the planters to cultivate and improve their plantations", and both stayed in the militia.³⁶⁸⁹ In April 1744 four "black natives of the island" were discharged after five years as soldiers.³⁶⁹⁰ A Francis Hayes and a Benjamin Seale, owners of runaway slaves the next month, were perhaps among them.³⁶⁹¹ Re-enlistment bounties in 1751 were £10 for a European soldier and £1 for a native.³⁶⁹²

Free men could also fall towards the condition of slaves. In March 1743 Long, "late Indian and late soldier", was sentenced for housebreaking to labour "as a bond slave at the fortifications".³⁶⁹³ In January 1744 two white soldiers were sentenced to hard labour at the works "as bond slaves during the pleasure of the Governor and council".³⁶⁹⁴ Men were sent from Bencoolen and Bombay "to serve the Court as a slave during life".³⁶⁹⁵ A hired servant in 1757 refused his master's hours, declaring that "by God he was no slave and would not be confined".³⁶⁹⁶

What a Slave Could Own, and Whose Word Counted ↑

The law treated a slave's acts and goods as the owner's. By the custom of the island the master of a runaway who robbed a planter made satisfaction. In August 1742 two owners therefore paid 30s for a Company calf their slave women had killed.³⁶⁹⁷ "By the custom of the island in cases of this kind the owner of a slave made restitution to the person robbed."³⁶⁹⁸ In 1759 this was "a standing law of the island".³⁶⁹⁹ An order of about 1714 forbade slaves to run into debt.³⁷⁰⁰

Yet slaves held things that were recognised as theirs. Robert Swallow left his black boy Philip 3 cows in 1688.³⁷⁰¹ Ann Fuller in 1713 left a heifer calf to Margaret Hine, daughter of Abigail, a slave woman.³⁷⁰² In March 1700 an orphan named Mary, described as a slave and now of age, was given possession of her own estate so that she could leave the island.³⁷⁰³ In 1710 Mary Hoskison fenced with "Blacks of her own".³⁷⁰⁴ When Simmo took linen laid out to bleach in July 1781, the indictment listed among the goods "drawers belonging to James, a slave".³⁷⁰⁵ A slave's clothing could be named in court as his own property.

A slave's word counted for little against a white person. In September 1744 the Governor stated that "no black person's evidence was allowed here against a white man".³⁷⁰⁶ A free black man could be condemned on a slave's evidence. In 1759 Samuel Bowers was ordered to pay for damask curtains on the evidence of John Prichard's slave.³⁷⁰⁷ In July 1781 the justices postponed James Youd's trial because two slaves were to give evidence. Henry Bazett and Corneille would have admitted slave evidence except against a slave's own master.³⁷⁰⁸ Wrangham, Matthew Bazett and the Governor held to island custom. By majority, "slaves' evidence would not be admitted against white people in any case whatever".³⁷⁰⁹ Counsel in London had warned in January 1781 that full English law for slaves would "dissolve the bond between master and slave altogether".³⁷¹⁰

Interpretations ↑

The evidence suggested that freedom on the island was granted as property was granted, by the owner's gift. It was controlled as land was controlled, by the Company's consent. A will that freed a slave was a disposition of an asset. The Council's concern was therefore that creditors be paid and the parish not burdened, as Dutton's case of 1760 showed.

The pattern of the wills probably reflected the households that made them. Many freedoms were deferred behind a widow's life or an heir's life. Such clauses kept the labour within the family and gave the freedom only when the household no longer needed it. The cash, annuities and houses of the 1770s and 1780s suggested that some owners came to see freedom without means as an empty gift. Most of the larger provisions went to women and children, several of them probably the testator's own.

The free black population was both needed and resented. The Court in London valued their labour as cheap, while the Council and the grand jury saw them as a charge and a disorder. The ban of 1723-1725 on black people holding slaves probably reflected fear that a free black class with property of its own would blur the line on which slaveholding rested.

Land drew a second line among the free. The vote of 1707, the game rules of 1753 and 1768 and the stints of 1757 and 1779 all measured rights by acres. Free black people seldom held enough land to cross those thresholds, so the property tests excluded them in practice without naming them.

Comparisons ↑

At the Cape of Good Hope, as on St Helena, freedom required official consent and security for the poor. Owners there had to guarantee that a freed slave would not fall on the church's poor fund for a term of years.³⁷¹¹ Manumission rates at the Cape were low, and freedom was most often granted to women and children of the household.³⁷¹² The St Helena bond of the 37th article followed the same logic as the Cape guarantee, though it is first seen in the records only in the 1790s. A slave at the Cape fetched a median of Rds 112 at estate auctions, about £22 at the rate of 1795.³⁷¹³ This was close to the £21 at which Grace Tanner's freedom was bought in 1766.

In Barbados the cost of freedom was raised by law. From 1739 an owner who freed a slave had to pay a sum to the parish, which was meant to support the freed person.³⁷¹⁴ The island's slaves were then valued at about £23 8s on average in 1708, with the best at £30 to £40.³⁷¹⁵ St Helena's Lufkin set aside £30 for a mother and child in 1744, a sum within the same range. Barbados also tightened its laws against free black people as their numbers grew.³⁷¹⁶

Bermuda offers the closest parallel in scale. Its slaveholding was small and household-based, and its assembly restricted free black people and pressed freed slaves to leave the colony.³⁷¹⁷ Bermuda slaves were valued at £20 to £35 in an inventory of 1714.³⁷¹⁸ Wrangham's provision for passage off the island, and the leave required of free black people to depart, suggest the same pressure on St Helena.

English settlement law supplied the model for the parish bond. Under the Act of Settlement of 1662 a parish could remove a newcomer who might become chargeable, and parishes took bonds of indemnity from those who brought in poor persons.³⁷¹⁹ The St Helena bond applied this English device to a freed slave rather than to a migrant.³⁷²⁰ The property tests also had English roots. The English game laws from 1671 confined the right to take game to men of landed income.³⁷²¹ Gregory King put the yearly income of a lesser freeholder at £50 and a greater freeholder at £84 in 1688.³⁷²² The island's 50-acre test of 1768 was a local equivalent, set in acres because the island had few incomes in rent.

In Company India the island's slaves met another kind of status. Young men sent from St Helena to Bombay in 1687 were to earn their freedom by a term of paid service.³⁷²³ Men condemned at Bencoolen, Fort St David and Bombay came the other way, to serve the Company on the island as slaves for life.³⁷²⁴ The Company's servants thus moved people across the line of freedom in both directions, as punishment and as reward.

Part Five: Stock, Buildings and Taxes ↑

Beyond land and slaves, the islanders held property in livestock and in houses and town plots. Rights and charges ran with each of them. Cattle, sheep, goats, horses and even dogs were bought and bequeathed like any other goods. They were also marked, counted and stolen. The Company taxed and regulated each kind of property in turn, and the planters defended each as their own.

21. Livestock as Property ↑

Cattle as Money, Gift and Inheritance ↑

The first planters received cattle with their land. Each new settler had a parcel set out and two cattle delivered free, with nine months' provisions from the Company's magazines.³⁷²⁵ A single man who married on the island received 10 acres more and a cow.³⁷²⁶ A planter's son who married an English woman took 20 acres and a cow.³⁷²⁷ John Duffield, four years on the island without land or cattle, received 10 acres and a cow on his marriage in December 1678.³⁷²⁸ In June 1681 James Dyce, a freed servant, was granted 50 acres and a cow from the Company's stock.³⁷²⁹ An early rule let land and cattle descend to a married woman's sons, and a son who settled on the land received a cow and a bull.³⁷³⁰

Stock was a condition of holding land. In March 1679 an heir living off the island had two years to come and reside on his inheritance.³⁷³¹ Otherwise he had to keep it peopled and stocked "so that every twenty acres carried at least two people and two cows".³⁷³² The land was otherwise forfeit to the Company. The same rule was still cited against an absent heir, Anthony Beale, in a later opinion.³⁷³³

Cattle also served as money. The planters owed the Company upwards of £1,800 on the cloth account by 1679, and the debt was to be recovered in cattle at market price.³⁷³⁴ By August 1687 London observed that "all its duties, debts and payments for goods came in by cattle".³⁷³⁵ Cattle were taken from the planters in truck for European goods at about 16s a hundred for beef, on the Dutch model at the Cape.³⁷³⁶ When Smoult fell into debt in 1687 the Council seized all his cattle and set aside his conveyances to his son-in-law.³⁷³⁷ In a drought about 1720 the Council took overstocked beasts from the inhabitants towards their debts to the Company.³⁷³⁸

Private bargains were struck in cattle too. In December 1686 Thomas Fewsdale sold 10 acres in Sandy Bay for £24, 40 dollars and £14 in cattle valued by two impartial appraisers.³⁷³⁹ In 1699 James Draper sold a house near Fort James for £18, half "paid in live cattle, appraised by two impartial men".³⁷⁴⁰ Arthur Bradley sold his 10-acre plantation in 1705 for 100 dollars and two cows with their calves.³⁷⁴¹ The same year John French took a heifer valued at £5 15s and £1 5s of store credit for a piece of ground in Chapel Valley.³⁷⁴² Cattle could also be pledged. In April 1718 John Goodwin sold back to Frances Carne 45 head of black cattle and nine slaves for £321.³⁷⁴³

Wills named cows as carefully as slaves. In December 1681 Richard Harding gave each child cows and heifers by name, among them Crumple, Coppin and Tadigall.³⁷⁴⁴ His cattle grazed on other men's grounds at Sandy Bay and the Peak, "with the privilege of grazing their cattle there".³⁷⁴⁵ John Younge gave each child a named heifer in 1682 and the unborn child the next heifer calf.³⁷⁴⁶ Five weeks later his widow left the cow Browning to her daughter and the heifer Brindle to her newborn son.³⁷⁴⁷ Robert Orchard divided 14 head between his widow and four children in October 1682.³⁷⁴⁸ His overseers were to see the children "not wronged in their persons or in their cattle".³⁷⁴⁹ Gilbert Colgrave left the cows Browney, Merrygold and White Apron to his sons as a separate stock in 1711.³⁷⁵⁰

Cattle passed even to slaves and their children. Robert Swallow's will of 1688 gave his black boy Philip three cows at the age of 21.³⁷⁵¹ In 1713 Ann Fuller left a heifer calf of the cow Long Legs to Margaret Hine, daughter of Abigail, a slave woman in Joshua Johnson's household.³⁷⁵²

Inventories priced cattle by the head. In 1693 the cows Tolley, Stanley and Fannys, each with a calf, were valued at about £4.³⁷⁵³ Bullocks and heifers in the same estate stood at £2 to £3 each.³⁷⁵⁴ In November 1717 Frances Carne sold John Goodwin all her hogs, goats and sheep and 31 black cattle for £206 1s 7d.³⁷⁵⁵ Her 144 goats were valued at £53 2s 6d, her 30 sheep at £28 19s and her 47 hogs at £16 10s.³⁷⁵⁶ By subtraction the cattle came to about £3 9s a head.³⁷⁵⁷ A heifer was reckoned "worth about 40s" in 1732, and the Rydell inventory of 1744 valued 31 head at £107.³⁷⁵⁸

Values rose after the 1740s. In 1749 a large estate valued 72 neat cattle at £416, about £5 15s a head.³⁷⁵⁹ At Gawling's auction in September 1754 cows and calves fetched about £10 each.³⁷⁶⁰ Martin Harper's 24 cattle, with cows named Gentle, Welcome and Lovely, were valued at £134 10s in 1755.³⁷⁶¹ Even so, stock formed a small part of a great estate. Doveton's cattle came to £179 in an estate of £4,016 18s 9¼d in 1744.³⁷⁶² For a small planter it counted for more. A smallholder of 1749 left three cows worth £19 5s in an estate of £285 5s 6d.³⁷⁶³

Marks, Brands and the Toll Book ↑

The law of 1 August 1683 made the brand the test of a right to graze the waste. No cattle were to stray on the Company's waste unless first marked with its brand at Rupert's Bay, the marking being held yearly.³⁷⁶⁴ Owners paid 12d a head for a year's grazing.³⁷⁶⁵ Unmarked beasts were claimed as the Company's goods and chattels, "as lords of manors claimed strays", and the due was called pescionage.³⁷⁶⁶ The Company's own cattle were marked on each horn (see section 10).³⁷⁶⁷ The rule was restated in the island's laws of about 1707.³⁷⁶⁸

Sales of stock were registered like sales of land. A toll book was kept, with 2s paid "for every ox or fat beast sold" and 6d for each sent aboard ship.³⁷⁶⁹ An ox or beast sold without entry in the toll book made the sale void.³⁷⁷⁰ Each sale was also registered with the sales of houses and land, on pain of 10s to the Company.³⁷⁷¹ Another copy of the code set the toll at 2d, or 6d for a beast shipped.³⁷⁷² A duty of 6d was laid on every ox killed or sold.³⁷⁷³ All meat was to be sold in an open market before it went aboard ship.³⁷⁷⁴

Private marks followed. By about 1688 all persons holding cattle had to register their ear marks, and no mark could be altered without licence.³⁷⁷⁵ Parents marked stock for their children within the family herd. In 1696 Mary Dixon left her son "a stock of cattle marked with his own father's mark", to be kept entire.³⁷⁷⁶ In 1710 Richard Alexander's daughter Abigail already owned 4 head under a separate stock and mark.³⁷⁷⁷ Charles Steward set apart heifers under a distinct mark for four sons in 1714.³⁷⁷⁸ He also directed £35 10s from cattle sold for an absent son to be paid him over his share.³⁷⁷⁹

The purpose was to let a child's stock grow. In 1716 the widow Elizabeth Steward gave her son Thomas £50 and a heifer.³⁷⁸⁰ The heifer was "to be put into a distinct mark for all the increase to run on and immediately bring him a stock".³⁷⁸¹ Governor Hodgkinson gave each daughter a heifer under a brand distinct from his own in 1724.³⁷⁸² Deputy Governor John Alexander kept separate stocks for his married daughters on his own lands for about 14 years.³⁷⁸³

The mark was proof of title. In August 1743 Benjamin Pledger claimed a heifer he had bought from Priscilla Higham's father for £2 17s.³⁷⁸⁴ Priscilla proved that her grandfather had given her the cow from which it came.³⁷⁸⁵ Her father had claimed only the raising and keeping of the cattle, and her stock ran unmarked.³⁷⁸⁶ Pledger's own stock, by contrast, "was in his proper mark, as every planter upon the island knew".³⁷⁸⁷ The Council returned the heifer to her and left Pledger a creditor of her father's estate.³⁷⁸⁸

Ear marks later settled criminal trials. In 1755 Benjamin Pledger knew a sheep taken from a flock by its ear mark as John Desfountain's.³⁷⁸⁹ In 1764 one of two goats shot at the Vineyard "had both ears slit".³⁷⁹⁰ In 1769 Matthew Burling's slave Charles knew his master's stolen bull "from the marks on both its ears".³⁷⁹¹ In April 1772 Bazett described his mark: "the right ear was slit downward".³⁷⁹² John Desfountain's mark added an upper point cut away and the other ear cropped.³⁷⁹³ In 1775 Bazett again identified a slaughtered ewe by the mark cut in its ears.³⁷⁹⁴ As later context, in 1794 island custom still treated unmarked sheep and goats on the commons as wild animals that finders might mark and eat.³⁷⁹⁵

Returns of Stock and the Slaughter List ↑

Private stock was counted yearly. From 1683 every planter had to give a yearly account of his household and cattle, on pain of 40s levied by distress for a false return.³⁷⁹⁶ The rule was republished in 1746.³⁷⁹⁷ Each September thereafter the inhabitants returned "an exact signed account of their families, land and cattle" before paying their rents at the Castle.³⁷⁹⁸

The early returns show who held the herds. A return of about 1714 listed each inhabitant's cattle by type, with running totals of 164 head and 528 acres.³⁷⁹⁹ Haswell then held 25 head on 52 acres, and Bazett 48 head on 55 acres.³⁸⁰⁰ The census of May 1721 counted 834 people, 1,711 head of livestock and 3,279½ acres.³⁸⁰¹ Gabriel Powell and John Hodgkin jointly held 178 head of cattle, 73 of them cows, on 255½ acres.³⁸⁰² The widow Grace Coulson held 64 head on 159¾ acres.³⁸⁰³ Francis Wrangham held 52 head on 105 acres.³⁸⁰⁴ Stock was also taxed. Arrears of 6s a head were collected in 1684, and yearly payments for cattle and slaves formed part of the island's £554 revenue in 1727.³⁸⁰⁵

From 1750 the Council required a second return of the beasts each planter meant to kill. In January 1751 every inhabitant with cattle for slaughter had to lodge a signed account of their number.³⁸⁰⁶ A fortnight later sellers had to give the exact weight of each beast and name the ship that bought it.³⁸⁰⁷ From April 1752 a sale to a ship had to be reported within 3 days, on pain of 40s.³⁸⁰⁸ By 1759 the return had become a promise to deliver.³⁸⁰⁹ An owner who lost a beast had to report it in writing within 3 days or "provide another animal in its place".³⁸¹⁰ From February 1772 no planter might kill cattle without leave, on a fine of £2 a beast.³⁸¹¹

The returns give the size of the private herd. The planters' cattle, 1,526 head by the count of 30 September 1746, stood against the Company's "not quite 400".³⁸¹² In 1753 42 holders returned 1,229 head, of which 371 were for slaughter.³⁸¹³ The largest herds were Francis Wrangham senior's 128, Samuel Doveton's orphans' 86 and Purling's 60.³⁸¹⁴ Eight of the entries stood in orphans' names, and one in a woman's, Mary Seale's 11.³⁸¹⁵ The 1755 list spoke of "1,100 stocks", held by 30 planters and orphans' estates.³⁸¹⁶

The 1721 figure is the census total of livestock as stated. The 1746 count is the Governor's figure for the planters' cattle. Slaughter figures are the planters' signed returns for the coming year.

The Council expected cattle in proportion to land. In January 1758 the Council called John Alexander and James Greentree to account for returning no cattle for slaughter. Alexander held 140 acres and Greentree 103.³⁸¹⁷ Greentree said he had been "under a necessity of disposing of his young cattle to pay his rents to the Honourable Company".³⁸¹⁸ Both promised to supply their proportion the next year.³⁸¹⁹

The Beef Dispute, 1745-1755 ↑

The planters lived by selling beef to the ships, and the Company sought to control the price. In 1716 the Council fixed beef to the Company's shipping at 25s a hundred, and every planter was bound to supply at that rate.³⁸²⁰ The same year two French ships paid the planters 4½d a pound for 24 bullocks, and "paid for all with ready money".³⁸²¹

The quarrel opened in 1745. Captain Kirwan argued that the planters' beef at 5d a pound retail fed his men more cheaply than salt beef.³⁸²² The chief inhabitants answered that a lower price would ruin them.³⁸²³ They "would find it hard to maintain their families and pay their rents to the Company, since it was chiefly from the beef that they raised money".³⁸²⁴ On 10 May 1745 the Council fixed beef to the Company's ships at 4d a pound for that year, against the planters' 5d.³⁸²⁵ It noted that a few years earlier the price had been 3½d, and that there had been five good years.³⁸²⁶ London had already ordered foreign ships to pay 6d.³⁸²⁷

The Council then tested the planters' word. It set up a register of all cattle killed and sold, kept in the marshal's office at 6d a head.³⁸²⁸ In July 1745 every planter had to return on oath, within 4 days, the number, kind and ages of his cattle.³⁸²⁹ The planters registered 200 head as spare.³⁸³⁰ The clerk of the market's accounts showed that "the planters had killed and sold alive 326 head, which was 126 more than they had returned to the council".³⁸³¹ The Governor also complained that they withheld beef except in barter for arrack, sugar and rice.³⁸³² The planters replied that the extra beasts had come from their breeding stock and young cattle.³⁸³³

The garrison market became the next ground of dispute. In 1746 the Council summoned planters who had killed nothing for the market since September.³⁸³⁴ In October the planters agreed to supply only 600 lb on Wednesdays and 300 lb on Saturdays, pleading young and few cattle.³⁸³⁵ The Governor reminded London that they enjoyed half their rents abated and leave to sell beef at 5d.³⁸³⁶ He wrote that "it seemed as if the settlement were at the mercy of the planters, whether to live or starve".³⁸³⁷ He named William and Thomas Greentree and Richard Goodwin as malignant planters.³⁸³⁸

In February 1749 the Council asked London whether to fix one price for all beef.³⁸³⁹ It would not curtail the planters "if the inhabitants were not to be left at full liberty to dispose of their cattle just as they had a mind".³⁸⁴⁰ London refused to fix a price but ordered a licensing scheme.³⁸⁴¹ The Council was to learn early each year how many cattle were fit to kill and license the early ships to buy from any planter.³⁸⁴² Later ships bought freely, and planters were not to supply foreigners under 6d a pound.³⁸⁴³

The scheme was soon tested. In February 1750 Admiral Boscawen asked for cattle to give about 11,000 lb of fresh meat for his squadron.³⁸⁴⁴ The planters' signed returns showed only 130 beasts fit for slaughter that season, about 32,760 lb.³⁸⁴⁵ After the Company's servants were served, only 19,760 lb remained for 27 expected ships.³⁸⁴⁶ The Council refused the Admiral, who accepted the 3,085 lb already set aside.³⁸⁴⁷ London approved the refusal.³⁸⁴⁸

The price then became the planters' grievance. In May 1750 they said they had sold beef at 3¾d a pound for 14 months and asked for a floor of 5d.³⁸⁴⁹ Thomas and James Greentree got up a representation for a higher price.³⁸⁵⁰ The Council found that several signers had no cattle, and "the rest did not make a majority either of hands or of stock".³⁸⁵¹ The Wranghams, Purling, Goodwin, Powell and Bazett refused to join.³⁸⁵² In March 1751 the defaulters agreed to supply their quotas at the customary rate.³⁸⁵³

A remonstrance followed in November 1751. The planters complained that the market served other Company servants who could pay 5d while they were barred from selling to the ships to best advantage.³⁸⁵⁴ The Council answered from the clerk of the market's books.³⁸⁵⁵ A third of the complainants had sent no meat to market, and the rest only 23 cattle in 17 months against 133 sold to ships.³⁸⁵⁶ The two Greentrees sold far more beef to foreign ships at 6d than to the Company's ships and market together.³⁸⁵⁷ Thomas Greentree cried that the planters had lost their liberties, but Francis Wrangham senior, "the most considerable planter on the island", would not sign.³⁸⁵⁸ When the Council halved a French captain's order for 30 cattle, it explained its fear.³⁸⁵⁹ If planters were left free, "strangers would soon reap more benefit from the island than those who had the only just right".³⁸⁶⁰

In December 1752 London settled the matter. The remonstrants were "inconsiderable in number as well as in fortune", and Greentree was to be sent to England.³⁸⁶¹ A market was to be held at least weekly and an exact account taken of each planter's cattle and sheep.³⁸⁶² Each planter was to supply the market in proportion to his stock.³⁸⁶³ "No planter was to be allowed to sell any beef or mutton to any ship whatever" without a written licence, granted free.³⁸⁶⁴ Planters who refused to sell fowls unless the buyer took a beast as well were to be stopped.³⁸⁶⁵ The Council published the rules in March 1753.³⁸⁶⁶

The quota was then fixed at one beast in 20. The planters agreed to send "a beast out of every twenty of their whole stocks to the market".³⁸⁶⁷ Finding more could be spared, the Council ordered three a week from June 1753.³⁸⁶⁸ Of 371 beasts returned that year, 205 went to the market, 140 to Company ships and 25 to foreign ships.³⁸⁶⁹ Because the September returns showed 91 fewer cattle, market beef was allowed at 5d a pound.³⁸⁷⁰ Greentree submitted and was allowed to stay, and Benjamin Mason was reprimanded for a false return of his cattle.³⁸⁷¹ In 1754 London left the Council to ration cattle among the ships.³⁸⁷² In 1755 it approved the yearly list of each planter's supply and ordered foreign ships held to bare necessity.³⁸⁷³

Drought, Disease and the Cape ↑

Drought turned stock from an asset into a loss. After heavy deaths in 1714 London wanted a penalty on anyone who should "kill a calf or a cow within a limited time".³⁸⁷⁴ At the same time the leading planters resolved to sell the Company no breeding stock.³⁸⁷⁵ In the words of one report, "They came to a resolution not to furnish the Honourable Company with any breeders, not so much as a slaying ewe".³⁸⁷⁶ Small holders sought waste to keep their cattle alive. Richard Gurling asked for 15 or 18 acres in Swanley Valley lest his stock perish in the dry season.³⁸⁷⁷ John Long, holding only 10 acres, sought 8 acres more of waste to preserve his cattle.³⁸⁷⁸

Heavy shipping and dry years left the planters short. In September 1749 several had "no cattle remaining but breeding cows and sucking calves".³⁸⁷⁹ In August 1752 the planters returned 64 beasts dead of drought since January.³⁸⁸⁰ From then they reported their losses monthly.³⁸⁸¹ A disease of 1761 killed beasts within two or three days and later spread to all parts of the island.³⁸⁸² In 1767 it still chiefly attacked the breeding animals.³⁸⁸³

The worst losses came in the drought of 1770 to 1772. By August 1770 more than 500 cattle had died, chiefly the young animals meant for slaughter.³⁸⁸⁴ The September return of that year had to state the cattle lost since January.³⁸⁸⁵ In December the Council reported that the planters' herds had lost 330 head in two dry years and the Company's 130 in the year.³⁸⁸⁶ In January 1771 it gave the year's losses as 550 for the planters and 150 for the Company.³⁸⁸⁷ The two letters did not agree. By May 1771 at least a third of the island's cattle had died.³⁸⁸⁸ In 1774 the Council told London that most inhabitants lived by selling the stock and provisions raised on their plantations.³⁸⁸⁹ A later drought cut the inhabitants' herds by 809 head between September 1778 and October 1779, and the landholders petitioned for relief.³⁸⁹⁰

The Company restocked from the Cape and passed some of the gain to the planters. In 1767 the Council asked for Cape cattle so that some might be sold to the planters, whose herds suffered greatly from the disease.³⁸⁹¹ Cape bullocks cost 7½ rixdollars each in 1768, and others 18 or 19.³⁸⁹² Half of the old, large animals died soon after landing.³⁸⁹³ By 1772 the Council suspected that Cape cattle had "introduced the disease then present on the island".³⁸⁹⁴ London then sent English cattle to improve the breed, and surplus bulls were "given to the breeders of cattle from time to time".³⁸⁹⁵ In 1774 the Council began selling young English bulls to the inhabitants, and in April 1775 it auctioned five on credit.³⁸⁹⁶ In 1763 the Company also bought a Cape stallion, the island's only stallion being "old and unfit for service".³⁸⁹⁷

Sheep, Goats, Horses, Hogs and Dogs ↑

Sheep spread with the planters' flocks and soon competed with the cattle. In 1706 the Council feared sheep were spoiling the grass, since "there was not herbage enough for both sorts".³⁸⁹⁸ In 1716 the Mary brought a new stock of 20 sheep from the Cape, sold at the Council's price.³⁸⁹⁹ By April 1754 48 holders returned 1,217 sheep, John Goodwin's 69 being the largest flock.³⁹⁰⁰ Women held flocks too, among them Mary Seale with 31 and Helena Ryder with 12.³⁹⁰¹ An island sheep was valued at £1 at the Company's table in the 1740s.³⁹⁰² The stint that tied sheep to acreage is described in section 7.³⁹⁰³ Flocks on the commons were held by partners, and from 1777 no owner might send slaves to impound sheep without notice to two or more partners.³⁹⁰⁴

Goats ran on ranges that were themselves property (see section 7). A range with its goats could be sold, bequeathed and inherited. At Gawling's sale in 1754 John Goodwin paid £36 for "30 goats in Lemon Valley range and the property to the same".³⁹⁰⁵ Joseph Whaley left his son James a goat range with five cows in 1751.³⁹⁰⁶ William Burnham's goats and range at Stone Top were to be delivered to his son at 16.³⁹⁰⁷ In 1745 London ruled: "The goats were of much more use to the Company and the poorer sort of planters than the growth of ebony".³⁹⁰⁸ In 1746 the Governor fixed the market price of goat at 2d a pound, since goats cost nothing to raise.³⁹⁰⁹

Horses were limited to protect the cattle. In 1745 London ordered an attested account of every horse and mare on the island, with each owner's name.³⁹¹⁰ By 1751 there were near 100 horses and mares, and London ordered all stone colts and horses gelded.³⁹¹¹ In April 1752 every inhabitant was to geld his stallions, colts and riggs and return his horses by kind.³⁹¹² From 1759 one saddle horse was allowed for 10 to 70 acres, two for 70 to 140 and three above, on pain of £5 for each horse over.³⁹¹³ In 1768 no one holding less than 10 acres might keep a horse.³⁹¹⁴ In 1777 every colt was to be gelded within its first year.³⁹¹⁵ Horses were valuable. Richard Beale paid £30 9s for Goodwin's white horse in 1742, and the Company paid £18 and £25 for two horses in 1765.³⁹¹⁶ When Thomas Harper shot George Alexander's mare in 1759, Harper had to pay her value and Alexander the damage done by his cattle.³⁹¹⁷

Hogs were property even when they ran loose. In 1751 every inhabitant had to bring in his hogs.³⁹¹⁸ From 1755 hogs rooting in the water channel or rolling stones on the paths might be shot.³⁹¹⁹ In 1758 hogs in the town were impounded for 5s, or sold at auction with the balance returned to the owner.³⁹²⁰ In 1753 very few hogs remained, and pork could not be sold to ships without leave.³⁹²¹ A hog of unknown owner killed at Sandy Bay in 1762 was still treated as stolen property.³⁹²² At the trial Finn said "he would gladly compensate the owner if he knew who it was".³⁹²³

Dogs were valued and then taxed. In 1750 the chaplain Dobie's dog Ponto sold for £1 1s 6d at his auction.³⁹²⁴ In 1759 Matthew Bazett said of his house dog that "he would rather have lost a cow than it".³⁹²⁵ Dogs held by grant from the Company were not to follow slaves except on real service.³⁹²⁶ From 1755 slaves could not take dogs from home without written leave.³⁹²⁷ In 1770 a meeting proposed to scale the right to keep dogs to acreage held.³⁹²⁸ Under it "no soldier without such property, and no black, could keep a dog for any reason whatever".³⁹²⁹ The Council refused the scale. In April 1778 a tax of 5s a year on every dog became law, because of "the damage dogs were doing to property held in common".³⁹³⁰ Undeclared dogs were seized and destroyed.³⁹³¹ The roll of 1778-79 took £44 16s 3d for dogs.³⁹³²

Theft of Stock and the Treble-Value By-Law ↑

The island's law of theft rested on restitution. From March 1681 a convicted thief was to restore three times the value of what he stole and forfeit the rest of his goods.³⁹³³ If he could not pay, he worked for the owner until the sum was worked off.³⁹³⁴ The rule was applied to stock. In June 1755 five men took a sheep that Pledger knew by its ear mark to be John Desfountain's.³⁹³⁵ The Council ordered them to restore the price and three times the value under a by-law of the island.³⁹³⁶ It also fined Joseph Bates £10 and the Easthopes £5 each.³⁹³⁷

Owners answered for damage done by their slaves. In 1742 two slave women of Joseph Desfountain and Matthew Mudge killed a Company calf in the great wood.³⁹³⁸ By old custom "the master of such robber made satisfaction to the person who was robbed".³⁹³⁹ The owners paid 30s.³⁹⁴⁰ The Company applied the rule to itself, paying Desfountain £4 3s 4d for a beast killed by its slaves in 1746.³⁹⁴¹ In 1755 it sent Clark two barrows for a sow destroyed by its dogs.³⁹⁴² In 1760 Samuel Knipe was ordered to pay John Desfountain for two breeding turkeys his slaves had sold.³⁹⁴³

Slaves accused of stealing stock suffered the heaviest penalties. In 1754 six slaves of Francis Wrangham senior and John Alexander were whipped for stealing sheep, and four of them were "branded on the cheek besides".³⁹⁴⁴ In 1757 Wrangham's slave Simon received 300 lashes and branding for a second theft of a sheep.³⁹⁴⁵ The runaway Landey, who had stolen hogs and turkeys, was sentenced in 1759 to 1,000 lashes in five floggings.³⁹⁴⁶ In 1755 the Council complained that it could only imprison and fine a white man and whip a slave.³⁹⁴⁷

Juries often valued thefts low to keep them below the capital line. Soldiers who killed a hog of unknown owner in 1762 were found guilty to the value of 10d and whipped.³⁹⁴⁸ In 1778 a tailor and a yeoman who ate two kids from the open hillside were also found guilty at 10d.³⁹⁴⁹ Larger beasts brought capital charges. In 1768 three soldiers were indicted for killing Matthew Burling's yearling bull.³⁹⁵⁰ Burling was one of the two remaining justices. The Council held that "it would be wrong for Burling to sit as judge in a case in which he was the injured party".³⁹⁵¹ The trial failed when the accomplice was ruled infamous.³⁹⁵² In 1772 William Seale's runaway slave Cato was hanged for stealing Henry Bazett's sheep.³⁹⁵³ In 1778 two runaways, March and Billy, were sentenced to death for killing a sheep and raiding the Company's plantation.³⁹⁵⁴

Interpretations ↑

The evidence suggested that cattle served as the island's first currency. In a settlement short of coin, debts to the Company, house prices and land prices were met in beasts valued by impartial appraisers. Marks and the toll book did for cattle what the register of deeds did for land. They turned a moving animal into a title that could be proved, sold, pledged and inherited.

The pattern probably reflected the planters' dependence on the shipping. Beef was the crop from which they paid their rents, so the price of beef was in effect the price of their land. Their claim to "full liberty" over their cattle was a claim of property against the Company's need to feed its garrison and ships. The settlement of 1752-1753 kept the property private but made its use public. The planter kept his herd, but he had to declare it, supply the market in proportion and sell to ships only under licence.

The regulation of stock seemed to follow the regulation of land. Horses, sheep and finally dogs were tied to acreage held, and the landless lost the right to keep them. The heaviest penalties fell on slaves and soldiers who took stock, while planters who defied the Council over beef were reprimanded and pardoned. Property in livestock was thus secure for the landholding planter and precarious for everyone else.

Comparisons ↑

The Dutch at the Cape supplied their ships in a different way. The VOC farmed out the supply of meat to contractors, the pachters, who supplied meat to the Company and its ships at agreed prices and bought their cattle from the farmers.³⁹⁵⁵ St Helena never let the trade to a contractor. Its Council licensed the sellers, fixed quotas and left the planters to deal with the ships directly. In 1687 London had taken planters' cattle in truck at a fixed rate on the Dutch model.³⁹⁵⁶

Cape livestock was cheap by island standards. Average prices in Cape estate auction rolls of the 18th century were Rds 9.4 for cattle, Rds 20.2 for a horse and Rds 1.18 for a sheep.³⁹⁵⁷ At De Zwart's rate of 4s a rixdollar in 1795, the cattle price was about £1 18s and the sheep under 5s (derived).³⁹⁵⁸ Island cattle were valued at £3 to £6 a head in the same decades, and the Council paid 15s for a Cape sheep landed.³⁹⁵⁹ The gap reflected scarce pasture and the freight from the Cape.

In England ownership of stock was proved in similar ways. Commoners marked their beasts and grazed them under stints set by the manor or village.³⁹⁶⁰ Cattle were driven long distances to fairs and markets, where tolls were paid and sales of horses were entered in toll books.³⁹⁶¹ The St Helena toll book and the register of ear marks followed this English practice. The island differed in having the shipping as its one large buyer. The Company also set the terms of sale.

Bermuda offers a nearer island parallel. Its settlers also supplied passing ships, but they lived chiefly by the sea, by shipbuilding and by trade.³⁹⁶² On St Helena the herd itself was the planters' main source of money. The goats that browsed the island's woods also had wider consequences for its endemic flora.³⁹⁶³

22. Buildings, Town Houses and Improvement ↑

House Ground and the Early Town, 1673-1720 ↑

The first orders treated house ground as a privilege held under the needs of defence. In December 1673 the Company allowed inhabitants "for a fair payment, enough ground to build a house or houses in any valley".³⁹⁶⁴ They were to build in an order that suited the defence, and houses standing between the sea and the forts could be ordered removed.³⁹⁶⁵ The letter of February 1677 left the setting out of house plots to the governor and council.³⁹⁶⁶ It added flatly: "No houses were to be built between the forts and the sea."³⁹⁶⁷ In 1678 timber was granted to the planters to build houses sited for defence above their plantations.³⁹⁶⁸

Houses soon became property in their own right. From August 1683 every sale of a house or land had to be registered with the clerk, on pain of a 10s forfeit.³⁹⁶⁹ A house built on Company ground still belonged to its builder. The Council was told to buy Anthony Beale's house on Company land for not more than £100, a short writing under his hand conveying it.³⁹⁷⁰ Decayed Company buildings passed the other way. Lieutenant Johnson bought a decayed Company warehouse above Fort James for 40s, charged to his account.³⁹⁷¹ In March 1697 he took the masters' wash house opposite the great storehouse in Chapel Valley for £2 placed to his debt.³⁹⁷²

Wills show that a planter of standing commonly held a house in the valley beside his country plantation. In 1682 Nathaniel Barndine left his widow "his house and land, his house at the fort".³⁹⁷³ John Bartlee left his wife a two-room house in Chapel Valley near Fort James in 1684.³⁹⁷⁴ Benjamin Seale gave his widow "one stone house, situated opposite the burying place in Chapel Valley".³⁹⁷⁵ William Price left two neighbouring stone houses in Chapel Valley to two sisters in 1692.³⁹⁷⁶ The appraisers of Thomas Smoutt's estate in 1688 found a double house and four parcels of land with houses.³⁹⁷⁷

The early town houses were small and cheap. Robert Tomps sold a stone house in Chapel Valley near Fort James for £8 10s in January 1688.³⁹⁷⁸ John Nicholls paid £20 for a dwelling house in Fort James Valley with its garden running back to the watercourse.³⁹⁷⁹ Payment took whatever form the island had. In 1696 a tenement house in Chapel Valley sold for £25 "paid in hand in yams".³⁹⁸⁰ In 1699 a house fetched £18, half "paid in live cattle, appraised by two impartial men" and half in Spanish dollars at 6s.³⁹⁸¹ Other houses changed hands for store credit on the Company's books, £15 in 1703 and £170 in 1712.³⁹⁸² The standing orders of about 1714 forbade the Company to lend money to buy houses.³⁹⁸³

Prices rose sharply for the larger houses. Edward Edmunds sold a large tenement house in Chapel Valley Town to Thomas Goodwin for £130 sterling in May 1700.³⁹⁸⁴ In 1715 the same house, now "known as Captain Goodwin's House" in the High Street of James Town, went for £285.³⁹⁸⁵ Resales show the gain on lesser houses too. The Sherwin house bought for £26 in 1694 sold for £50 in 1709.³⁹⁸⁶ A Fort James Valley house sold for £20 in 1709 fetched £32 two years later.³⁹⁸⁷

Houses were also exposed to loss. A violent wind destroyed the house of the poor planter Jonathan Heyham, who asked leave to raise money by charity for his family.³⁹⁸⁸ When Mr Alexander's house broke down in the wind about 1712 he built on fresh Company ground and left his old acres in exchange.³⁹⁸⁹ The Company forbade such exchanges thereafter.³⁹⁹⁰

Divided Houses, Shares and Party Walls ↑

A house could be divided as finely as land. Henry Coales's will of 1700 split his house at Fort James by storeys.³⁹⁹¹ His son Thomas took the lower rooms and the front of the upper storey, and his daughter Elizabeth Mudge the rear half above.³⁹⁹² They shared the stair, and a stone wall was to be built where the weatherboards stood.³⁹⁹³ Thomas bore three quarters of the cost and Elizabeth one quarter.³⁹⁹⁴ Captain Beale's country house was divided room by room between his widow and Gabriel Powell, the slave house going to Powell and the 90 acres split equally.³⁹⁹⁵

Single rooms were sold and reserved. In 1705 Owen Bevian sold a Chapel Valley house for £30 and an adjoining room for £5.³⁹⁹⁶ "Bevian retained the use of it during his natural life", after which the room fell to the buyer.³⁹⁹⁷ Town conveyances carried the party wall as a right. When Mary Conway sold the ruined house plot called Conway's Wash Yard in 1715 she passed "the right of party wall or walls previously enjoyed or paid for".³⁹⁹⁸ The Beale brothers sold the Company two halves of their father's ground in the High Street for £31 10s each, with "any right of party wall or walls".³⁹⁹⁹

Inheritance broke houses into fractions that were then bought and sold. Thomas Allis sold half a James Valley house he had inherited for £5 in 1722.⁴⁰⁰⁰ In 1725 an executor sold two thirds of Richard Alexander's house to Richard Swallow for £43 6s 8d, the other third being Swallow's "in right of his deceased wife Abigail".⁴⁰⁰¹ Elihu Carne took one third of his father's mansion house at once and the other two thirds only on the widow's death.⁴⁰⁰² He sold the whole for £200 in lawful money of Great Britain in 1733.⁴⁰⁰³ Captain William Kennedy's estate in 1760 held "the third part of a house valued at £100", entered at £34 3s.⁴⁰⁰⁴

Widows commonly held town houses for life. Grace Coulson lived in a James Valley house "which she held for her life, during her widowhood, under the laws and constitutions of the island".⁴⁰⁰⁵ In 1722 she bought the reversion from her son for £200 and so turned her life estate into a fee simple.⁴⁰⁰⁶ Ebenezer Leech left his widow the use of his Chapel Valley house for life only if she kept it in repair.⁴⁰⁰⁷ Richard Goodwin's will of 1748 split his James Valley house between his two sons with a party wall.⁴⁰⁰⁸ In 1772 James Powell divided a yard, giving his son the upper half and keeping the lower half and the passage for his own dwelling.⁴⁰⁰⁹ Elizabeth Desfountain left her house to her son in 1773 on condition that her two daughters might live there for life.⁴⁰¹⁰

Town Plots, Frontage and the Building Lease ↑

Town ground was measured by its frontage on the street, not by the acre. In 1704 Richard Gurling sold George Carne a parcel 16½ feet broad running back as described in the deed.⁴⁰¹¹ In April 1711 the Company granted Governor Roberts in fee 43 feet of frontage in James Valley at a ground rent of 5s.⁴⁰¹² He had with it "whatever ground Roberts could make backwards to the watercourse".⁴⁰¹³ The Company later bought the plot back from him in London for £15.⁴⁰¹⁴ By 1717 the Goodwin mansion in James Valley stood on a garden of 94 feet by 107 with a front yard of 45 feet.⁴⁰¹⁵

The Company soon let rather than sold most town ground. In 1728 John Goodwin leased 6 feet of frontage and 80 feet of depth beside the Reform House for 21 years at 6s.⁴⁰¹⁶ Joseph Whaley's lease of 1727 bound him to keep up his buildings and "not damage the watercourses or drains under the side of the hill".⁴⁰¹⁷ In 1730 the Council sold William Gaa four back plots behind houses he had bought for only £3.⁴⁰¹⁸ Francis Wrangham leased a strip behind the court house in 1731 with leave to turn a window into a door for his passage.⁴⁰¹⁹ He surrendered it within six months.⁴⁰²⁰

A run of back-yard leases in 1737 and 1738 set the pattern for the Fort houses. Francis Wrangham took 37½ by 100 feet behind his yard for 21 years at 19s, to be enclosed with a sound wall within a year.⁴⁰²¹ Charles Steward took 2,940 square feet at 14s 6d and Richard Goodwin 3,500 square feet at 10s 6d.⁴⁰²² Jonathan Doveton's rent was abated because clearing ground and turning the watercourse for the Governor had cost "more than the small parcel was worth".⁴⁰²³ Deputy Governor John Goodwin held a frontage of 60½ feet on lives in 1737, with no building allowed within 25 feet of the watercourse feeding the shipping crane.⁴⁰²⁴ In 1743 much the same ground by the channel went to the chaplain Edwin Alcock, with the building line cut to 10 feet.⁴⁰²⁵

Some builders still obtained the fee. In October 1738 the Company confirmed to John Bazett a lot of 62 by 101 feet on which he had lately built a house and outhouses.⁴⁰²⁶ It sold him the ground behind his yard wall for 40s a week later.⁴⁰²⁷ Governor Goodwin granted himself in fee a lot with a messuage, brick chamber and brew house for 15s.⁴⁰²⁸ From 1742 the town lease took a settled form. Nathan Sample leased 50 by 60 feet with the house he had already built for 21 years at 2s 6d.⁴⁰²⁹ He was to "surrender in good order and repair all such buildings or edifices" at the end of the term.⁴⁰³⁰ His own house thus reverted to the Company, the rule for every lessee's buildings.⁴⁰³¹

Petitions for building ground were viewed before any grant. In 1746 Corporal Andrew Blinman's plot was granted as "no ways prejudicial to anyone".⁴⁰³² James Pritchard's ground was found "in no way harmful to the Company or the neighbourhood".⁴⁰³³ A row of small plots on the Southwark side of James Valley followed in 1746, let at 5s to 15s a year.⁴⁰³⁴ In 1747 John Barton's lease of 105 feet carried a covenant to build a footbridge over the water run "strong enough to carry foot passengers safely".⁴⁰³⁵

Garrison men and artisans took most of the new plots. In October 1758 John Legg leased 47 feet of frontage between Corporal Gilbert Clough and Sergeant Michael Frost at 15s a year.⁴⁰³⁶ He was to build a dwelling house "to stand in a straight line in front with the other houses on both sides".⁴⁰³⁷ The quarter gunner John Jacks and Corporal Clough took 60-foot plots on the same terms.⁴⁰³⁸ In 1764 a carpenter, a mason and an officer each took 60 feet on the road up to the Maldivia garden at 15s.⁴⁰³⁹ Back ground behind six James Valley houses was let the same year at odd-penny rents, from 12s 5d to 20s 3d.⁴⁰⁴⁰ By 1769 new ground went at 3d a foot of frontage.⁴⁰⁴¹

The leases of the 1760s and 1770s name a wide range of tenants. John Price, the jailer, took 80 by 52 feet at £1 a year in 1766.⁴⁰⁴² The joiner George Bird and the shopkeeper James Goudy took plots in January 1767.⁴⁰⁴³ Julio Fabiano, a foreign resident, was let 60 feet square at 15s in 1765.⁴⁰⁴⁴ His lease bound him not to alter or remove the fences that marked the plot's bounds.⁴⁰⁴⁵ The covenant became a regular clause of town leases from November 1785, later context outside this period.⁴⁰⁴⁶

Leases and houses on Company ground could be sold only with the Council's leave. Richard Mason assigned his Southwark Street plot to John Scott in 1745 for 20s, leave having been granted.⁴⁰⁴⁷ Onesiphorus Beale was allowed in 1756 to assign his leasehold house "to whoever should bid the most for it".⁴⁰⁴⁸ In 1762 John Price, the marshal, needed leave to sell a dwelling house standing on the Company's waste.⁴⁰⁴⁹ In 1770 Thomas Harper likewise asked leave to sell the house he lived in.⁴⁰⁵⁰ A house bought at Governor Goodwin's sale on Company land without any deed was granted to Richard Gurling in fee by a bill of sale of 1745.⁴⁰⁵¹

Neighbours disputed walls, doors and water. In 1719 Doveton agreed to take down an enclosure projecting into the street.⁴⁰⁵² In 1751 a buyer was refused a back door that opened onto ground sold to John Bazett in 1738.⁴⁰⁵³ In 1764 the Council ordered doors knocked through onto the Ladder Hill lane by Elizabeth Kennedy and Robert Ballard to be blocked.⁴⁰⁵⁴ In 1756 Francis Wrangham and Onesiphorus Beale complained that a new wall had stopped their way and water.⁴⁰⁵⁵ They called the water "the only thing that made those grounds of any value to them".⁴⁰⁵⁶ The governor replaced the wall with a shorter one with a door and allowed them water from the main run.⁴⁰⁵⁷

Prices and Valuations of Houses ↑

House prices ranged more widely than land prices. They ran from £8 for a small Southwark Street house in 1723 to £800 for a James Valley house in 1757.⁴⁰⁵⁸ Table 29 sets out stated sale prices and inventory values.

Sales and inventory values as stated; inventory values were set by appraisers.

The dearest houses stood in the valley at the fort. In 1744 Jonathan Doveton's James Valley house was valued at £250, against £75 and £50 for his two mansion houses in the country.⁴⁰⁵⁹ Richard Goddard's "house at the fort, £270 0s 0d" was the dearest building in the inventories of the 1740s.⁴⁰⁶⁰ His mansion house came to £160 and a house formerly Carew's to £90.⁴⁰⁶¹ Gabriel Harper's house at Fort Valley was valued at £220 and his mansion house at £86 in 1748.⁴⁰⁶² Samuel Doveton's estate of 1749 included "1 house in James Valley with the billiard room adjoining, outhouses, yard and appurtenances, £240 0s 0d".⁴⁰⁶³ His country dwelling house was valued higher, at £300.⁴⁰⁶⁴ Country houses were usually far cheaper. Ebenezer Gurling's country house stood at £15 and Thomas Hayes's dwelling at £20.⁴⁰⁶⁵

Town ground with a house was worth many times country land. In 1746 Edwin Black's 2¼ acres of leasehold in James Valley "with a small house and yams standing thereon" were valued at £200.⁴⁰⁶⁶ That was nearly £90 an acre. Lesser men held several modest houses. The gunner's mate James Pritchard left three houses in 1752, valued at £50, £20 and £15.⁴⁰⁶⁷ Richard Mason's estate of 1755 had no freehold at all, but two James Valley houses at £170 and £20.⁴⁰⁶⁸

The highest prices came in the 1750s. Samuel Falconer's house sold at auction in May 1757 for £291.⁴⁰⁶⁹ In July 1757 John Goodwin sold Matthew Bazett a James Valley house for £800 in island money.⁴⁰⁷⁰ Francis Wrangham's will of 1759 charged his son with the James Valley house and the old court house ground at £560.⁴⁰⁷¹ By 1769 a testator could require whichever child took his James Valley house to pay £800 for it.⁴⁰⁷² At the bottom of the market an executor sold a Southwark Street house for £13 in 1746.⁴⁰⁷³

Houses were commonly bought on credit or mortgaged. In 1739 Thomas Greentree paid £72 down for a James Valley house and owed £178 for six years.⁴⁰⁷⁴ A balance of £38 on a house sale of 1739 carried "interest at the rate of 8 per cent per annum".⁴⁰⁷⁵ In June 1740 Governor Goodwin mortgaged his town house to George Gabriel Powell for £700 sterling by conditional sale.⁴⁰⁷⁶ The Court later resolved to buy that house "and allow five hundred pounds for it towards his debt".⁴⁰⁷⁷ Estate auctions sold houses on credit, Falconer's on security at 5 per cent.⁴⁰⁷⁸ A sergeant mortgaged his house to a soldier for £50 in 1753 and later lost it.⁴⁰⁷⁹

Rents, Lodgings and Houses Let ↑

A market in lodgings grew with the shipping. When the Council arrived in 1714 it paid "forty pounds a year farm rent for houses to put the Honourable Court's goods in".⁴⁰⁸⁰ In 1742 the 11 officers and covenanted servants said they could not pay island house rents from their salaries.⁴⁰⁸¹ They reported that "the inhabitants let their rooms at eight shillings a day" while ships lay in the road.⁴⁰⁸² No lodging could be had under £10 a year, and the Company's six houses were all taken.⁴⁰⁸³ The Council allowed each man £10 a year until apartments could be built.⁴⁰⁸⁴

The Company itself hired private houses. It paid £42 for a furnished house for the late Governor Lambert's family for 40 weeks at a guinea a week.⁴⁰⁸⁵ Thomas Greentree was paid £14 8s for lodging a visiting captain in 1743.⁴⁰⁸⁶ The Company rented a house for its slaves from Thomas Moslyn, paying £18 for two years, and then bought it for £100.⁴⁰⁸⁷ In 1757 it hired two small houses of eight rooms as an overflow hospital at £16 a year.⁴⁰⁸⁸ When the new church displaced the doctor's shop in 1773 it hired a house as a dispensary at £20 a year.⁴⁰⁸⁹

Rents for tradesmen give a fixed point. The master mason John Bland's contract promised a house, but "the Company having none" he was allowed £6 a year in 1746.⁴⁰⁹⁰ In 1771 the master mason Edward Daniels rented a house at £20 a year, which the Council agreed to pay.⁴⁰⁹¹ Other servants without a Company house received only £10.⁴⁰⁹² In 1769 the mason John Preston asked for a plot to build on because "house rent was very expensive".⁴⁰⁹³ In 1758 the Council found 26s for 26 days in a small house "a very exorbitant price", though the landlord claimed a rent of £15 a year.⁴⁰⁹⁴

Planters let town houses for income. William Moore left his widow his James Valley house in 1764 and reserved half its rents yearly for a daughter in England.⁴⁰⁹⁵ Richard Bagley's house at the fort was let to Mr Stewart in 1774.⁴⁰⁹⁶ John Price's will of 1777 applied the rents of two let houses to the purchase money of one and "the expenses of building the other".⁴⁰⁹⁷ Inhabitants built rooms for sick seamen, a trade the Company suppressed in 1762 and allowed again in 1774.⁴⁰⁹⁸ By 1779 a house let to a tenant counted as the occupier's dwelling in a charge of burglary.⁴⁰⁹⁹

Company Houses: Valuation and Allotment by Rank ↑

The Company's own houses were allotted to its servants by rank. In June 1744 its six houses or apartments were held by Dixon, Goodwin and Purling, with Meech, Clarke and Hayes.⁴¹⁰⁰ In 1742 Lieutenant Scott was ordered out of a Company house so that the factor Twyman, next in station, might have it.⁴¹⁰¹ Scott was given £10 a year until apartments could be built.⁴¹⁰² His claim for over £5 spent repairing that house was refused as unreasonable.⁴¹⁰³ The Lieutenant Governor Hutchinson improved his parlour at his own cost in 1746, keeping the right to take out his new windows.⁴¹⁰⁴

The Company bought houses as well as building them. In 1711 the Court ordered Mr Johnson's old house appraised and bought if it stood in the way of new barracks.⁴¹⁰⁵ Governor Goodwin's mortgaged house was bought against his debt and became the Great House.⁴¹⁰⁶ In 1746 its rooms were assigned as apartments of two rooms each to three writers and four junior lieutenants.⁴¹⁰⁷ In 1763 Captain John Clark was repaid £112 for repairs and additions to the house allotted to him.⁴¹⁰⁸ Officers quartered in the Great House were moved out with the usual £10 a year each for house rent.⁴¹⁰⁹

In the 1770s allotment by rank replaced the cash allowance. The officers' barracks, finished in 1773, saved "the £10 0s 0d yearly house rent paid to eight subaltern officers".⁴¹¹⁰ In July 1775 servants complained that £10 a year was no equal to a Company house.⁴¹¹¹ The Council ordered "every member of Council should be allotted one of the Company's houses", the other principal servants following by seniority.⁴¹¹² In March 1776 the Court required an account of every Company house, its occupant, its rent and its building cost.⁴¹¹³ In February 1777 it gave each councillor a house and allotted the remaining four to the chaplain, secretary, surgeon and engineer.⁴¹¹⁴ The allottees held them on condition of keeping them in repair.⁴¹¹⁵ The Court also required "that no building be erected in future without the Court's express licence".⁴¹¹⁶ The Council applied this as the standing rule in July 1777.⁴¹¹⁷

The Company's houses were now treated as capital. In July 1776 the Council ordered them valued afresh because the book cost omitted the work of salaried artificers and "the labour of the Company's slaves".⁴¹¹⁸ It judged that "the original figure was therefore not a true value".⁴¹¹⁹ In 1773 the engineer Tippet built rooms on two Company houses without leave.⁴¹²⁰ The charge was allowed "since the work was an addition to one of the Company's houses, which would be the better for it".⁴¹²¹ The island's net cost for 1777 fell by over £8,000 because finished buildings were entered in the books as Company property.⁴¹²²

The great country house of the Company fared badly. The Plantation House built by Governor Roberts was in 1717 so slightly built that rain came in everywhere.⁴¹²³ A new Plantation House was built from 1753 but leaked through a roof of gutters and valleys.⁴¹²⁴ It was pulled down in 1769.⁴¹²⁵ The Council then explained that the Company owned the stone and lime and that "its own slaves supplied most of the labour on its buildings".⁴¹²⁶ Private men drew on the same resources. In 1744 the Council found that Governor Powell had used Company slaves to carry stone for his own house.⁴¹²⁷ Company lime had also gone to his house.⁴¹²⁸

Improvement Covenants and the Value of Improvement ↑

Improvement was a condition of freehold from the start. In 1673 each deed was to bar sale until the land had been settled by four years' cultivation.⁴¹²⁹ The rule was repeated in 1677 and in 1678 as a proviso requiring four years' residence and improvement.⁴¹³⁰ In 1679 a planter who had cultivated his land for four years held it freely and might sell it as he pleased.⁴¹³¹ The code of about 1707 restated that four years' cultivation gave free tenure with power of sale.⁴¹³²

Building and fencing were written into leases. In 1684 John Draper leased an orphan's land for seven years at £3 a year and was to build a house of 24 feet by 14 feet for the orphan.⁴¹³³ An early despatch pressed the fencing of planters' land, the Company funding the means through the pay office.⁴¹³⁴ In 1711 the fencing and planting laws were enforced, holders short of slaves being given more time but no dispensation.⁴¹³⁵ Governor Roberts held an acre of cleared waste with a right of renewal "for the encouragement of others to undertake similar improvement of the island".⁴¹³⁶

The improving leases of 1717 set out duties in detail. Samuel Price's lease for three lives required him to build a house at once and fence the whole within 20 months.⁴¹³⁷ He was also to plant 10 fruit trees an acre besides timber.⁴¹³⁸ The Council could grant leases for three lives where a tenant made some considerable improvement, such as buildings.⁴¹³⁹ On any sale the fences were not valued, being paid for by the Company, but buildings and planting were.⁴¹⁴⁰ Thomas Cason surrendered two 21-year leases for a lease on lives, citing his great expense in fencing and planting.⁴¹⁴¹ Each tenant was to keep one acre in every 10 planted with wood.⁴¹⁴²

Town leases carried their own building covenants. Francis Wrangham's lease for lives of 1738 bound him to build a substantial dwelling house within a reasonable time.⁴¹⁴³ In 1756 the Lieutenant Governor argued that Wrangham had forfeited the ground by not building.⁴¹⁴⁴ Wrangham replied that Governor Goodwin had taken the deals he had gathered, and the governor ruled the lease not forfeited.⁴¹⁴⁵ The Company called itself "too indulgent to their tenants to take any advantage of them, even though the law might allow it".⁴¹⁴⁶

Improvement raised value, and the Company recognised it. In 1712 Bagley, turned off land he had improved, was still to be allowed his charges for fencing and planting.⁴¹⁴⁷ John Seale had bought a lease of 7½ acres in Sandy Bay bearing 25,000 yams, and left 70,000 after removing a hill and fencing it.⁴¹⁴⁸ The Council renewed it to his widow in 1757.⁴¹⁴⁹ Appraisers distinguished improved from raw ground. One leasehold of 1752 was entered as "10 acres of leasehold land, about 3 acres cleared, the other 6 not cleared, £55 0s 0d".⁴¹⁵⁰ In 1752 plantation land was valued at 20s an acre against 4s for the ground about the house.⁴¹⁵¹

Resales show the premium on built and improved land. James Vaughan's 25 acres with houses sold for £88 in 1742.⁴¹⁵² The same estate, now 26 acres with a house and outhouses, sold for £500 in 1745.⁴¹⁵³ Three acres of leasehold in Sandy Bay with houses fetched £147 in 1741.⁴¹⁵⁴ In 1740 a freehold of 10 acres with buildings sold for £250, or £25 an acre.⁴¹⁵⁵ A rebuilt James Valley house sold for £150 in 1715, the old house having been "held and rebuilt by Richard Cleve".⁴¹⁵⁶ In 1768 the Council resolved never to lease commons improved at public expense, since letting them would defeat the improvement.⁴¹⁵⁷

Improvement of the public estate went with private building. Salt pans were to be sited near the shore in Rupert's Valley, with roads made fit for oxen.⁴¹⁵⁸ From August 1683 every person from free planter to slave owed one day's labour a year on the highways.⁴¹⁵⁹

Public Buildings as Property ↑

Public buildings raised questions of ownership. The parish owned a house in James Valley by 1747, and plots were described by reference to it.⁴¹⁶⁰ In 1767 the court ordered the churchwardens "to assess the cost proportionately on the island's inhabitants" of repairing it.⁴¹⁶¹ Church building rested on subscription. The inhabitants were encouraged in 1716 to subscribe towards a parsonage house, the Company calling itself lords of the manor.⁴¹⁶² In 1743 the churchwardens were warranted to collect the subscriptions for rebuilding the country church.⁴¹⁶³ The vestry later complained that only £36 of £236 subscribed remained and that both ends had fallen in.⁴¹⁶⁴

The school house of 1770 was the clearest case of corporate property. In September 1769 the vestry set aside £450 of the poor fund to build a house for a schoolmaster from England.⁴¹⁶⁵ In June 1770 the Council granted the slaughterhouse ground as the site.⁴¹⁶⁶ The building was to be paid for by the inhabitants and belong to them jointly, so the Council chose to "convey the land to them by deed".⁴¹⁶⁷ The parish paid the Company 40s.⁴¹⁶⁸ The deed of September 1770 described the ground as "112 feet along the watercourse, 133 feet along Mary Hooks's garden".⁴¹⁶⁹ The Council allowed the inhabitants to buy materials from the Company's stores.⁴¹⁷⁰ The parish accounts of 1770-1771 set a house at £730 against its funds, probably the school house.⁴¹⁷¹ The vestry's rules of 1779 kept it solely as a school, its master forbidden "to lead or allow any stream of water into any part of the schoolyard".⁴¹⁷²

The burial grounds were shared between the parish and the Company. In 1755 the planters offered to bear "one half of the cost of enclosing a new one" if the Company paid the rest.⁴¹⁷³ The Company paid Solomon St Maurice half the cost of a wall he built on the watercourse bank "for the safety of travellers".⁴¹⁷⁴ In 1770 the Governor kept the Maldivia walk, made by the Company "for the inhabitants more than 30 years before", at a cost of about £100.⁴¹⁷⁵

Later records show the scale the town reached. In 1811 the vestry gave the school house to the Company on condition it be kept as a school, though valued at £1,500.⁴¹⁷⁶ In October 1825 a vestry committee valued 201 houses in Jamestown at £96,835 and 158 country houses at £61,520.⁴¹⁷⁷ The return closed with "Grand total, £158,355 0s 0d".⁴¹⁷⁸ These figures lie outside this period and serve only as later context.

Interpretations ↑

The evidence suggested that town houses were the most liquid form of property on the island. They changed hands far more often than country land and were mortgaged, let and divided with ease. Their value lay almost wholly in the building and its site near the landing. The ground rent was nominal, from 2s 6d to £1 a year, while the house might be worth £200 or more.⁴¹⁷⁹

The Company kept the ground and so kept control. Its 21-year town lease made every lessee's building revert in repair, and no house on Company ground could be sold without leave. In practice leases were renewed and assignments allowed, so the reversion was seldom enforced. The control mattered more as a check on who held the town than as a source of revenue.

The rise in house prices probably reflected the shipping trade more than local wealth. The officers of 1742 tied high rents to rooms let at 8s a day while ships lay in the road.⁴¹⁸⁰ The dearest houses of the 1740s and 1750s belonged to the councillors and officers who also handled that trade. The billiard rooms of Doveton and of Bazett and Mitchell pointed the same way.⁴¹⁸¹

Improvement covenants shifted the cost of improvement onto the tenant. The Company in turn recognised improvement through renewals, longer terms and valuation on sale. The allotment of Company houses by rank in the 1770s made housing a perquisite of office rather than a cash allowance. The fresh valuation of 1776 showed the Company counting its buildings, and the labour of its slaves in them, as capital.

Comparisons ↑

In England the building lease was the usual means of developing town ground. On the great London estates builders commonly took ground for 99 years, and their houses fell to the ground landlord at the end of the term.⁴¹⁸² St Helena's 21-year town lease applied the same reversion over a far shorter term. A private islander used the English form directly in 1717, when John Goodwin let his James Valley mansion to his mother for 99 years at £20 a year.⁴¹⁸³ English land in 1725-1729 yielded a return of about 4.20 per cent, about 23.8 years' purchase (derived).⁴¹⁸⁴ At St Helena a house sold for £250 in 1739 and a mason's house rented at £20 in 1771, which suggests a far higher yield, though the two figures concern different houses.

Building wages set the cost of a house. Master masons at St Paul's in London earned 28d to 30d a day in 1700-1709.⁴¹⁸⁵ St Helena engaged a master mason in 1764 at £120 a year in full for wages, diet money and house rent.⁴¹⁸⁶ In Jamaica about 1774 building tradesmen earned £65 a year in Jamaica currency.⁴¹⁸⁷

Bridgetown in Barbados was a port town where slaves, sailors and lodging houses filled the streets much as in James Valley.⁴¹⁸⁸ In Charleston private owners built up the town lots, much of the work done by slave artisans.⁴¹⁸⁹ St Helena differed in keeping most town ground in Company hands on short leases.

At the Cape the Dutch Company granted building plots in Cape Town called erven, and their transfers were registered.⁴¹⁹⁰ In Company India servants of the East India Company invested part of their private fortunes in houses in the presidency towns.⁴¹⁹¹ The St Helena councillors who held the dearest houses in James Valley followed the same course on a smaller scale.

23. Taxes, Head Money and Church Rates ↑

Dues on Land, Watch Money and the Duty of 1716 ↑

Rent was the Company's main charge on island land, and section 4 treats it in full. Beside the rent, however, landholders owed a range of dues that were taxes in all but name. The earliest was local. In September 1678 half an acre round the church was enclosed as a churchyard. Families holding land, cattle or stock were rated between 6d and 12d a year to pay the sexton.⁴¹⁹² In March 1679 the Council set a due of 1d an acre on every transfer of land, "and no more", payable to the Company as chief lords of the soil.⁴¹⁹³

The laws sent out in August 1683 turned a duty of service into a money charge. Watch every sixth night had fallen on each planter of 20 acres for two months in the year. The Company commuted it for a yearly payment of 40s on every 20 acres of freehold.⁴¹⁹⁴ Planters able to bear arms still mustered and attended alarms.⁴¹⁹⁵ The rate was restated in the consolidated laws of about 1707.⁴¹⁹⁶ In April 1711 the register put it simply: "These were rated at forty shillings for every twenty acres, which was two shillings an acre".⁴¹⁹⁷ The same laws charged 12d a head yearly for every beast grazed on the Company's waste.⁴¹⁹⁸

Other dues followed. In August 1687 the inhabitants were obliged to accept "the half-tax laid on the plantations of two shillings an acre", sent out under Sir Thomas Grantham's orders.⁴¹⁹⁹ By about 1707 this half-tax was described as a charge paid on transfers of land.⁴²⁰⁰ Private leases passed these burdens to the tenant. In August 1689 Thomas Allis took 10 acres in Deep Valley from John Stevens for 18 years and undertook to pay any Company taxes or assessments.⁴²⁰¹ In December 1717 Frances Carne, leasing 89 acres in Lemon Valley from her son, was bound to "pay all taxes and chief rents chargeable on freehold land".⁴²⁰²

By the 1690s the duties were gathered owner by owner. A revenue roll for 1691-1692 charged named inhabitants on their lands, slaves and cattle, from £8 17s for Grace Coulson to £8 11s 9d for John Cleverley.⁴²⁰³ In April 1711 London asked for a yearly account naming each payer and the sums paid "for their yearly rents, or other taxes on their lands, blacks, cattle and the like".⁴²⁰⁴ The account of rents and revenues to 25 March 1716 set a yearly duty of 12d an acre on all land, with head money on the slaves. The whole came to £124 15s 4d.⁴²⁰⁵ Errors crept in. Richard Beale paid the revenue for his lands twice in one year because two books charged him for the same, and the Council allowed him the overcharge.⁴²⁰⁶

A letter of November 1727 put the scale of these charges in view. It put the island's revenue at £554 in all, from "the duties on the free land, the rent of the lease land and the yearly payments for cattle and slaves". Liquor licences brought a further £35 a year.⁴²⁰⁷ From the 1740s the duties on freehold were merged into the yearly rent roll as a quit-rent of 1s an acre.⁴²⁰⁸ The roll was settled each October after every inhabitant had returned "an exact account of their families, land and cattle".⁴²⁰⁹ A false or refused return cost 40s, "to be levied by distress".⁴²¹⁰ The return thus served as the assessment for every charge on property, not for rent alone. In October 1755 the roll carried a separate column for poll beside ground rent and fees.⁴²¹¹

Duties on Slaves and the Church Head Rate, 1683-1716 ↑

The Company first taxed slaves to pay for defence. In August 1683 it lifted its ban on free planters keeping slaves, citing Barbados with its 50,000 slaves held by 6,000 whites.⁴²¹² The price was a yearly levy rising with the number held, since the garrison must grow as slaves increased.⁴²¹³ A holder of four slaves was to keep an extra Englishman for alarms. Lesser holders paid watch money with "a slave counting as an acre".⁴²¹⁴ The consolidated laws of about 1707 set out the scale: "ten shillings for one slave, twenty shillings for two slaves and thirty shillings for three slaves a year".⁴²¹⁵ The holder of four paid 40s a year if he kept no extra man.⁴²¹⁶ The 1683 text reads 1s rather than 10s for one slave, and neither version squares with the 2s an acre of the watch rate.⁴²¹⁷ Owners of white servants were exempt from the levy.⁴²¹⁸

The church was paid for by a head rate that fell on slaves as well. From Michaelmas 1684 every master or mistress of a family paid yearly "sixpence a head for every person, man or woman, white or slave, above the age of sixteen years".⁴²¹⁹ The money went to building a church and keeping a minister.⁴²²⁰ Payment was slow. In 1684 five years' arrears at 6s a head stood unpaid on slaves and cattle.⁴²²¹ In August 1687 London ordered the Governor and Council to levy "the duties formerly imposed on the inhabitants for their slaves, at sixpence a head" by distress, accepting no excuses.⁴²²² If the Governor failed, the shortfall would be recovered from his own salary.⁴²²³ The same letter rebuked the Council for letting the interloper Woolyford sail from Madagascar unpaid: "they should have detained his slaves until he had paid the duties".⁴²²⁴

The churchwardens also rated land directly. In the 1680s they assessed all landholders other than Company tenants at 2s for every 10 acres to make good a deficit of 25s from the previous year.⁴²²⁵ The consolidated laws of about 1707 kept the head rate of 6d on every person over 16, white or slave, now "towards the charge of repairing the church".⁴²²⁶

The rolls of these years counted slaves household by household. A poll-tax roll of 1698 listed each inhabitant with the men and women slaves held and the sum due; two slaves paid 7s 8d.⁴²²⁷ A two-year head-money roll of 1699-1700 even charged an account styled "Clothing of orphans" on three black persons in 1699 and two in 1700.⁴²²⁸ The 1716 account placed head money on slaves beside the duty of 12d an acre, so that land and slaves were taxed together.⁴²²⁹

Head Money and the Parish, 1748-1779 ↑

By the middle of the century the head rate had passed from the Company's revenue to the parish. The churchwardens collected it. In 1748 the estate of the late officer Barton paid 7s 6d for "the last tax on his slaves as by the churchwardens' account".⁴²³⁰ A small estate of the 1750s owed "the churchwardens for head money in 1752, £0 2s 10d".⁴²³¹ The Council would enforce the parish's claims. In May 1756 the former churchwarden Richard Goodwin summoned the planter William Teale "for not paying his proportion of the assessment, amounting to 5s 3d"; the Council ordered him to pay and he did.⁴²³²

The parish accounts preserve a run of head money rolls from 1763 to 1779. Each named the householder, the number of heads charged and the sum. The 1763 roll charged 945 heads at 1s and 613 of a second count at 1s 1¾d, £82 7s 4¾d in all.⁴²³³ The heading of the second count is lost, and it may have been a count of slaves. In 1764 the roll at 1s 2¾d totalled 968 heads and £59 9s 10d.⁴²³⁴ By 1779 the count had risen to 1,210 heads.⁴²³⁵ The rate changed every year to meet the year's costs, from 10½d in 1775 to 2s in 1777.⁴²³⁶

Rates and totals are as written. In several rolls the clerk's total did not agree with the rate and the heads. In 1778-1779 a further £44 16s 3d of dog tax was added to the roll.

The heads counted were the household's people over 16, slaves among them. The largest counts tracked the largest landholders. In 1771 Purling was charged 56 heads, Bazett 41 and Richard Bagley and William Wrangham 34 each.⁴²³⁷ By 1778 Matthew Bazett headed the roll with 56 heads and Wrangham followed with 44.⁴²³⁸ Small householders paid for a handful. Thomas Watts was charged 10 heads and James Torbett four.⁴²³⁹

Orphans' estates and women were charged in their own names. The roll of about 1770 charged the orphans of John Doveton, Onesiphorus Beale and William Burnham separately, and Margaret Alcock for 21 heads.⁴²⁴⁰ In 1771 the orphans of Orlando Bagley stood at 27 heads and those of John Desfountain at 24.⁴²⁴¹ The 1773 roll named Sarah Pritchard (21), Elizabeth Powell (17) and Margaret Alcock (20) as householders.⁴²⁴² The roll followed each death. In 1774 James Greentree's household appeared as "James Greentree's orphans, 31 heads, £2 6s 6d".⁴²⁴³ In 1775 the clerk wrote "Margaret Alcock, deceased, 17 heads".⁴²⁴⁴ In 1776 Richard Bagley was entered as deceased with no heads, his people having passed to others.⁴²⁴⁵ In 1777-1778 new orphans' estates appeared for John Bazett, William Caldwell, John Congreve, William Hayes, John Price, Benjamin Pledger, John Preston, John Shirtley and Nathan Sampell.⁴²⁴⁶

Some could not pay. Henry Harper, Sarah Lake, Margaret Payne, John Scott and James Whaley were marked unpaid in about 1770.⁴²⁴⁷ About 1771 the parish wrote off £2 6s of "Head money written off for various persons, marked by name, who could not pay".⁴²⁴⁸ In 1776-1777 it excused 16 heads, and in 1777-1778 it excused 28.⁴²⁴⁹ Collection had its own cost. Samuel Knipe was paid £2 2s for collecting the head money in about 1771.⁴²⁵⁰

The head money paid for the parish's ordinary charges. These included relief of the poor, such as £9 8s 9d for Elizabeth Willoughby and £14 0s 6d for John Hayes in about 1771.⁴²⁵¹ It paid the sexton's salary, surplices, books for parish children and the catching of rats.⁴²⁵² The parish boarded out William Peplow, "a parish child", at £3 for half a year.⁴²⁵³ In 1773-1774 it spent £29 5s 4¼d on the country church and 7s 6d on the poor house.⁴²⁵⁴ Rewards for retaking runaway slaves were also paid from it.⁴²⁵⁵

Parish Rates, Roads and the Parish House ↑

Beside the head money the parish raised rates in labour and in money for particular works. Highway labour was the oldest. From 1683 all servants, labourers and slaves were to give up to 20 days a year to repairing the highways, under surveyors.⁴²⁵⁶ A list of 1698 named every white inhabitant and male slave due to give a day's labour on the roads, the slaves entered under their owners.⁴²⁵⁷ By the 1740s each division had its overseer of the highways, chosen at the yearly vestry.⁴²⁵⁸ The overseers were drawn from the landholding families on the rent roll.⁴²⁵⁹

The road duty was an assessment on landholders by their slaves. In July 1767 the grand jury asked for a bridleway from Lemon Tree Gut over the Main Ridge to Sandy Bay. The court ordered "enough labourers be added to the usual assessments for repairing the highways".⁴²⁶⁰ In July 1774 the grand jury complained that the repairs fell in the windiest months, when the plantations most needed their slaves. "Having to send their slaves away to mend the roads at that time seriously disrupted their work".⁴²⁶¹ The justices fixed the start of repairs at 1 October.⁴²⁶² From 1770 the overseers reported their road work at every quarterly court.⁴²⁶³

Money rates met building costs. In October 1767 the constable complained that the punishment house was insecure. The court ordered the churchwardens to oversee its repair and "to assess the cost proportionately on the island's inhabitants".⁴²⁶⁴ In July 1755 the James Valley burial ground was full. The planters' churchwardens, Francis Mowatt and Richard Bagley, said the inhabitants would bear half the cost of a new one, and the Company paid the other half.⁴²⁶⁵ Subscriptions could be given the force of a rate. In October 1743 the Council warranted the churchwardens to collect money subscribed "for the use and purpose of rebuilding the church in the country".⁴²⁶⁶

Fines added to the parish's income and tied it to the regulation of property. Under the Sabbath order of September 1755, an owner forfeited 5s to the churchwardens for the poor for every slave set to work on a Sunday.⁴²⁶⁷ Fines under the game orders went half to the informer and half "to the churchwardens for the use of the poor".⁴²⁶⁸ In July 1770 the reward for a runaway slave was cut to £3. "The owner of the absent slave would pay 10s 0d of it, the Company 25s 0d and the parish 25s 0d".⁴²⁶⁹

The parish was also a holder of capital. In September 1769 its poor fund stood at £450, and the vestry voted to use it to build a rent-free house for a schoolmaster from England.⁴²⁷⁰ By 1770-1771 a house valued at £730 stood in the parish accounts.⁴²⁷¹ From April 1779 to March 1780 the parish rebuilt its parish house. It paid for four doors and three door cases, a roof, a skylight and £11 9s 6d of masons' and labourers' work.⁴²⁷²

Satisfaction for Executed Slaves ↑

A slave executed for a crime was a loss to the owner, and the island made the loss a common charge. In August 1687 London confirmed as standing law the Council's rule that "satisfaction be levied by poll on all the owners of slaves whose slaves were executed for serious offences".⁴²⁷³ It disallowed a grant of £2 4s of Company money to Garway and Fowles for the same purpose.⁴²⁷⁴ The cost was thus to fall on slaveholders, not on the Company. In December 1760 the Council described the rule again. A slave condemned for a third offence was to be valued, "and the master satisfied according to appraisal, by an assessment on the whole body of inhabitants".⁴²⁷⁵

From 1763 the parish paid the owners out of the head money. In April 1763 it paid £35 "on account of the three blacks who were executed".⁴²⁷⁶ In 1765 it paid £15 for Lewis, and £1 5s to the armourer for "a pair of chains in which Lewis hangs".⁴²⁷⁷ About 1771 Priscilla Watts received £15 for her male slave who had been executed.⁴²⁷⁸ In about 1775 the parish paid £15 for a male slave of John Alexander.⁴²⁷⁹ In 1777 Richard Mason and J. Desfountain each received £15.⁴²⁸⁰ In January 1781 Elisha Isaacs was paid £15.⁴²⁸¹ The figure of £15 was thus a customary rate, not a valuation.

As later context, the parish moved to payment by valuation. In 1794 the vestry resolved to pay £25 for two condemned slaves "in line with the valuation made".⁴²⁸² Awards later ranged from £7 for September in 1795 to £34 14s for a slave of Lieutenant Bennett in 1824, at the grand jury's valuation.⁴²⁸³ Section 19 follows these cases and the slaves concerned.

Duties on Trade, Licences and Fees ↑

Most duties on goods fell on trade rather than on land, but they bore on property in stock and liquor. The schedule of August 1683 charged 6d for each ox killed and 6d for each sold, 6d a hundredweight on sugar and 50s a hogshead on arrack or wine.⁴²⁸⁴ A toll book was kept, "for every ox or fat beast sold two shillings paid for tolling it".⁴²⁸⁵ In December 1698 arrack distillers had to compound for the Company's wood at 12d a hundredweight, besides 4d a gallon on low wines.⁴²⁸⁶

The arrack duty came and went. In January 1717 the Council laid 12d a gallon on all sellers of arrack or brandy.⁴²⁸⁷ The duty restrained selling and profited the Company, but "it had created the Governor, especially, several enemies".⁴²⁸⁸ In April 1745 the Council revived orders for 1s a gallon on arrack and 5 per cent on other goods.⁴²⁸⁹ The Court soon annulled them, "in favour of its people and planters".⁴²⁹⁰ In 1769 a new duty of 3d a gallon was laid on all arrack imported, with a salaried collector.⁴²⁹¹ The June quarter of 1769 brought £31 9s 3d on 2,517 gallons.⁴²⁹² Captain Francis Reed refused to pay it on 20 gallons for his own use. The Council answered: "The practice might be unknown at other settlements, but it was the law at St Helena".⁴²⁹³

Licences were charges on the right to trade. Liquor licences brought £35 a year by 1727.⁴²⁹⁴ In April 1745 nine punch-house licences went to the highest sealed bids, £58 1s in all, against £2 each the year before.⁴²⁹⁵ Through the 1750s 10 public houses paid £15 a quarter.⁴²⁹⁶ In 1768 one holder let his licence to a deputy for £50 a year.⁴²⁹⁷ From 1769 a punch-house licence cost £8 a year and could not be assigned.⁴²⁹⁸ In July 1764 six shops were licensed at 40s a year, with mark-ups capped.⁴²⁹⁹

Fees fell on every transaction in land. In 1683 a deed paid a fee of 2s 6d and registration 12d an acre to the Company.⁴³⁰⁰ Clandestine sales of houses or land forfeited treble toll and double registration fees.⁴³⁰¹ In 1704 London ordered "a small fee or duty, to be paid to the clerk on every transfer or mortgage entered in the register book".⁴³⁰² In April 1711 the Company remitted its own duty on the new leases, allowing only moderate clerk's and surveyor's charges.⁴³⁰³ In January 1745 London capped the secretary's charge: "One guinea for a lease or a bill of sale was a sufficient fee".⁴³⁰⁴ That April the secretary Dixon claimed £9 9s from Powell for bills of sale and the registering of leases.⁴³⁰⁵ Renewing a life in a lease cost a fine of a year's rent in 1745 and of half a year's rent from the 1750s.⁴³⁰⁶

The Dog Tax and Later Charges ↑

The last new charge of the period was a tax on dogs. In January 1778 the grand jury proposed a yearly tax of 5s a dog, collected by the churchwardens like parish rates. It cited "the damage dogs were doing to property held in common", since dogs were killing sheep, goats, lambs and kids. It said the tax would relieve the head money.⁴³⁰⁷ The justices made it law on 29 April 1778. From Easter "every dog owner, whatever the breed, would pay £0 5s 0d a year for each dog".⁴³⁰⁸ The money went to the same uses as the head money.⁴³⁰⁹ In July 1778 the constable was ordered to search the island with the list of declared dogs and to destroy any extra dog. Owners keeping more than they declared were fined from their goods, half to the parish poor and half to the constable.⁴³¹⁰

The dog tax soon took the place of the head money. The roll of 1778-1779 added "Cash received for dogs, £44 16s 3d" to £46 1s 9½d of head money.⁴³¹¹ In 1779-1780 the parish received £46 10s of dog tax.⁴³¹² In 1780-1781 it took £40 4s 6d of dog tax and £42 of fines on sheep.⁴³¹³ The accounts of 1781 to 1783 show the dog tax and the sheep fines but no poll tax.⁴³¹⁴ Dog returns were handed in at every quarterly court.⁴³¹⁵

What followed lies beyond 1782 and is given here only as later context. A tax on blacks at 4½d a head appeared in 1786-1787.⁴³¹⁶ A special tax of 2s a head met the smallpox costs of 1789, charged on 217 of the Company's slaves as well.⁴³¹⁷ In January 1791 the vestry excused free black inhabitants from the head tax.⁴³¹⁸ In July 1794 the Directors granted "the horse tax, and the money from fines imposed under the slave laws" to the Widows and Orphans Fund.⁴³¹⁹ In 1796 the parish taxed 1,028 slaves at 3s 6d a head.⁴³²⁰ From September 1805 a family tax charged every household's whites and blacks at 2s 6d a person, 1,716 persons in all.⁴³²¹ In May 1821 a land tax of 2d an acre and 2d in the shilling on ground rents replaced the estates' turns as overseers of the highways.⁴³²² The proclamation of 14 November 1825 abolished the tax on male slaves aged 16 to 60, the land tax and the poll tax. A house tax of 3s on every £100 of value took their place.⁴³²³

Rates are as stated in the records. Rents and quit-rents are given in section 4. Entries after 1782 are later context.

Interpretations ↑

The charges on property fell into two systems that drifted apart over the century. The Company's revenue came to rest on rent and quit-rent, and its older duties on land and slaves were folded into the yearly roll. The church head rate and the levy on slaves passed to the parish. By the 1760s the head money was a parish tax, set at the vestry and collected by the churchwardens. The Company kept its hands off this local purse. In December 1757 the Court saw "no feasible means in view by which anything towards this great expense might be raised without oppression".⁴³²⁴

The head money was in effect a tax on households weighted by slaves. It counted every person over 16, white or slave, so a large slaveholder paid many heads and a poor family few. The largest counts belonged to the families who led the rent roll and filled the parish offices. Those families thus set and paid the rate that relieved the island's poor and compensated owners for executed slaves. The evidence suggested a self-governing body of landholders using a poll on their own slaves for common ends.

The yields were small. A roll of 1,100 to 1,200 heads raised between £50 and £130 a year, against a Company rent roll of about £600. The rate floated each year to meet the year's bills, and the clerk's totals did not always agree with his rates. The dog tax of 1778 was probably welcome because it shifted part of the charge onto a nuisance rather than onto labour. Within two years it had largely replaced the head money.

Comparisons ↑

In England the main direct tax on property was the land tax, charged on rental values at up to 4s in the pound in years of war.⁴³²⁵ Parish needs were met separately by church rates and poor rates, assessed by churchwardens and overseers on occupiers. St Helena reproduced the parish side of this system closely, with churchwardens, overseers, a vestry and a rate. It had no equivalent of the land tax, because the Company took its share of the land as rent. The island's land tax of 2d an acre came only in 1821, and then for the roads.⁴³²⁶

The colonies of the Americas taxed slaves by the head. In Virginia the public levy fell on tithables, who included all free men and all slaves, male and female, above the age of 16.⁴³²⁷ The St Helena church rate on every person "white or slave, above the age of sixteen years" followed the same rule.⁴³²⁸ Barbados raised its public levies by taxes on land and on slaves held.⁴³²⁹ The St Helena levy of 1683 explicitly took Barbados as its warning, linking slave numbers to the cost of defence.⁴³³⁰ Bermuda drew its public revenue more from trade than from land.⁴³³¹

Virginia's quit-rents brought the Crown about £1,411 7s 7d a year in the 10 years to 1713, on more than two million acres.⁴³³² The whole of St Helena's head money in a good year was less than a tenth of that sum. Its rent roll came to less than half of it.⁴³³³

At the Cape the Dutch East India Company took a yearly return from each burgher, the opgaaf, of household members, slaves, stock and crops. Taxes and tithes were assessed from it.⁴³³⁴ The St Helena return of "families, land and cattle", due each September before rent day, served the same purpose.⁴³³⁵ The Cape charged land differently. A loan farm paid "the uniform charge" of 24 rix-dollars a year, whatever its value.⁴³³⁶

In Company India the charges ran on similar lines. At Calcutta in the early 18th century land was taxed at "Rs. 3 per bigha" regardless of crop. The sale of slaves was taxed at Rs 4-4 a slave.⁴³³⁷ Calcutta, like St Helena, taxed slaves as property alongside land, though it charged the sale rather than the holding.

Part Six: The People and the Record ↑

Land on St Helena was held by a small and closely related body of families, and Part Six turns from the rules of tenure to the people who lived under them. It asks who the holders were, how their estates rose and fell, and how far land carried office, credit and standing. It ends with the registers themselves, the record through which the island's property was known.

24. The Landholding Class ↑

The Size and Shape of the Landholding Body ↑

The holders of land were always few. In September 1682 a jury registered the planters' lots valley by valley, and most holdings were the original allotments of 20 acres or parts of them.⁴³³⁸ A few men had already gathered several lots. Captain Beale held 90 acres made up of his own 40 acres at the head of Waterfall Valley and three neighbouring parcels got by purchase and exchange.⁴³³⁹ Edmond Hooker held 50 acres in Chapel Valley by allotment, purchase and a gift sold on.⁴³⁴⁰

The Company required regular counts of this body. From March 1701 the governor was to send a yearly list of planters, marking each as married or single, with his children and the number of slaves he kept.⁴³⁴¹ Later standing orders asked for a yearly list of families with their land, cattle and slaves.⁴³⁴² By the 1740s the return had become an annual ritual tied to rent day. Each September every inhabitant gave in "an exact account of their family, land and cattle", and early in October the planters attended at the Castle to pay their rents.⁴³⁴³

The fullest early count was the census taken in May 1721 and copied on 5 June 1721. It recorded 391 white and 443 black inhabitants, 16 of the black people free, with 1,711 head of livestock.⁴³⁴⁴ The land totalled 3,279½ acres, with 2,068¼ free and 1,211¼ hired.⁴³⁴⁵ Some 70 named heads of household stood behind these figures.⁴³⁴⁶

The rent rolls give a yearly count from 1742. The roll of 14 October 1742 named 67 holders, and the number then moved between 70 and 80 for most of the next 30 years.⁴³⁴⁷ It fell to 65 in 1762 and rose to 82 in 1772.⁴³⁴⁸ Free land stayed near 2,200 acres from 1748. Lease land grew from 1,809¾ acres in 1748 to 2,311½ in 1772.⁴³⁴⁹ The average holding in 1772 was therefore about 55 acres of free and lease land together.⁴³⁵⁰ Many lines on these rolls were not farms at all. In 1765, 19 entries paid ground rent only for town plots in James Valley, and in 1768 there were 21 such entries.⁴³⁵¹

The Leading Families before the Rent Rolls ↑

Gabriel Powell was the first planter to stand far above the rest. In January 1717 the Council called him the wealthiest planter on the island, reputed worth £5,000 and holding about 300 acres.⁴³⁵² He "possessed about 300 acres of his own, and in his own or others' names", with a great stock got partly by marrying several wives.⁴³⁵³ The Court of Directors put his holding at 273 acres with 16 slaves, much the greatest of any one man.⁴³⁵⁴ In the census of 1721 Powell and John Hodgkin together held 255½ acres, 215½ free and 40 hired, with 178 head of cattle.⁴³⁵⁵

Powell's credit matched his land. The Council drew bills of £750 payable to him in May 1721, since he had so much credit in the Court's books.⁴³⁵⁶ In December 1719 it drew three bills of £50 each in his favour, which it judged it could not refuse.⁴³⁵⁷ The Council also counted him among the planters' leaders. In January 1717 it named Powell, Cason, Thomas Wrangham, Richard Swallow and Blunt as the directors of the people in every contention.⁴³⁵⁸ "They were all lawyers at St Helena", it added.⁴³⁵⁹

Other families rose by the confirmations of title in 1713. The Company confirmed 89 acres to Thomas Goodwin's widow Frances and 52 acres to her son John.⁴³⁶⁰ Jonathan Doveton received 90 acres under Halley's Mount, bought from the Company, beside his own 50 acres.⁴³⁶¹ The widows Mary Hoskison and Margaret Sich held 86 and 70 acres.⁴³⁶² Matthew Bazett had built a smaller estate of 25 acres from three purchases made between 1694 and 1706.⁴³⁶³

The 1721 census ranked the other leaders. The widow Grace Coulson held 159¾ acres and 64 head of cattle, the second largest holding.⁴³⁶⁴ Francis Wrangham held 105 acres, 75 free and 30 hired, with 52 cattle and a household of six white and 16 black people.⁴³⁶⁵ Wrangham rose by steady purchase. He bought the 10 acres in Peak Gut from Governor Keeling's heir for £20 in 1714.⁴³⁶⁶ In November 1725 he paid Richard Goodwin £200 for 40 acres in a branch of James Valley.⁴³⁶⁷ In August 1730 he took 17 acres of freehold from Edward Pyke for £150.⁴³⁶⁸

The Bazetts showed another route, the reassembly of a divided inheritance. Matthew Bazett's estate had descended in eighths to his children. Between January 1738 and December 1740 John Bazett bought the shares of his brother Thomas and of his sisters' husbands William Worrall, John French and John Leech.⁴³⁶⁹ Each eighth of the Deep Valley estate cost him about £27 10s.⁴³⁷⁰ He paid Isaac Leech £100 for 10 acres at High Hill in the same years.⁴³⁷¹

The Company tried to keep any one man from growing too large. In 1716 or 1717 the Council doubted whether Goodwin should hold 183 acres, land that had once kept six families.⁴³⁷² The Governor later held that no man with 40 acres or more should be granted more, though he might buy if he kept a white man on every 20 acres.⁴³⁷³ In January 1717 the Council agreed that wealthy planters engrossed the poorer men's land and so depopulated the island.⁴³⁷⁴ Those without their due number of able-bodied men for the militia were to be "restrained from making any further purchases".⁴³⁷⁵ The Court approved the policy, since engrossing weakened the militia.⁴³⁷⁶ In September 1721 Joseph Coles's petition to buy more land was refused for this reason.⁴³⁷⁷ In August 1722 Edmund Bodley's petition for waste was deferred after a neighbour objected that it would harm the whole neighbourhood.⁴³⁷⁸

The Great Holders on the Rent Rolls, 1742-1772 ↑

Francis Wrangham senior headed the first rolls. In October 1742 he held 305½ acres and paid £26 17s 6d.⁴³⁷⁹ The roll of October 1744 gave the same 305½ acres, 168½ free and 137 lease.⁴³⁸⁰ Below him came Jonathan Doveton with 204¾ acres, the orphans of John Purling with 185 and Richard Goodwin with 162½.⁴³⁸¹ Wrangham's holding was thus nearly twice Goodwin's.⁴³⁸²

Wrangham kept buying through the 1740s. He paid the balance of £204 0s 7d for 22½ acres of the late Governor Goodwin's land in August 1742.⁴³⁸³ In November 1746 he bought 16½ acres on the Main Ridge for £234 from the attorneys of John Searle, a London merchant.⁴³⁸⁴ In May 1747 James Powell sold him three parcels of 72 acres with houses at a stated price of £3,075.⁴³⁸⁵ That price, about £42 an acre, was more than double Samuel Doveton's price for land the same month, and it may hide a clerk's slip.⁴³⁸⁶ By 1747 Wrangham paid on 258½ acres of free land and 130 of lease.⁴³⁸⁷

In 1752 the Council called him "the secretary Francis Wrangham the elder, the most considerable planter on the island".⁴³⁸⁸ He held the largest herd, 128 cattle in 1753 and 127 in 1755.⁴³⁸⁹ In October 1756 he stated that he was in his 70th year.⁴³⁹⁰ His family arrangements show the estate being spread before his death. His son Francis, the Company's secretary, sold him 43 acres in 1756 for £750 10s.⁴³⁹¹ In 1758 he assigned 20½ acres of new leasehold to his son William.⁴³⁹² By 1765 William Wrangham held 144 acres of free land and 83 of lease.⁴³⁹³

From the early 1760s Richard Bagley paid the most rent. The Bagleys were an old family: Orlando Bagly had helped appraise Governor Blackmore's estate in 1690.⁴³⁹⁴ Richard Bagley held 163 acres in 1743 and paid £20 13s in 1753.⁴³⁹⁵ He bought freely in the following years. In March 1756 he paid Jonathan Doveton £425 for 20 acres called Annoys.⁴³⁹⁶ In 1758 he took four of Charles Steward's leaseholds for £5 each, and in 1762 he bought back the 14 acres called Bagleys from John Clark for £252.⁴³⁹⁷ In 1763 he paid £47 14s 4d on 126½ acres of free land and 182½ of lease.⁴³⁹⁸ His rent rose to £50 16s 11d in 1769 and £53 4s 2d in 1771.⁴³⁹⁹ He was sheriff in 1764.⁴⁴⁰⁰ He had died by 1776, when the poll roll entered him as deceased.⁴⁴⁰¹

Matthew Purling held the largest acreage in the 1760s. His father's estate had stood on the roll of 1744 as the orphans of John Purling, with 185 acres.⁴⁴⁰² In June 1748 he bought 41½ acres and a house from Samuel Doveton for £600.⁴⁴⁰³ In March 1751 his brother John, a London merchant, sold him his share of the inheritance for £1,158. It comprised 110½ acres free and 62½ lease with houses.⁴⁴⁰⁴ In 1762 he registered five bills of sale for houses and lands lately bought.⁴⁴⁰⁵ By 1764 he paid £36 0s 6d on over 313 acres, and in 1769 he held 313½ acres.⁴⁴⁰⁶

Below these three stood a second rank of 150 to 250 acres. In 1748 Samuel Doveton held 194 acres free and 34 lease, and John Goodwin and Richard Goodwin's orphans each held 130¼ acres free and 59 lease.⁴⁴⁰⁷ In 1769 James Greentree held 243½ acres, Matthew Bazett 237¼ and William Wrangham 232.⁴⁴⁰⁸ The largest appraised estates belonged to this group. Jonathan Doveton's inventory of May 1744 came to £4,016 18s 9¼d, with 16 slaves and 11 freehold parcels.⁴⁴⁰⁹ The largest estate appraised in 1749 reached £4,841 11s 5¾d, with 21 slaves, 203 acres of freehold and 48 of lease.⁴⁴¹⁰

Table 32 sets out the largest holdings on selected rolls, using only the free and lease acres and the rents stated against each name.

Rents include ground rent and parcels at special rates. Lease land paid 2s 6d an acre until 1750 and 5s thereafter, so lease acres weigh more heavily in the later rents.

Councillors and Company Servants as Landholders ↑

Office and land were held by the same men. In January 1745 the Court restored James Powell as a writer, saying that "his holding a plantation being no objection, since most of the Company's other servants held them too".⁴⁴¹¹ In June 1752 the Council told the Court that eight Company servants had stocks and plantations of their own.⁴⁴¹² Some of them supplied more beef to the market than many planters.⁴⁴¹³ The quarterly pay lists of the 1750s and 1760s name many landholders from the rolls. Among them were Purling, Bazett, Kirkpatrick, Powell, Wrangham, Doveton and Beale.⁴⁴¹⁴

Governors and councillors used their places to acquire land. Captain John Goodwin, fourth in council, took a run of small Company leases in 1723-1726 and bought adjoining freeholds.⁴⁴¹⁵ In November 1727 the Governor and Council sold 30 acres called Hutton's land to John Alexander, second in council, for £190.⁴⁴¹⁶ In September 1739 George Gabriel Powell sold his whole estate to Governor John Goodwin for £1,539 6s 4d.⁴⁴¹⁷ Goodwin died in debt to the Company, and his land was sold at auction in August 1742.⁴⁴¹⁸ Powell, now Governor, bought most of it.⁴⁴¹⁹

The deed that followed is the clearest case of a governor dealing with himself. Under the Company's order to raise Goodwin's debt, the Governor and Council sold Powell 69 acres of freehold and 20 acres called Longs for £835.⁴⁴²⁰ The price was to raise what "the late John Goodwin was found to owe on property belonging to the Company".⁴⁴²¹ Powell signed the deed as Governor and was also its grantee.⁴⁴²² In May 1744 he sold 50¾ acres of this land to Samuel Doveton for £650.⁴⁴²³ In February 1743 the Company let him 14 acres at Peak Hill for three lives at 1s 6d an acre, under a third of the usual rate, because so much was barren.⁴⁴²⁴ In January 1744 he granted himself 2 acres of waste in Chapel Valley and a lease of 6 acres on Bank Hill.⁴⁴²⁵

Purling and Bazett acted in the same way a generation later. Purling sat on the Council that renewed his own leases in November 1763 and September 1766.⁴⁴²⁶ In November 1763 he took over Simon Whaley's 5 acres of Company leasehold by the Council's leave.⁴⁴²⁷ In 1771 he assigned four leased parcels, 18½ acres in Sharks Valley going to Matthew Bazett.⁴⁴²⁸ In June 1772 Bazett, a member of the Board, took James Desfountain's 7 acres called Yams.⁴⁴²⁹

The overlap troubled one governor. In August 1746 he protested that "three of the four gentlemen were planters, and in his opinion not competent judges where a planter was concerned".⁴⁴³⁰ The councillors answered that the directors had appointed them, planters as they were.⁴⁴³¹ Office also brought cash. In 1769 Purling remitted £760 by Company bills, and in April 1770 he sent £1,226 5s more.⁴⁴³²

Marriage, Kinship and the Passage of Estates ↑

Marriage moved land between families as much as sale did. The earliest grant tied to marriage came in December 1678. William Doveton, after nearly five years without land or cattle, asked for a freeman's privileges on marrying.⁴⁴³³ Gabriel Powell's estate was built partly on his wives. In April 1711 he asked to have confirmed the land he held "in right of his wife, Mr Beale's widow".⁴⁴³⁴

Widows carried estates to second husbands, and families guarded against the loss. In February 1713 George Carne bound himself, on marrying the widow Frances Goodwin, to pay each Goodwin child £100 at marriage or majority.⁴⁴³⁵ On the same day Frances gave her son John her interest in the real estate of his late uncle.⁴⁴³⁶ In January 1718 Lucas Mason, husband of the former widow Wrangham, assigned 10 acres in Peak Gut to his brother-in-law John Wrangham.⁴⁴³⁷ In 1725 Richard Goodwin sold Wrangham 40 acres that he held in right of his wife Elizabeth, daughter of Sich.⁴⁴³⁸

The leading families married among themselves. Deputy Governor John Alexander's will of 1737 named his sons-in-law James Powell, James Harding, Edward Bagley and John Knipe.⁴⁴³⁹ Matthew Bazett's daughters married William Worrall and John French, and their husbands later sold their shares to John Bazett.⁴⁴⁴⁰ When William Worrall died intestate in 1749, his heirs were his brother Joshua and three brothers-in-law, Martin Harper, John Doveton and Onesiphorus Gurling.⁴⁴⁴¹ Francis Wrangham junior married Margaret, a daughter of the Goodwin family.⁴⁴⁴² His father secured her £30 a year in place of dower on a house and about 38 acres.⁴⁴⁴³ Charles Steward, placed in the secretary's office in 1754, was Wrangham senior's grandson.⁴⁴⁴⁴

Marriage could also link the planters to the governing class. James Greentree's married daughters were Elizabeth Dent and Margaret Skottowe, each given a marriage portion of £400.⁴⁴⁴⁵ His will left them £25 more and no further claim.⁴⁴⁴⁶

Kin often held land for each other. In May 1742 Joseph Bates assigned 50 acres of leasehold to his son-in-law James Greentree before sailing to Bencoolen.⁴⁴⁴⁷ In 1747 Richard Gurling sold about 25 acres he held by marriage to a Ryder daughter into trust for her sisters.⁴⁴⁴⁸ In 1726 five members of the Goodwin, Greentree and Carne families took the 90-acre Horse Pasture together, "sharing the land equally and in common between them".⁴⁴⁴⁹

Women, Orphans and Small Holders ↑

Women held land in their own names on every roll. Eight holdings stood in women's names in 1742, nine in 1745 and eight in 1753.⁴⁴⁵⁰ There were six in 1756, eight in 1762 and 1765 and 14 in 1772.⁴⁴⁵¹ Most were widows. Mary Alexander held 156½ acres in 1742, among the largest holdings that year.⁴⁴⁵² Margaret Alcock held 40 acres free and 60½ lease in 1763, paying £17 14s 6d.⁴⁴⁵³ In 1768 she applied to lease waste beside her enclosed land at Sandy Bay.⁴⁴⁵⁴ Some women traded land on their own account. In November 1758 William Wrangham registered leasehold bought from his sister Frances.⁴⁴⁵⁵

Orphans' estates were as common. Nine orphans' estates paid on the roll of 1743, 10 in 1745 and 14 in 1749.⁴⁴⁵⁶ The number reached 16 in 1754 and 17 in 1756, then fell to 10 in 1768 and six in 1771.⁴⁴⁵⁷ These estates were large. The orphans of Thomas Colgrave paid £27 1s 9d in 1763 on 20½ acres free and 104¾ lease.⁴⁴⁵⁸ In 1753 orphans' estates held about a fifth of the planters' cattle, Samuel Doveton's orphans alone 86 head.⁴⁴⁵⁹ Executors and guardians managed these holdings and often sold them. In 1764 the executors of Thomas Harper were allowed to auction 19 acres of leasehold for the orphans' benefit.⁴⁴⁶⁰

Below the leading families stood many small holders, often soldiers and tradesmen. The Company favoured soldiers who took land. From about 1714 civil soldiers might rent Company land and become planters.⁴⁴⁶¹ In June 1742 Richard Gurling left the service after 14 years, "having now a plantation of his own".⁴⁴⁶² Benjamin Seale, a sentinel of 20 who held 4 acres, pleaded that he was "left alone with his house, plantation and cattle".⁴⁴⁶³ In August 1742 James Draper and Orlando Bagley were discharged to their plantations but stayed in the militia.⁴⁴⁶⁴ The Council held that planters should be encouraged to cultivate and improve their plantations.⁴⁴⁶⁵

Tradesmen held land too, though policy wavered. In January 1716 the Council proposed to settle artificers on small plantations.⁴⁴⁶⁶ By August it would not, "because it thought one business enough for one man, and plantations hindered them of their work".⁴⁴⁶⁷ Later rolls show carpenters, innkeepers and publicans among the holders. John Robinson, a carpenter, took 28½ acres at 1s 6d an acre in 1765.⁴⁴⁶⁸ William Hayes senior, an innkeeper, bought a house and 11 acres of leasehold in 1769.⁴⁴⁶⁹ The armourer Francis Funge and the sergeant Joseph Whaley drew Company pensions and were also leaseholders.⁴⁴⁷⁰

Free Black holders were very few. A 20-acre allottee called Black Slewer appears in the 1682 register, perhaps a free black man.⁴⁴⁷¹ Black Oliver, freed by Munden, held a 20-acre lot that passed through his executors and was sold for his orphan's benefit.⁴⁴⁷² Most free black people of the 18th century appear as labourers rather than holders. In 1716 the Council hired free black labour at 18d a day.⁴⁴⁷³ In 1749 the Court refused to send free black women off the island, labour being valuable.⁴⁴⁷⁴ A planters' proposal of 1770 would have barred any black person from keeping a dog.⁴⁴⁷⁵ As later context, a rota of about 1809 lists the free woman Susan and the free man James George with 4 acres each.⁴⁴⁷⁶

Absentees, the Landless and the Privileges of Land ↑

Island land was often owned from far away. In July 1740 John Bazett and Francis Wrangham, as attorneys of Thomas Mostyn of Angingo on the Malabar Coast, sold 30 acres in Great Bottom for £410.⁴⁴⁷⁷ In February 1742 Joseph Coles of Sumatra sold 28 acres to William Coles, also of Sumatra.⁴⁴⁷⁸ In August 1754 the attorneys of the absent Gabriel Steward sold Lemon Valley Head, 21½ acres, to John Goodwin for £603.⁴⁴⁷⁹ The Company's rule required an heir to live on his land or keep two inhabitants and two cows on every 20 acres.⁴⁴⁸⁰ Otherwise the land was forfeit under the regulations of 2 March 1680.⁴⁴⁸¹

Fortunes made on the island were sent away. In June 1751 Purling paid in £232, part of his fortune, to be remitted to his brother.⁴⁴⁸² When he sailed for England in June 1774 he took bills for £4,150.⁴⁴⁸³ Thomas Greentree paid in £1,578 16s in coin in July 1766.⁴⁴⁸⁴ In 1767 Edwin Alcock, born on the island, sold his possessions and sent £700 to England by the Company's bills.⁴⁴⁸⁵

Others left because they had no land. In June 1740 Greentree was allowed to go to England, "being without a plantation and having no means of getting his living on the island".⁴⁴⁸⁶ In May 1742 William Worrall assigned his 42½ acres to his son and sailed for India with three young children.⁴⁴⁸⁷ In December 1752 Desfountain sold 23½ acres of freehold before going to India.⁴⁴⁸⁸ John Goodwin sold all his effects and his freehold in 1757.⁴⁴⁸⁹

The landless lost common rights as the commons grew scarce. A planters' committee proposed in December 1757 that holders keep one sheep for every three acres and that the landless keep none.⁴⁴⁹⁰ From 1768 no one holding less than 10 acres might keep a horse, and no one holding no land might keep sheep on the commons.⁴⁴⁹¹ The Long Wood, the fuel of the valley, was failing by 1777. The Council warned that "the rest of the inhabitants, who had no land, would be reduced to the greatest distress".⁴⁴⁹²

Land also carried political and social privileges. From August 1683 only free planters settled on their own land might vote for island officers, each with one vote however large his holding.⁴⁴⁹³ A purchaser needed at least 20 acres to vote.⁴⁴⁹⁴ In 1753 shooting game was confined to holders of 10 acres of free land or 20 acres of lease land.⁴⁴⁹⁵ From October 1768 no one might carry firearms "unless he held at least 50 acres of land in his own possession".⁴⁴⁹⁶ The rule was renewed in March 1777.⁴⁴⁹⁷ Horses were rationed by acreage in 1759, with three as the most for a holding of 140 acres or more.⁴⁴⁹⁸ From 1763 the vestry nominated three leading inhabitants for sheriff, and they were landholders on the roll.⁴⁴⁹⁹ In 1772 the island's freeholders chose a coroner unanimously.⁴⁵⁰⁰ As later context, in 1802 the Governor ruled that a sheriff must hold real property, though on the island a house might suffice.⁴⁵⁰¹

Interpretations ↑

The landholding body was small, stable in number and rich at the top. Between 65 and 82 holders shared about 4,000 acres, and a handful held 200 to 300 acres each. The leadership changed hands every generation, from Powell to Wrangham, Bagley and Purling. Each rise came by purchase, often of an estate that death, debt or departure had broken. The rules against engrossing probably slowed this, but they were seldom applied to councillors.

The evidence suggested that office and land reinforced each other. Councillors leased Company land to themselves, renewed their own leases and bought at auctions they supervised. Powell's purchase of Goodwin's estate showed the pattern at its plainest. The Company accepted the overlap because its servants were the island's most solvent tenants.

Women and orphans held a large share of land at any moment, but mostly for a time. Widows kept estates for life or widowhood, and orphans' land was managed and often sold before they came of age. The frequency of orphans' estates probably reflected early death among the holders. The steady flow of remittances suggested that the leading families treated the island as a place to make money rather than to stay.

Comparisons ↑

England offers the closest measure of rank. Gregory King set the yearly income of a gentleman in 1688 at £280, a greater freeholder at £84 and a lesser freeholder at £50.⁴⁵⁰² Capitalised at 20 years' purchase, a gentleman's £280 implies an estate of about £5,600, a derived figure.⁴⁵⁰³ St Helena's largest estates of £4,000 to £4,850 stood close to that level. Bagley's rent of £53 a year was itself above a lesser freeholder's whole income. English landed society also tied privileges to land, and the 50-acre rule for firearms followed English game law in principle.⁴⁵⁰⁴

The Barbados planter elite was far richer. A model 100-acre sugar plantation with 50 slaves was costed at £5,625 in 1690.⁴⁵⁰⁵ In Jamaica the mean sugar estate was valued at £19,500 sterling in 1774.⁴⁵⁰⁶ Dunn traced the concentration of Barbados land in the hands of a few great planters.⁴⁵⁰⁷ St Helena never produced a staple crop, and its holders remained middling farmers and graziers by Caribbean standards.

Bermuda is the nearer parallel. Its holdings were small and its leading families combined land with shipping and trade.⁴⁵⁰⁸ St Helena's planters likewise lived by supplying ships, though through the Company's controls.

The Cape's freeburgher elite shared St Helena's position under a trading company. Early Cape freehold grants were of about 60 morgen, some 50 hectares, similar in scale to St Helena holdings.⁴⁵⁰⁹ Average Cape household movable wealth was Rds 1,578.7, and the richest group held Rds 5,361.4.⁴⁵¹⁰ At the Cape too the leading burghers gained from office and from contracts to supply the Company.⁴⁵¹¹

In Company India, servants were expected to make private fortunes and remit them home.⁴⁵¹² Purling's £4,150 was small beside Bengal fortunes, but it followed the same habit of service, private trade and return.

25. The Registers: Record, Error and Fraud ↑

The Orders to Register, 1673-1711 ↑

The Company meant from the first that title to land on St Helena should rest on a written register. The orders of 13 December 1673 required a register of every grant, transfer and sale by a planter of his house and plantation.⁴⁵¹³ Its purpose was "to guard against every kind of fraudulent conveyance".⁴⁵¹⁴ A second register was to record births, marriages and burials.⁴⁵¹⁵ The Governor was also to send home each man's name and land with its butts and bounds, so that the Company could draw deeds under its common seal.⁴⁵¹⁶

The letter of 20 February 1677 made registration a condition of a valid sale. Lands granted on a planter's arrival were to be registered, and the governor and council were to record every later sale and conveyance.⁴⁵¹⁷ The order added that "no sale or conveyance was to be treated as valid unless it was registered, with a duplicate kept safely".⁴⁵¹⁸ The duplicate was meant to prevent suits. The Company's abstract of laws repeated the rule in February 1678.⁴⁵¹⁹

The orders of 26 March 1679 set out a full procedure. Every holder was to register his land within six months in a book kept by the governor or his deputy.⁴⁵²⁰ Each entry was to record "the quantity of acres, the exact boundaries and the name of the person holding or enjoying them".⁴⁵²¹ After examination the governor gave the owner a certificate without fee.⁴⁵²² Later grants, and every change by sale, transfer or inheritance, were to be registered within a month.⁴⁵²³ On each transfer 1d an acre was due to the Company as chief lords of the soil, with a further sum to the register.⁴⁵²⁴ Deserted and uncultivated land was deemed forfeit.⁴⁵²⁵

The orders of 1 August 1683 sharpened the penalty. A sale, transfer, gift or division of land was void against the purchaser, heir or assign unless registered within a month.⁴⁵²⁶ A planter who had cleared his debt received a printed Company deed, attested by the register with the folio of entry, and paid the register 2s 6d.⁴⁵²⁷ Registration also carried 12d an acre to the Company as lords proprietors.⁴⁵²⁸ Sales of cattle, houses and land were to be entered in the toll book and register on a penalty of 10s.⁴⁵²⁹ The Company sent printed blank forms of deeds and leases, and the register noted the page where each was entered.⁴⁵³⁰

Disputes over possession prompted a further order of 30 November 1704. Transfers and mortgages were to be entered in a register at the fort, signed by buyer and seller and attested by the governor and council.⁴⁵³¹ A transfer not so entered was not binding.⁴⁵³² Every inhabitant was also to declare the land he claimed by a set day. A claim unchallenged within about six months was to be "taken as certain evidence of the property, not to be disputed in future".⁴⁵³³ The clerk was to take a small fee, and the registers were to lie open for inspection without charge.⁴⁵³⁴ The consolidated laws of about 1707 made these rules law, and a margin marked them as what made a valid title.⁴⁵³⁵ The Company's abstract of the same order is dated 30 November 1702, probably a slip for 1704.⁴⁵³⁶ In April 1708 the Company asked whether the clerk's fees for deeds and for registering lands were acceptable to the people.⁴⁵³⁷

The repetition of these orders shows that they were not kept. In about 1710 the Company learned that consultation books and registers of wills had been destroyed or damaged by rats, moth or wet.⁴⁵³⁸ It ordered all leases, wills, surveys and other public writings to be entered in books, with the originals lodged where those concerned could consult them.⁴⁵³⁹ In April 1711 it found that grants had never been registered, so that "many people's titles were become precarious".⁴⁵⁴⁰ All fenced land was to be measured and new grants issued with plans, the Company remitting its own duty for the occasion.⁴⁵⁴¹ The laws of 1679 to 1693 had never been published to the inhabitants, and now were to be.⁴⁵⁴² The Council itself found many lands held, bought and sold without registration, the church lands among them.⁴⁵⁴³

The Land Registers in Use ↑

The first surviving land register opens with a jury inquest of 26 September 1682. It traced each holding by valley and abuttals from the original allottee, with a running total of acres.⁴⁵⁴⁴ A certificate of 18 December 1707 explains its disorder. The deeds of 1683 to 1707 had been copied from "an older book that had become unbound and decayed by rats".⁴⁵⁴⁵ The clerk of the council examined the copies before witnesses at Fort James.⁴⁵⁴⁶ Before deeds were issued, the council minutes served as the record. A sale of 1694 recited that James Eastings's grant stood in "the Grand Council Book, the only book of record then kept".⁴⁵⁴⁷

The settlement of titles in 1711-1714 filled the register with confirmations. Each title was examined in consultation after notice by beat of drum brought no claim, and a plan was annexed.⁴⁵⁴⁸ William Seale's deed of 1713 states that "a copy of the deed and plan were entered in the register book".⁴⁵⁴⁹ Several engrossments were left with the consultation date and witnesses blank.⁴⁵⁵⁰ In April 1711 the council ordered a separate book of plans and deeds.⁴⁵⁵¹ By 1719 deeds cited "the old register book", and by 1723 assignments went into "the new register book".⁴⁵⁵² The first register closes with about nine blank engrossments of the standard lease for three lives.⁴⁵⁵³

Later registers carry the series on. Deeds and leases survive for the 1720s, for 1730-1761 and for 1731-1748, the last a fair copy of some 170 leases and assignments.⁴⁵⁵⁴ Leases of 1759 and of 1766-1790 survive in two further books.⁴⁵⁵⁵ The wills stand in two registers, from 1683 and from the later 18th century.⁴⁵⁵⁶ Probate inventories, and the yearly public notices, fill volumes of their own.⁴⁵⁵⁷ A later index of town and country leases, compiled in the 19th century, cites lettered register books B, C, D and E.⁴⁵⁵⁸ It also cites "the lease book for 1749 to 1766".⁴⁵⁵⁹

Title often passed by endorsement on the deed itself. In 1687 James Eastop sold John Coole 10 acres at the head of Fisher Valley for £8 sterling.⁴⁵⁶⁰ Coole assigned his right by endorsement to Edward Brayne in 1688, and Brayne to Edward Heath in 1702.⁴⁵⁶¹ Mary Swallow's assignment of 1721 lay "on the back of an original lease granted to Richard Swallow, deceased".⁴⁵⁶² A lease of 99 years was "too old to be endorsed without risk of defacing it" in 1758.⁴⁵⁶³ In 1760 Jonathan Doveton wrote an assignment separately because "there was no room left on the lease itself for a note of it".⁴⁵⁶⁴

Registration often lagged far behind sealing. Antipas Tovey, the register, entered his own deed of gift of 1713 only in November 1717.⁴⁵⁶⁵ Francis Wrangham senior sold William Young an acre in September 1751, and the sale was entered in April 1758.⁴⁵⁶⁶ Some sales were entered twice. George Hoskison's sale of a house and 50 acres to Gabriel Powell for £350 in 1706 stands twice in the register.⁴⁵⁶⁷

From 1740 private parties brought deeds to the Council "for greater security". Powell had two bonds from John Goodwin registered in July 1740.⁴⁵⁶⁸ In 1758 Henry Bazett asked that his purchases from Charles Steward be registered "so that his title should be secure".⁴⁵⁶⁹ Francis Wrangham senior registered a mortgage from his son in 1757, and Lieutenant John Clark registered another in 1760.⁴⁵⁷⁰ Mary Burnham, signing by mark, registered her purchase of a house and land from John Legg in 1759.⁴⁵⁷¹ Matthew Purling had five bills of sale registered on one day in July 1762.⁴⁵⁷² A ship's passenger registered marriage articles in 1758.⁴⁵⁷³ The treasurer of the Widows' Fund registered a mortgage bond in 1770.⁴⁵⁷⁴ The register had become a public office of record for any instrument a holder wished to make safe.

Fees, Custody and the Lease Book ↑

Fees were charged from the start and argued over throughout. The order of 1679 set 1d an acre on a transfer, and that of 1683 set 2s 6d for the deed and 12d an acre for registering.⁴⁵⁷⁵ In January 1745 the Company held that "One guinea for a lease or a bill of sale was a sufficient fee".⁴⁵⁷⁶ In April 1745 the secretary Dixon claimed £9 9s from Powell for bills of sale and leases bought at Goodwin's outcry.⁴⁵⁷⁷ The attorneys argued that bills drawn by the parties should pay only 6d to register.⁴⁵⁷⁸ The council upheld one guinea for a bill of sale, whether drawn or only registered. It held that "the planters drawing their own bills of sale was not only attended with ill consequences but also defrauded the secretary of his just fees".⁴⁵⁷⁹

The custody of the books was poor for many years. A letter of 1714 ordered a schedule of consultation books, registers of freehold and leasehold land and registers of wills, signed by the clerk as his charge.⁴⁵⁸⁰ The old books were to be kept safe from rats and mice.⁴⁵⁸¹ In 1716 the Council boxed all the secretary's books and papers in three boxes, the office being "a poor, rainy place".⁴⁵⁸² In 1744 the Secretary's Office listed consultation books 1 to 21, new register books, a register of wills, "A new lease book" and a book of licences.⁴⁵⁸³

The lease book became the test of a leasehold title. In February 1745 the council found that "the planters had sold their leases one to another and seldom made any assignment or registered them".⁴⁵⁸⁴ Some leases had passed through two or three hands, so the land returns could not be trusted.⁴⁵⁸⁵ All leases were called in to the secretary's office and an abstract taken.⁴⁵⁸⁶ James Greentree's renewal was deferred because his lease was not in the lease book.⁴⁵⁸⁷ John Worrall was given copies of two leases whose originals were lost.⁴⁵⁸⁸ In 1756 Lieutenant John Clark asked "to have a copy of the original from the lease book" in place of a defaced lease.⁴⁵⁸⁹ In 1769 a search of the register book found Kirkpatrick's lease for lives, but every nominee in it was dead.⁴⁵⁹⁰

The registers were guarded against private use after 1759. The former Lieutenant Governor John Adamson had taken copies of the Company's letters and consultations.⁴⁵⁹¹ The Council resolved in April 1760 that "No copies of the Court's registers, etc., would in future be delivered to anyone without the Council's orders".⁴⁵⁹² His widow later surrendered plans and copies of general letters he had denied holding.⁴⁵⁹³ The Court stressed the danger of "the private custody of its registers".⁴⁵⁹⁴

Wills, Inventories and the Secretary's Office ↑

Wills were proved before the governor and council and copied into a register. In 1684 Henry Francis's will was "examined against the original by Henry Blackmore Junior, register".⁴⁵⁹⁵ In 1715 a clerk checked Edward Crosby's will of 1705 and found it "agreeable to the original in words, though not in spelling".⁴⁵⁹⁶ Wills of 1713-1719 note that "no stamped paper was available on the island".⁴⁵⁹⁷ The council authenticated copies of a will and inventory for sending to England in 1731.⁴⁵⁹⁸

The Secretary's Office lists of March 1744 show what was held. There were 51 inventories and accounts of sales of the estates of dead or absent persons.⁴⁵⁹⁹ Several were women's estates, among them those of Sarah Free, Elizabeth Marsh, Martha Francis and Mary Powell.⁴⁶⁰⁰ The wills list held 71 wills and codicils.⁴⁶⁰¹ At least a dozen testators were women, among them Grace Colson, Bridgett Bates and Mary Powell.⁴⁶⁰²

Yet the inventories had only been filed. In February 1745 the council found that "the inventories of deceased persons effects had until then never been registered".⁴⁶⁰³ It ordered a book kept and all later inventories registered in it.⁴⁶⁰⁴ The form soon settled. Appraisers swore to their valuation, and the widow swore "she had produced every article belonging to the deceased to the best of her knowledge".⁴⁶⁰⁵ The inventory was then "registered in the book kept for that purpose".⁴⁶⁰⁶ Such entries recur from 1746 to the 1770s.⁴⁶⁰⁷ The inventories themselves were seldom copied into the consultations.⁴⁶⁰⁸

The Council widened the register to protect orphans. In December 1768 executors who had sold any orphan's property were to send "a true account of every sale, properly witnessed, to the Secretary's Office".⁴⁶⁰⁹ There the orphans and others concerned might consult it.⁴⁶¹⁰ The same month all executors were to lodge attested accounts of their administration.⁴⁶¹¹ As later context, the Council noted in 1791 that widows swore to their inventories but executors took no oath at all.⁴⁶¹²

Errors and Corrections ↑

The registers carry many void and corrected entries. A lease of 1742 to the Alexander heirs bears two notes that "the clerk had entered the agreement in the wrong place, so it counted for nothing".⁴⁶¹³ A lease of 11 acres to John Leech in 1759 was marked of no value, because the ground was already included in his lease of 26 acres.⁴⁶¹⁴ A lease to John Worrall was begun and crossed out in about 1725, as was a draft to Benjamin Mawson in 1759.⁴⁶¹⁵ A lease of 1738 to James Vaughan was entered with the acreage blank and a term of 31 years, perhaps a slip for 21.⁴⁶¹⁶ Two of Joshua Worrall's leases begun in 1713 and 1714 had been endorsed August 1726, which misled him about their expiry.⁴⁶¹⁷

The largest error stands in a crossed-out conveyance of February 1742. On the Company's authority the Governor and Council sold Governor George Gabriel Powell part of the late Governor Goodwin's freehold.⁴⁶¹⁸ The sale was to make good "what he had taken from the Company's property while serving it on the island".⁴⁶¹⁹ This copy gives 69 acres in the West Division and 20 acres called Longs, 89 acres in all, for £8,035 in island money.⁴⁶²⁰ The figure is wrong. The deed of 1 February 1742 in another register gives £835.⁴⁶²¹ The sale entered at the consultation of 1 February 1742/3 also gives £835.⁴⁶²² That copy gives the land as 49 acres and 70 acres of Longs, which is perhaps itself miscopied.⁴⁶²³ All three charge a quit-rent of 1s an acre.⁴⁶²⁴ Powell had sold Goodwin his whole estate in 1739 for £1,539 6s 4d.⁴⁶²⁵ At £835 he recovered the freehold part of it from his own council.⁴⁶²⁶

Errors in accounts were also found and put right. In 1717 the Council admitted an inventory sent home unexamined, and promised that "nothing of that man's writing should be so blindly put up or sent away without due examination".⁴⁶²⁷ Richard Beale had been charged twice for his land revenue in one year, so the overcharge was allowed him.⁴⁶²⁸ The inventory of Blackledge's estate in 1746 cannot be right, for the clean estate of £500 5s exceeds the whole estate of £300 6s 7d.⁴⁶²⁹ A later index notes that a renewal fee had been "charged twice in error".⁴⁶³⁰

The rent rolls show the clerks' arithmetic at its weakest. Several rolls carry totals that do not agree with their own entries, as Table 33 sets out.

Entries are the sums of the holders' lines as written. Cash is the rent entered in the treasury account for the month.

The faults were of several kinds. In 1758 the heading and the foot of the roll differ by exactly £300.⁴⁶³¹ In 1759 the lease total of 834 acres was the first page's figure carried down unchanged.⁴⁶³² In 1762 the heading repeated the first page's carried sum, and the treasury took only £509 9s 9d.⁴⁶³³ The lease acres of 1767 ran 732 carried, 832 brought, then 1,477 and 2,983.⁴⁶³⁴ The total of 1771 is £825 in the roll, but the treasury account has "30 September 1771, rents, £625 0s 3d".⁴⁶³⁵ In 1772 the clerk entered leased land before free land, so the labels stand reversed.⁴⁶³⁶ Against these, the roll of 1763 agrees with its entries exactly, page by page.⁴⁶³⁷

London noticed. In December 1762 the Court wrote that "The rent roll of the Company's estate could not be complete".⁴⁶³⁸ Small arrears of Mary Mason had come to light only on looking over old leases.⁴⁶³⁹ The Council replied in April 1763 that it "would take care to prevent any mistakes in the rent roll in future".⁴⁶⁴⁰

Fraud, Forgery and Title ↑

The law punished forgery from 1681. Anyone convicted of counterfeiting deeds or writings, or of cheating another of lands, goods or money, made satisfaction and paid a like sum to the Company.⁴⁶⁴¹ He also stood three days in the pillory, or laboured first for the injured party and then for the Company.⁴⁶⁴² An order of 1687 held that conveyances by a man bound to the Company were void against its debt.⁴⁶⁴³

The register itself was tampered with. In November 1709 Marsden found entries apparently made recently but bearing old dates.⁴⁶⁴⁴ Among them was a bill of sale of 15 acres from Gurling to Carne for £55.⁴⁶⁴⁵ In 1716 two men claimed knowledge of Company land taken by secret dealing. As many as 233 acres were said to lie concealed, and a reward was advertised for each parcel revealed.⁴⁶⁴⁶ In 1712 Mr Boyce charged the storekeeper's accounts with "burning of papers, fraudulent registry".⁴⁶⁴⁷ In 1718 Swallow said John Field had taken the ground behind his house by a deed of gift signed in drink. He could find no such deed registered in the office.⁴⁶⁴⁸

The Council defended registered titles as the security of all. In April 1725 it upheld the sale between Girling and Goodwin as a precedent for every planter's title on the island.⁴⁶⁴⁹ An old claim could still be heard in court. In about April 1726 John Colgrove sued Captain John Alexander, a sitting councillor, for 6 acres bought by his grandfather.⁴⁶⁵⁰ Alexander's defence referred back to "the year 1657", before the Company's first settlement, so the date may be miswritten.⁴⁶⁵¹ The jury found for Colgrove.⁴⁶⁵²

Registration could also protect the weak. In 1751 Richard Gawling made a deed of gift of his lands called Francis, four slaves and his house to his daughter Margaret.⁴⁶⁵³ In September 1754 the council set the deed aside. Gawling had told his wife he never meant it to take effect.⁴⁶⁵⁴ The deed had never been registered, as the Company's order required "all writings by which lands were conveyed or mortgaged to be registered or else be null and void".⁴⁶⁵⁵ Upheld, it would have cost the widow her jointure and left the debts unpaid.⁴⁶⁵⁶ In February 1759 the council set aside a paper by which the sergeant Langhorne had taken command of the widow Susannah Pledger's land and slaves.⁴⁶⁵⁷ It found that "Langhorne had drawn the widow Pledger to sign an agreement of which she was entirely ignorant".⁴⁶⁵⁸

Officials tampered with the record as well. In 1744 the council found that Powell had erased his own name from a report on Richard Goodwin's lease petition of November 1739.⁴⁶⁵⁹ He had written in Crisp's name, saying Crisp had asked for it after complaining that Powell always found fault.⁴⁶⁶⁰ Steward Peter Cummings owned that he had sold Company goods for Powell, and Powell "had told him he had burnt the book with some other papers".⁴⁶⁶¹

Receipts and auctions could be falsified too. Joshua Johnson owed Goodwin's estate £55 17s 2d by the books.⁴⁶⁶² "Having by some means or other obtained a receipt in full", he claimed to have paid.⁴⁶⁶³ Bazett and John Goodwin showed he had not, and the Court insisted he pay at once.⁴⁶⁶⁴ In September 1745 James Greentree held a private auction of a debtor's house, acted as marshal and bid it in himself.⁴⁶⁶⁵ The council ruled that "Greentree was the seller and the auctioneer, neither of whom ought to bid in such a case".⁴⁶⁶⁶ In December 1746 the master mason John Bland alleged a sham sale of Johnson's house by executors' agents.⁴⁶⁶⁷ He had agreed £150 with the executor Robert Wright, but Doveton bid against him until it was knocked down at £180.⁴⁶⁶⁸ The board would not judge its own members and sent him to a jury.⁴⁶⁶⁹

Fraud in the Company's Books and Stores ↑

The gravest frauds lay in the Company's own books. After Governor Goodwin's death an inquiry found a deficiency in the Company's estate charged to Goodwin, Duke Crispe and John Bazett.⁴⁶⁷⁰ Crispe, written Crisp in the charges, was examined day by day through May and June 1741.⁴⁶⁷¹ The charge against him of May 1742 came to £1,626 4s 6d.⁴⁶⁷² It included false entries in the store accounts of Rose Read, Nicholas Clothes and John Worrall.⁴⁶⁷³ It ran on "To false transfers, in account of Jos Bates, £53 3s 6d".⁴⁶⁷⁴ Crisp said Goodwin had invented entries in settlers' names to pay secretly for yams for the Company's slaves.⁴⁶⁷⁵ They were "invented to raise a fund to pay for the yams thus bought".⁴⁶⁷⁶ A false transfer of £13 16s 9d in Edward Came's name could not be proved against Crisp, so it was debited to Goodwin's estate.⁴⁶⁷⁷ Bazett asked to search the store books back 18 years to "put the saddle upon the right horse".⁴⁶⁷⁸ Goodwin's estate was sold for £3,237 5s 2d, and bills of sale were drawn for the buyers.⁴⁶⁷⁹

Goodwin's successor Powell was audited in turn in 1744. He had sold the Company 1,000 teak boards at 1s each that were "bought by him at 4.75d each".⁴⁶⁸⁰ Linen bought at Goodwin's auction at 9½d a piece was charged to the Company at 1s.⁴⁶⁸¹ He charged £38 19s 6d for his own slaves' labour when the overseer's account showed only 68 days.⁴⁶⁸² The council forbade any alteration of the books.⁴⁶⁸³ Powell was held on the island until he paid or gave security.⁴⁶⁸⁴

Adamson's case of 1759 led to new rules. As Lieutenant Governor he had embezzled and sold Company furniture and old iron.⁴⁶⁸⁵ His goods were left with his attorneys "to be sold as his own".⁴⁶⁸⁶ Since no account showed what furniture he held, holders of Company property were henceforth to keep "inventories mutually signed and held by each party".⁴⁶⁸⁷

Smaller frauds were caught across the 1760s. In July 1766 a court martial found Lieutenant Bridgwater guilty of cheating soldiers at the Sandy Bay works of their arrack, and he was discharged.⁴⁶⁸⁸ The Council promised care that overseers did not cheat the soldiers and blacks.⁴⁶⁸⁹ In August 1766 the overseer Daniel Tongue was caught "cheating the slaves of part of their rice and of the arrack issued to them as a daily dram".⁴⁶⁹⁰ In 1769 the paymaster Kirkpatrick had passed off a fictitious advance to the commanding officers of the companies.⁴⁶⁹¹ His own charge against Corneille had been found false and malicious.⁴⁶⁹² In March 1771 the cooper Drawwater admitted entering expected gallons instead of gauging the arrack casks.⁴⁶⁹³ "He had not gauged the casks by the gauging rod", and he was dismissed for fraud.⁴⁶⁹⁴ The bakers Evans and Cooksey sold surplus bread from Company flour in 1757.⁴⁶⁹⁵ The gardener James Black sold £9 10s of the Plantation House garden produce in 1768.⁴⁶⁹⁶

Not every loss was fraud. In March 1766 the new overseer found 23 cattle and 65 goats missing from Thomas Warne's charge.⁴⁶⁹⁷ Corneille saw no fraud, and Warne blamed "relying too much on the slaves who drove the cattle between the different pastures".⁴⁶⁹⁸ The animals were written off.⁴⁶⁹⁹

Counterfeit coin attacked the island's money. In February 1748 Legente pleaded guilty to casting false rupees and was pilloried and whipped.⁴⁷⁰⁰ In November 1769 the soldiers Dobson and Brown were found to have cast false rupees in the armourer's shop.⁴⁷⁰¹ The justices doubted that forging rupees was treason and shipped them home "each with a noose around his neck".⁴⁷⁰² The informer William Coppen received £12.⁴⁷⁰³ In 1771 the Council held that "rupees were not English money", so counterfeiting them was not capital.⁴⁷⁰⁴ Base copper halfpence from the Pigot were refused at the stores in September 1771.⁴⁷⁰⁵

Later Context: The Widows' Fund Inquiry of 1837 ↑

An inquiry of 1837 showed the old weaknesses surviving long after 1782. A committee was named in April 1837 to examine the bonds of the Widows' Fund.⁴⁷⁰⁶ It reported that "Many of the mortgages lacked the title deeds to the land and houses pledged".⁴⁷⁰⁷ The Alexander executors had mortgaged land in Deep Valley that did not then belong to the estate.⁴⁷⁰⁸ Griffin's, 11 acres also mortgaged to the fund, "had since been sold to Captain Wright as though free of any claim".⁴⁷⁰⁹ Land pledged by Henry Doveton had passed by John Bagley's will to Major Sampson's wife.⁴⁷¹⁰ The fund called in a quarter of all bonds and ruled that no mortgage be granted without the title deeds.⁴⁷¹¹

Interpretations ↑

The evidence suggested a register that was strong in law and weak in practice. Each order from 1673 to 1707 restated the same rule, and each new inquiry found it neglected. The pattern probably reflected a small settlement where neighbours knew who held what. Writing seemed less urgent than possession, until death, debt or departure put a title to the test.

The register's greatest value appeared at such moments. The Gawling deed, the Pledger agreement and the Johnson receipt were all tested when an estate was opened. In each case the absence of a proper entry, or the evidence of the books, defeated the claim. The registers therefore worked best as evidence in dispute, not as a complete record of every holding.

The errors in the rent rolls probably owed more to haste than to fraud. The faulty rolls repeat carried sums, drop digits and transpose columns. The treasury accounts usually held the true figure. The frauds that did occur lay chiefly in the Company's own store books and accounts, and were committed by its officers. The planters' land titles were rarely forged, but the Company's goods and money were often misentered.

Comparisons ↑

England had no general register of deeds. Registries were set up for the West Riding of Yorkshire in 1704 and for Middlesex in 1708, where an unregistered deed lost priority to a later registered one.⁴⁷¹² St Helena's rule went further, for an unregistered sale was void outright. Its orders of 1677 and 1683 also came a generation before either English registry.⁴⁷¹³ Most English land passed by private conveyance kept in the family's chest.⁴⁷¹⁴

Virginia recorded deeds in county court books, and its quit-rent rolls were the main register of holdings. The colony drew about £1,411 7s 7d a year in quit-rents in the 10 years to 1713, from 2,238,143 acres in 1704.⁴⁷¹⁵ In 1760 George Washington paid £38 18s 9d in quit-rent on 6,431 acres.⁴⁷¹⁶ St Helena's rolls brought in £320 to £630 a year on about 4,000 to 4,500 acres, and every holder was named on a single roll each September.⁴⁷¹⁷

Barbados kept deeds and wills in the island secretary's office, much as the Secretary's Office did at St Helena.⁴⁷¹⁸ At the Dutch Cape, land passed only by a transport deed executed before officials of the Court of Justice and recorded by the Company.⁴⁷¹⁹ The Cape system thus resembled the St Helena order of 1704, under which a transfer was entered at the fort and attested by the governor and council.⁴⁷²⁰

In Company India the Mayor's Courts of 1726 proved wills and kept registers of probate. Fraud by Company servants in their own accounts was a constant concern there.⁴⁷²¹ St Helena's cases of Crisp, Powell and Adamson belong to the same pattern of officers using the Company's books for private ends.⁴⁷²²

26. St Helena Compared ↑

St Helena's land, labour and slaves were priced in a small and remote market. Its figures gain meaning only beside those of other places. Earlier sections made such comparisons one subject at a time, and they are drawn together here. The places compared are England and five mainland colonies of British North America. Barbados, Jamaica and St Kitts stand for the Caribbean. Bermuda, the Dutch Cape, the French Ile de France and the Company's settlements in India complete the set.

Currencies differed, and they must be read with care. The island reckoned in pounds, shillings and pence of island money. Its coin was a mixture of Spanish dollars, pagodas, fanams, copper and Company paper.⁴⁷²³ The dollar passed at 6s about 1700, and the Council still proposed that rate in 1716.⁴⁷²⁴ By 1742 the treasury counted dollars at 5s, and in 1751 the Council lent them "at five shillings the dollar".⁴⁷²⁵ The Council admitted that it let coin pass above its worth to keep money on the island.⁴⁷²⁶ In 1763 it ruled that "a pistareen would pass or be accepted in any payment for no more than one shilling", a quarter dollar having passed for more.⁴⁷²⁷ Some deeds named "lawful money of England" instead of island money, as in a house sale of 1717.⁴⁷²⁸ No fixed rate between island money and sterling is known. Island figures are therefore given as written, and comparisons with sterling are approximate.

Other places used other monies. Cape figures were reckoned in rix-dollars, guilders and schellingen, and Ile de France in livres and sols. Carolina and Massachusetts figures come in dollars converted by modern authors, and Jamaica used a currency below sterling. The table gathers the rates stated in the sources.

Rates are those stated in the sources named. No earlier sterling rate for the rix-dollar is given than that of 1795, so Cape conversions are indicative only.

Land Prices ↑

Land on St Helena grew dear over the century. The median price per acre of land sold rose from about £1 2s in 1680-1699 to £3 13s in 1700-1719 and £4 17s in 1720-1739.⁴⁷²⁹ It reached £11 15s in 1740-1759 and £18 10s in the four recorded sales of 1760-1779.⁴⁷³⁰ Some of these prices included a house or standing crops. In 1752 the Council told London that land, "as well as leaseholds, they had sold for much more lately than ever it did".⁴⁷³¹ Wills and inventories valued freehold on the same rising scale. A valuation of 1754 put freehold at £11 an acre and leasehold at £1 10s.⁴⁷³² Francis Wrangham's will of 1759 set £16 an acre on his best freehold, and William Young's of 1778 set £15 on freehold and £5 on leasehold.⁴⁷³³ As later context, a will of 1792 valued freehold at £28 an acre.⁴⁷³⁴

English land prices per acre must be derived. One estimate multiplies Gregory Clark's average farm rents by the years' purchase implied by his rate of return on land.^47354736 For the 1690s John Locke's rule of land "at Twenty Years Purchase" supplies the multiplier.⁴⁷³⁷ The results are about £8 18s an acre in the 1690s, £12 7s in 1725-1729, £14 11s in 1750-1754 and £21 8s in 1770-1774. They are estimates rather than prices paid. Clark's rents also include tithe. On this reckoning island land sold at about two fifths of the English price before 1740. By the middle of the century it sold within the English range.

Land in the mainland colonies was far cheaper. The Pennsylvania proprietor sold land at £5 for 100 acres in the 1680s and raised the price to £15½ for 100 acres in 1732.⁴⁷³⁸ These were about 1s and 3s 1d an acre. Maryland's caution money for new land had reached "five pounds sterling per hundred acres" by 1776.⁴⁷³⁹ Land near Charleston was worth $1.25 an acre in 1720-1724 and $2.08 in 1755-1759. At the authors' rate these sums equal about 5s 8d and 9s 4d sterling.⁴⁷⁴⁰ George Washington bought 1,806 acres of improved riverside land at Clifton's Neck in 1760 for £1,210 sterling, about 13s 5d an acre.⁴⁷⁴¹

Only good West Indian land came near the island's prices. In 1714 the former French lands of St Kitts were expected to rise "to 3, 4, or 5l. per acre, which last ... is more than was ever given there before".⁴⁷⁴² In 1717 "the highest bidders do not exceed the sum of £6 pr. acre; excepting only Col. Codrington, who has offered £8 pr. acre".⁴⁷⁴³ In Jamaica about 1,000 acres of unsettled land "may be worth at present about £400 sterl." in 1709, about 8s an acre. Clearing such ground cost "£3 per acre" in the same year.⁴⁷⁴⁴ Jamaican land later rose to "£4-£5 per acre", in a currency the source does not state.⁴⁷⁴⁵ No land prices per acre are available for Barbados or Bermuda.

The Cape had a small market in freehold beside its vast loan farms. Early freehold grants there were of "60 morgen (about 50 hectares)", close in scale to St Helena holdings.⁴⁷⁴⁶ A small Stellenbosch farm of 29 morgen sold for ƒ800 in 1714, and a farm of about 54 morgen for ƒ900 in 1744.⁴⁷⁴⁷ Buildings may be included in these prices, and the source is a heritage report. Loan farms themselves could not be sold, only the buildings on them.⁴⁷⁴⁸ In Bengal the Company bought the three villages of Calcutta in 1698 for 1,300 sicca rupees, a purchase of revenue rights rather than of farmland.⁴⁷⁴⁹

Rents and Quit-Rents ↑

The Company's lease rent was 4s an acre and 1s duty from 1711, 5s in all.⁴⁷⁵⁰ It was abated to 2s 6d in the 1740s and held there until 1750.⁴⁷⁵¹ From the 1760s barren and steep ground was let at 1s to 5s according to quality.⁴⁷⁵² Freehold sold by the Council paid a quit-rent of 1s an acre each Michaelmas.⁴⁷⁵³ The roll of 1745 fits 1s an acre on free land and 2s 6d on lease land.⁴⁷⁵⁴ A sale of leasehold was allowed only "on condition that he found a tenant whom the Council judged sufficient to pay the Honourable Company's quit rent".⁴⁷⁵⁵ The rent roll rose from £320 17s 9½d in 1742 to £628 7s in 1772.⁴⁷⁵⁶ It was charged on 2,100 to 2,200 acres of freehold and between 1,800 and 2,300 acres of leasehold.⁴⁷⁵⁷

English farm rents give the measure of the lease rent. Farmland in England let on average for £0.450 an acre in 1700-1704 and £0.536 in 1720-1724, about 9s and 10s 9d.⁴⁷⁵⁸ The average dipped to about 9s 8d in 1740-1744 and rose to 11s 5d in 1760-1764 and 13s 9d in 1780-1784. The island rent of 5s was thus about half the English rent, and the abated 2s 6d about a quarter. As section 4 showed, the island abatement fell in the years of English agricultural depression. No English quit-rent per acre is available for comparison.

The island quit-rent was heavy by colonial standards. On the former French lands of St Kitts the Crown asked "an annual Quit Rent of 6d. sterling upon every English acre" in 1717.⁴⁷⁵⁹ Jamaican grants paid ½d or 1d an acre, and South Carolina asked "1d. yearly per acre" in 1709.⁴⁷⁶⁰ Pennsylvania asked "a half-penny per acre" from 1732.⁴⁷⁶¹ Maryland's rate stood "for the most part at four shillings per hundred acres".⁴⁷⁶² Virginia asked "two shillings in money, or 24 pounds weight of tobacco for every hundred acres" in 1721.⁴⁷⁶³ St Helena's 1s an acre was twice the St Kitts rate and 12 to 50 times the mainland rates.

Virginia's quit-rents brought the Crown about £1,411 7s 7d a year in the 10 years to 1713.⁴⁷⁶⁴ They were charged on 2,238,143 acres in 1704. St Helena raised between a quarter and a half of that sum from about 4,000 acres.

Other companies took nominal rents. A Cape loan farm paid "24 Rix Dollars per annum" whatever the value of the land.⁴⁷⁶⁵ The charge had been "doubled from 12 rixdollars to 24" by a proclamation of 28 February 1732.⁴⁷⁶⁶ A loan farm could reach about 3,000 morgen, so the fee came to a fraction of a penny an acre.⁴⁷⁶⁷ On Ile de France the French company asked one sol an arpent a year and a hen from 1721, with a tithe on certain crops.⁴⁷⁶⁸ Calcutta land was taxed at Rs 3 a bigha regardless of crop.⁴⁷⁶⁹ The Company itself paid the Crown "an annual rent of £10" for the whole island of Bombay from 1668.⁴⁷⁷⁰

Slave Prices ↑

Section 19 set out the island's slave values in full, and only their outline is repeated here. The Company ordered slaves sold to planters at £12 to £14 a head in 1684.⁴⁷⁷¹ It contracted for good slaves at £21 a head in 1714, and Madagascar slaves sold at outcry for about £21 in 1717.⁴⁷⁷² In 1743 it booked new Madagascar men at £20 and boys at £10.⁴⁷⁷³ It sold girls to planters at £7 to £16, "having more of that sex than they knew what to do with".⁴⁷⁷⁴ Appraisers of 1744-1760 valued grown men at £25 to £31 and small children at £1 10s to £2.⁴⁷⁷⁵ Auction prices ran higher, from £6 to £40 at Goodwin's sale in 1742 and up to £39 5s in 1754.⁴⁷⁷⁶

Early in the century these prices sat squarely within the Atlantic range. A prime male slave in Jamaica averaged £18.73 sterling in 1680-1692.⁴⁷⁷⁷ In Barbados in 1708 Governor Crowe reported "the best from £30 to £40 each, and in an average amounts to about £23.8. per head".⁴⁷⁷⁸ In 1709 slaves in Jamaica were "usually sold at from £15 to £26 per head" and sold "at Virginia for about £25".⁴⁷⁷⁹ A Bermuda inventory of 1714 valued six slaves at £20 to £35 each.⁴⁷⁸⁰ The Company's £21 a head lay near the middle of all these figures.

Later in the century the mainland drew ahead. Adult men in South Carolina averaged $164.16 in 1722-1729 and $245.70 in the 1770s. At the authors' rate these sums equal about £37 and £55 7s sterling.⁴⁷⁸¹ In Jamaica in 1773 Spanish buyers had "offered but £38 sterling, to have the first choice".⁴⁷⁸² Island values of £25 to £31 for grown men in the 1740s and 1750s stood well below these levels.

The Indian Ocean figures are harder to set beside the island's. Cape estate auctions sold slaves at a median of Rds 112.⁴⁷⁸³ At the rate of 1795 that is about £22, an indicative figure only. The French company's instructions of the 1720s priced slaves on Ile de France at "150 a 200 livres par chaque piece d'Inde".⁴⁷⁸⁴ No sterling rate for those livres is available. No slave prices for the Company's Indian settlements are available, though Calcutta taxed the sale of slaves at Rs 4-4 a head.⁴⁷⁸⁵

Hire rates give a second measure. About 1715 a hired slave on St Helena earned his owner 18d a day, or £22 10s a year.⁴⁷⁸⁶ From 1742 the usual rate was 12d a day.⁴⁷⁸⁷ In Jamaica about 1774 a male slave hired for "about £20" a year in Jamaica currency, about £14 6s sterling at the stated rate.⁴⁷⁸⁸

Wages ↑

The island paid labour at about English rates or above. In 1714 London objected to the pay "allowed to Mr Man, the mason, six shillings a day" with his diet, while soldiers lived on 9d.⁴⁷⁸⁹ A black carpenter was credited at 2s 6d a day on the Company plantation in 1707.⁴⁷⁹⁰ In 1716 the Council had to hire free black labour at 18d a day.⁴⁷⁹¹ An order of January 1745 capped carpenters, joiners, stonelayers and other artificers at 3s a day and labourers at 12d.⁴⁷⁹² A tailor by the day was to have half a crown.⁴⁷⁹³

The rates of the 1760s were much the same. In 1765 the Company paid soldiers 1s or 1s 6d a day on its works, a mason 2s 6d and a carpenter 5s.⁴⁷⁹⁴ The Company carpenter said he had earned 5s a day from private customers before entering its service.⁴⁷⁹⁵ In 1767 planters were paid 2s 6d a day for their stonelayers and 1s for their labourers.⁴⁷⁹⁶ Garrison craftsmen then had 1s 6d. Free Moses earned 2s 6d a day on Company works in 1771.⁴⁷⁹⁷ As later context, the parish paid masons 3s 6d and labourers 2s 3d a day in 1783-1784.⁴⁷⁹⁸

The English farm labourer earned on average 10.6d a day in 1680-1684 and 10.0d in 1700-1704.⁴⁷⁹⁹ The figure was 10.8d in 1740-1744, 10.9d in 1760-1764 and 13.3d in 1780-1784. In the South East it ran from 12.4d to 15.9d over the same years. The island labourer's 12d thus matched the English farm wage, and in sterling it perhaps fell a little below it.

Island craftsmen stood level with London's best. A standard series assumes 30d a day for a London building craftsman early in the century, with labourers at 22d to 24d. J. Stephenson argued that 30d was what "the most skilled master masons could command".⁴⁸⁰⁰ At St Paul's in 1700-1709 labourers had 18d, skilled masons 19d to 27d and master masons 28d to 30d.⁴⁸⁰¹ The island mason at 2s 6d to 3s earned what a London master mason earned.

Colonial wages were higher still in money terms. In Pennsylvania in 1698 labourers had "generally between 18 Pence and a half-a-crown" a day in local currency. Carpenters, bricklayers and masons had "between five and six shillings every day".⁴⁸⁰² Massachusetts farm labour paid $0.394 a day outside harvest in 1764-1769, about 2s 4d in lawful money.⁴⁸⁰³ In Jamaica about 1774 a free unskilled man started at "£25 per annum" in Jamaica currency, and building tradesmen had £65.⁴⁸⁰⁴

The Cape and India paid less. Free masons and carpenters at the Cape had 8 to 9 schellingen a day in 1743, about one rix-dollar.⁴⁸⁰⁵ A building labourer there earned 13 to 14 guilders a month about 1700. Measured in silver, the European unskilled day wage at the Cape was 6.08 g in 1701-1725 and 5.96 g in 1726-1750.⁴⁸⁰⁶ Southern England paid 7.0 g in 1700-1749 and London 10.5 g. South India paid 1.5 g.⁴⁸⁰⁷

The Value of Estates ↑

Section 17 described the largest island estates. Eight were appraised at more than £1,100 between 1744 and 1760. Samuel Doveton's, the largest, came to £4,841 11s 5¾d in 1749, with 21 slaves, 203 acres of freehold and 48 of leasehold.⁴⁸⁰⁸ Jonathan Doveton's stood at £4,016 18s 9¼d in 1744 and Richard Goddard's at £3,213 9s 10½d in 1747.⁴⁸⁰⁹ Land and houses carried about half of Samuel Doveton's value. His slaves made under 7 per cent of it.⁴⁸¹⁰ The estates of passing commanders could rival these planters in cash alone. Captain Cornelius Inglis's estate remitted £1,034 15s by bills in 1768.⁴⁸¹¹

Such fortunes were small beside the sugar estates. A model Barbados plantation of 100 acres with 50 slaves, seven white servants, mill and boiling house was costed at "£5,625" in 1690.⁴⁸¹² In 1774 Jamaica's 775 sugar plantations had an estimated mean value of £19,500 sterling each.⁴⁸¹³ A median Jamaican sugar estate held 99 slaves in 1741-1745 and 204 in 1771-1775.⁴⁸¹⁴

The Cape gives a closer match. Auction rolls there show average household movables of Rds 1,578.7 between 1673 and 1800, of which slaves made Rds 554.9.⁴⁸¹⁵ The richest group averaged Rds 5,361.4. These figures leave out land. At the rate of 1795 they equal about £316 and £1,072, an indicative conversion only. Cape households averaged 6.67 slaves in 1741-1745, near the holdings of the island's middling planters.⁴⁸¹⁶

Gregory King's scheme for England in 1688 gave yearly incomes rather than capital. He put a gentleman at £280 a year, an esquire at £450, a greater freeholder at £84 and a lesser freeholder at £50.⁴⁸¹⁷ Capitalised at 20 years' purchase, a gentleman's £280 implies an estate of about £5,600 (derived). The Dovetons and Goddard thus stood between the English greater freeholder and the lesser gentleman. In Company India private fortunes were made in trade and office and on another scale.⁴⁸¹⁸

The table brings the measures together.

St Helena figures are in island money and carry the references given above. Outside figures are as stated in the sources cited above; "derived" marks sterling equivalents or prices calculated from stated figures.

Tenure and Inheritance ↑

The island freehold was a conditional estate. Land granted to planters and their heirs descended to heirs, as Company counsel confirmed about 1780.⁴⁸¹⁹ Yet it passed only by leave and registration, and it paid a quit-rent to the Company as lord. An absent heir had to come and live on it within two years. Otherwise "every 20 acres of the land carried two inhabitants and two cows", or the land was forfeit.⁴⁸²⁰ An English freeholder faced no residence test and no bar on sale. The island tenure borrowed from copyhold its entry in the lord's register.⁴⁸²¹

Bermuda's freeholds came by a different road. The Somers Isles Company divided the islands into shares of about 25 acres, and many were farmed by tenants of absent adventurers. After the Company's charter was annulled in 1684 the Bermudians came to hold their land outright as small freeholders.⁴⁸²² Barbados planters bought confirmation of their titles in 1663 with a duty of 4½ per cent on exports.⁴⁸²³ St Helena's company never gave up its lordship, so its settlers made neither passage.

Leasehold was the larger part of St Helena's tenure by the 1770s. The Company let land for 21 years at 5s an acre, and from 1716 it allowed leases for three lives where the tenant built or improved.⁴⁸²⁴ A new life cost "the customary fine of half a year's rent".⁴⁸²⁵ The Company forbade new leases for lives in 1769.⁴⁸²⁶ In the western counties of England land was let for three lives, with a fine for each new life that often exceeded a year's value.⁴⁸²⁷ Church and college land was let on beneficial leases of 21 years, renewed for fines.⁴⁸²⁸ The island borrowed both forms but kept the fine low.

The Cape's loan farms were the opposite of a lease. From about 1714 the Dutch East India Company ceased to grant freehold on its frontier. It issued loan farms held from year to year for a recognition fee, unsurveyed and in principle revocable.⁴⁸²⁹ The St Helena lease had a term, a plan and covenants binding both sides. On Ile de France the French company granted land that reverted if not cultivated within three years.⁴⁸³⁰

The status of leasehold in inheritance was settled by English law. In 1753 the Council held that leasehold had always been treated on the island as real estate. Counsel found no written custom to support it.⁴⁸³¹ In April 1754 the Council accepted that "leasehold lands were by the law of England deemed personal estate".⁴⁸³² In England a lease for years was a chattel real, passing to the executor and sharing the fate of the goods.⁴⁸³³ The ruling brought about 1,800 acres of leasehold into the personal estate for purposes of descent.⁴⁸³⁴

The widow's share was the island's most distinctive rule. From 1679 a widow took half her husband's land for life and a third of his goods.⁴⁸³⁵ By 1719 wills called this "the custom of the island".⁴⁸³⁶ The Company applied a third to its own leases held in trust for widows in 1738.⁴⁸³⁷ An English widow had dower, a life interest in a third of the freehold. The Statute of Distributions of 1670 gave her a third of an intestate's goods where there were children.⁴⁸³⁸ Among the propertied, jointures settled before marriage were displacing dower.^48394840 In Virginia and Maryland the widow's thirds were the legal standard, and husbands often left more.⁴⁸⁴¹

The Cape followed Roman-Dutch law. Spouses married in community of property, and the widow took half the joint estate outright. The Orphan Chamber secured the children's half.⁴⁸⁴² Her half did not end on remarriage. The island's half for life matched the Cape figure but not its substance.

Island testators divided land among all their children. They kept it whole where they could by giving one child the refusal at a valuation by two indifferent men.⁴⁸⁴³ Matthew Bazett gave the reason in 1742: "his lands, being divided among his children, would come too little to settle upon them".⁴⁸⁴⁴ In England primogeniture governed the land of intestates and the settlements of the gentry, though yeomen often provided portions for younger children.⁴⁸⁴⁵ Barbados sugar planters tended to leave the estate whole to one son, since a works could not be divided.⁴⁸⁴⁶ Cape children had a legitimate portion that a parent could not will away, and estates were often auctioned to pay it.⁴⁸⁴⁷ The island planter stood nearer the English yeoman than either.

In Company India the law of property was English law administered by Company courts. The charter of 1726 set up Mayor's Courts at Madras, Bombay and Calcutta to try civil suits among Europeans.⁴⁸⁴⁸ At Bombay the Company confirmed existing holders in their land for fixed yearly payments. St Helena had no such charter of justice. Its civil court of 1762, the Governor and Council with a jury of 12, rested on the Company's own proprietary right.⁴⁸⁴⁹

Interpretations ↑

The comparisons placed St Helena between an English county and a proprietary colony. Its land prices, rents and wages ran close to English levels, far above those of the mainland colonies. Its tenure resembled that of the proprietary colonies and the Cape, where a company or proprietor held the soil as lord.

Land was probably dear because it was scarce, improved and close to a market. The rent rolls covered only about 4,000 to 4,500 acres, and the Company held the rest as waste or pasture. The passing ships paid rising prices for island beef, which went from 5d to 6d a pound by 1752.⁴⁸⁵⁰ Mainland land was cheap because it was plentiful, and the Cape's loan farms were cheap for the same reason. Only the improved sugar land of St Kitts fetched comparable prices early in the century.

The gap between freehold and leasehold prices was striking. At the median of 1740-1759 an acre of freehold cost about 47 years of the Company's 5s lease rent (derived). An English buyer paid about 26 years' purchase in 1750-1754 (derived from Clark). The difference suggested that the island lease rent lay well below the market value of the land. The Council said as much in 1752, when it refused to fear that planters would throw up their leases.⁴⁸⁵¹ The freehold premium probably also bought security against the Company's leave, its covenants and its power to resume.

The rents sat between two worlds. The lease rent was half the English farm rent, while the quit-rent was heavier than any colonial one. The Company took from its land much what an English landlord took from a small estate, without an assembly to resist it.

Slave prices told a different story from land prices. Early in the century the island bought and valued slaves at Atlantic prices. Later its values fell behind those of South Carolina and Jamaica. The island had no export staple to raise the demand for labour, and its slaves were valued chiefly for hire and household work. At 12d a day a slave valued at £25 earned his price for an owner in about 500 days of hire (derived).

Wages pointed the same way as land. Labour was scarce on a garrison island, and the Company paid English rates or more to keep artificers. The Cape and South India paid far less in silver. The island's costs were probably set by its isolation and by the ships, not by the Indian Ocean economy around it.

The estates of the richest planters were modest by Atlantic measures and substantial by Cape ones. A Doveton or a Goddard was worth at most a quarter of a mean Jamaican sugar estate, or less than one Barbados model plantation. His wealth lay chiefly in land and houses, not in slaves. In this he resembled an English freeholder more than a West Indian planter.

In tenure and inheritance the island combined English forms with company lordship. Its freehold, leases for lives and widow's thirds in goods came from England. Its widow's half in land, its residence rule and its register were island creations. The ruling of 1754 showed English law displacing island custom where custom had never been written. The closest parallels were the Cape and Bermuda before 1684, and St Helena kept its company lord long after Bermuda had shed its own.

27. Change over the Century ↑

The rules of land and property on St Helena were not made once and left alone. They were laid down in the first decade of Company rule and recast in 1711. They were tested in the crisis of the 1740s and brought closer to English law in the 1750s and 1760s. The century divides into five periods. Each had its own rent, its own market in land, its own practice of inheritance and its own place for slaves and stock.

1673-1710: Allotment and Registration ↑

The first period was one of grants, small lots and repeated orders to register. Each planter's share was granted "to hold for himself, his heirs and assigns for ever under the company's common seal", so long as he did his service.⁴⁸⁵² The grants actually made were of 10 and 20 acres. In January 1679 Henry Coales held 20 acres as a family holding, while John Hemmings held 10 acres as a single man.⁴⁸⁵³ By orders of March 1677 no land was to be alienated without the Council's consent.⁴⁸⁵⁴ In March 1679 London declared that no planter held in fee simple and that no sale might pass without the Governor's licence.⁴⁸⁵⁵

The jury of 26 September 1682 gave the first general view of private land. It traced each holding by valley and abuttals from the first allottee and closed its account at "In all: 1,090 acres".⁴⁸⁵⁶ Most lots had already changed hands by sale, exchange, marriage or gift.⁴⁸⁵⁷ A second roll, headed 20 February 1702/3, described holders now styled corporal, soldier or free planter.⁴⁸⁵⁸

Registration was ordered again and again. The orders of 13 December 1673 required a register of every grant, transfer and sale "to guard against every kind of fraudulent conveyance".⁴⁸⁵⁹ In February 1677 no sale was to be valid unless registered, with a duplicate kept safely.⁴⁸⁶⁰ In 1683 the registering due was fixed at 12d an acre, payable to the Company as lords proprietors.⁴⁸⁶¹ On 30 November 1704 the Council ordered transfers and mortgages entered at the fort, signed by buyer and seller and attested by the Governor and Council.⁴⁸⁶²

Land was cheap and often paid for in kind. In November 1683 Samuel Jeffrey sold about 10 acres in Fryer Valley to Henry Kersey for £5.⁴⁸⁶³ In March 1686 Philip Savage sold 10 acres with its plantation for £8 2s 6d.⁴⁸⁶⁴ Thomas Fewsdale took £24 sterling, 40 Spanish dollars and £14 in cattle for 10 acres in Sandy Bay in December 1686.⁴⁸⁶⁵ Prices began to climb after 1700. George Hoskinson sold Gabriel Powell 20 acres in Peak Gut for £32 in May 1704, and Powell resold them for £100 in December 1706.⁴⁸⁶⁶ In June 1707 John Lufkin sold the Company a house and 30 acres for £350.⁴⁸⁶⁷

The first wills date from these years. Richard Harding's will of 28 December 1681 left his widow a house in Chapel Valley and his country house.⁴⁸⁶⁸ The island law of 1679 gave a widow more than English common law. When a married planter died, "one half went to his wife for her lifetime", with a third of the goods he had not disposed of.⁴⁸⁶⁹

Slaves and cattle were already property in their own right. Each new settler received two cattle with his land.⁴⁸⁷⁰ From 1683 cattle on the waste had to bear the Company's brand.⁴⁸⁷¹ In April 1684 the Governor was told to sell Captain Knox's slaves to the planters at £12 to £14 a head.⁴⁸⁷² From 1683 every free planter paid a yearly levy on each slave he held.⁴⁸⁷³ On 30 April 1683 John Greentree gave one slave to each of his six children.⁴⁸⁷⁴ In February 1690 Joseph Trapp sold John Goodwin 10 acres with "a male slave known by the name of Asher" and eight hogs for £35.⁴⁸⁷⁵

1711-1740: The Resurvey and the 21-Year Lease ↑

The second period opened with a settlement of title. In April 1711 London found that "many people's titles were become precarious" for want of registered grants and landmarks.⁴⁸⁷⁶ The Council ordered all fenced land measured. Holders who failed to fence were "to forfeit the lands to the Lords Proprietors".⁴⁸⁷⁷ Each freehold was confirmed after "Notice had been given by beat of drum for any person to make a claim".⁴⁸⁷⁸ It was then confirmed to the holder and his heirs for ever, on condition of allegiance and obedience.⁴⁸⁷⁹

Land held beyond the grant became Company leasehold. Leases sealed from April 1711 ran 21 years at 4s an acre and 1s duty, 5s in all.⁴⁸⁸⁰ Jonathan Doveton's lease of 17 April 1711 split the rent: "four shillings for the gumwood and one shilling for the cabbage tree".⁴⁸⁸¹ Every lease barred disposal of the land without the consent of the Governor and Council.⁴⁸⁸² In 1716 the Company also allowed leases for three lives where a tenant built or improved.⁴⁸⁸³ From 1719 the fine for a new life was half a year's rent.⁴⁸⁸⁴

The 5s rent was not kept for long. Richard Mason's arrears were reckoned "at 5s an acre to March 1728, then 2s 6d".⁴⁸⁸⁵ The leases of 1711-1717 then fell in together. Some 60 leases covering about 830 acres were sealed on 30 September 1738, at the same 21-year term and 5s rent.⁴⁸⁸⁶ Executors took 10 of them in trust for widows and orphans.⁴⁸⁸⁷ The re-letting allowed for poor ground. Francis Wrangham's 20 acres paid £4 a year rather than £5, since much was barren rock.⁴⁸⁸⁸

The land market rose steadily through these years. The median price of land sold went from £3 13s an acre in 1700-1719 to £4 17s in 1720-1739.⁴⁸⁸⁹ Elizabeth Haswell sold 10 acres in Sandy Bay with a house for £480 in May 1719.⁴⁸⁹⁰ The Company sold 40 acres called the Hutts to John Coulson for £190 in April 1726.⁴⁸⁹¹ In September 1739 Powell sold Governor Goodwin his whole estate for £1,539 6s 4d, valuing 69 acres of freehold at £10 an acre.⁴⁸⁹² In July 1740 the attorneys of Thomas Mostyn sold 30 acres in Great Bottom for £410.⁴⁸⁹³

Wealth gathered in a few hands. In January 1717 the Council called Gabriel Powell the wealthiest planter, reputed worth £5,000 and holding about 300 acres.⁴⁸⁹⁴ London had already warned in 1712 that "A lord of the manor does not buy his tenants' lands".⁴⁸⁹⁵

The widow's half acquired a name. Thomas Harper left his wife "one half of the leased land for her lifetime" in 1715.⁴⁸⁹⁶ In 1719 Matthew Bazett gave his wife half the real estate for life on remarriage "according to the custom of the island".⁴⁸⁹⁷

The Company's slaves grew in number with the Madagascar cargoes. In January 1716 the Company had not above 100 sound slaves.⁴⁸⁹⁸ By July 1717 their number "had grown to about 200 on the island".⁴⁸⁹⁹ The Company contracted for good slaves at £21 a head in 1714, and Madagascar slaves sold at outcry for about £21 in 1717.⁴⁹⁰⁰ The Council banned manumission in 1723, and London confirmed the ban in 1725.⁴⁹⁰¹

1741-1752: Goodwin's Fall, Powell and the Abatement ↑

The third period began with a governor's death and a deficit. After Governor John Goodwin died, an inquiry charged a deficiency in the Company's estate to Goodwin, Duke Crispe and John Bazett.⁴⁹⁰² The Company authorised the sale of enough of Goodwin's estate "to raise the sum of money the late John Goodwin was found to owe".⁴⁹⁰³ His land was auctioned on 10 August 1742, and the new Governor, George Gabriel Powell, bought most of it.⁴⁹⁰⁴ His 31 slaves went the same day to 16 buyers, from Old Tacky at £6 to Emmanuel at £40.⁴⁹⁰⁵ The whole sale came to £3,237 5s 2d.⁴⁹⁰⁶

Powell's main purchase was the freehold he had sold Goodwin in 1739. On 1 February 1743 the Governor and Council sold Powell 69 acres in the West Division and 20 acres called Longs for £835.⁴⁹⁰⁷ One copy of the deed reads £8,035, but the other two give £835.⁴⁹⁰⁸ Every buyer of Goodwin's freehold paid a quit-rent of 1s an acre each Michaelmas.⁴⁹⁰⁹

The lease rent stood at half its former level. The rolls of the 1740s charged lease land at 2s 6d an acre and free land at 1s.⁴⁹¹⁰ On 31 January 1745 the Court agreed that "the planters' rents would stay at the present reduced rate of two shillings and sixpence an acre until the year of Our Lord 1750".⁴⁹¹¹ It expected vigorous service in the island's defence in return. From 1742 to 1752 the rent day brought in about £320 to £370 a year.⁴⁹¹² On 8 December 1749 the Court ended the indulgence. The planters "were, at the expiration of the Court's indulgence, to pay the same rents as before".⁴⁹¹³

The Council also found its lease book out of step with possession. In February 1745 it learned that "the planters had sold their leases one to another and seldom made any assignment or registered them".⁴⁹¹⁴ The Court then advised renewing leases for lives "on the old terms and conditions".⁴⁹¹⁵

Beef set the planters against the Council. The planters said they raised their rents chiefly from beef sold to the ships.⁴⁹¹⁶ In October 1746 the Governor wrote that "it seemed as if the settlement were at the mercy of the planters, whether to live or starve".⁴⁹¹⁷ In December 1752 London ordered a weekly market and forbade any sale to ships without a written licence.⁴⁹¹⁸

The market in land reached its highest level yet. Powell sold Samuel Doveton 50¾ acres for £650 in May 1744, about £12 16s an acre.⁴⁹¹⁹ In 1747 James Powell sold Francis Wrangham 72 acres in three parcels with houses for £3,075.⁴⁹²⁰ In June 1752 the Council wrote that land and leaseholds "they had sold for much more lately than ever it did".⁴⁹²¹

The dead men's estates came under closer record. On 12 February 1745 the Council found that "the inventories of deceased persons effects had until then never been registered".⁴⁹²² It ordered a book kept, and 48 inventories survive from 1744 to 1760.⁴⁹²³ Samuel Doveton's estate, the largest, was appraised at £4,841 11s 5¾d in 1749.⁴⁹²⁴ His widow Margaret had given up her customary half of the freehold for a child's share in March 1749.⁴⁹²⁵

Orphans' money exposed the Council as lender. In June 1747 it lent £70 of the Bradley orphans' money to the councillor Robert Wright at 5 per cent.⁴⁹²⁶ The loan was made on "he giving seven and a quarter acres of land in Sandy Bay for security".⁴⁹²⁷ Wright died insolvent in 1748.⁴⁹²⁸ In December 1749 London told the Council to "never lend the Company's money, or any lodged in its cash, on any pretence or security whatever".⁴⁹²⁹ The land was sold for £70 in June 1750, and the orphans were credited with £80 10s.⁴⁹³⁰

Slaves were now valued one by one. The roll of 12 March 1744 named 184 Company slaves with their ages and tasks.⁴⁹³¹ Appraisers of 1744-1760 valued over 220 private slaves, from £1 10s for a small child to £31 for a grown man.⁴⁹³²

1753-1769: Full Rent and English Law ↑

The fourth period opened with the full rent. The roll of 1753 rose to £564 3s 6d, and Rachel Alexander's 18 acres paid the full 5s an acre.⁴⁹³³ From 1753 the roll stood at about £560 to £606 a year, though the roll of 1765 fell to £536 16s 2d.⁴⁹³⁴

English law now reached into island custom. Gabriel Harper had left his widow half his freehold and leasehold during widowhood.⁴⁹³⁵ Her second husband, Richard Goodwin, claimed a third of the leasehold in June 1753 as personal estate.⁴⁹³⁶ On 8 April 1754 the Council accepted London's counsel that "leasehold lands were by the law of England deemed personal estate".⁴⁹³⁷ Goodwin took a third of the leasehold in right of his wife.⁴⁹³⁸ In 1753 the Council also rejected Thomas French's claimed custom of descent. It "could find no such by-law or custom on the island as he mentioned".⁴⁹³⁹

The leases of 1738 expired in 1759. The Council renewed those expiring on 11 October "upon the parties paying one year's ground rent".⁴⁹⁴⁰ About 49 leases covering some 570 acres were sealed on 8 and 12 November 1759.⁴⁹⁴¹

Courts and juries took on new weight. The Directors' letter of 3 February 1762 gave the island civil courts for property disputes, with the Governor and Council as judges and a jury of 12.⁴⁹⁴² On 15 August 1762 the Council undertook to hear every dispute over property, "and juries would decide cases in each instance".⁴⁹⁴³ The first quarterly court under the new powers sat on 12 October 1762.⁴⁹⁴⁴

The Company's waste was let in small strips after a view. Viewing came before any letting of waste.⁴⁹⁴⁵ In 1768 the Council divided the waste at Woody Ridge between Matthew Bazett and John Desfountain at 1s 6d an acre.⁴⁹⁴⁶ Strips of waste were let at 1s to 5s an acre by quality.⁴⁹⁴⁷ In November 1768 it resolved never to lease the barren commons improved by grass sown at public expense.⁴⁹⁴⁸ To do so would be "a great injustice to the people whose labour went into improving it".⁴⁹⁴⁹ The lease acres on the roll rose from about 1,820 in 1757 to 2,200 in 1769.⁴⁹⁵⁰

The lease for lives came to an end. In May 1769 Thomas Kirkpatrick asked to renew a lease for lives whose nominees were all dead.⁴⁹⁵¹ The Council gave him 21 years at 5s instead, since "the Company had also forbidden any further leases for lives".⁴⁹⁵² The Leases Register opened with leases of December 1765 and February 1766.⁴⁹⁵³

Land values in wills followed the market upwards. Francis Wrangham's will of 1759 valued 43 acres of freehold at £16 an acre and leasehold at £2 to £7.⁴⁹⁵⁴ The few recorded sales of 1760-1779 had a median of £18 10s an acre.⁴⁹⁵⁵

The Company's servants made their own provision for widows. On 1 April 1766 they founded a fund, with married men paying £5 a year and single men £2.⁴⁹⁵⁶ Each widow was to have £30 a year, but "If she married again, she lost her right to the pension".⁴⁹⁵⁷ The Court approved the scheme in December 1766.⁴⁹⁵⁸

The Company's slaves grew in number. They rose from 187 in 1761 to 204 in 1762 and 284 in 1765.⁴⁹⁵⁹ In 1766, after the Angola slaves came, 164 men's and 67 boys' suits were issued.⁴⁹⁶⁰ The parish now paid owners for executed slaves, £15 for a man named Lewis in 1765.⁴⁹⁶¹ Stock was tied to land. The planters' articles of December 1757 allowed holders "only one sheep for every three acres of land they should from time to time possess".⁴⁹⁶² From October 1768 "no one holding less than ten acres of land could keep a horse".⁴⁹⁶³

1770-1782: Drought, Stints and the Last Records ↑

The last period began in drought. By August 1770 more than 500 cattle had died, chiefly young animals meant for slaughter.⁴⁹⁶⁴ By May 1771 at least a third of the island's cattle had died.⁴⁹⁶⁵ A later drought cut the herds again. In October 1779 "the inhabitants' herds of cattle had fallen by 809 head since 30 September 1778".⁴⁹⁶⁶

Grazing rules grew tighter in these years. In January 1777 the court ordered every colt gelded within its first year.⁴⁹⁶⁷ In April 1779 the justices heard of "the excessive growth in the number of sheep and goats, which was damaging the rearing of cattle".⁴⁹⁶⁸ The rules of 13 September 1779 allowed sheep to landholders only. "Each landowner could keep sheep at a rate of two sheep for every three acres of land he held, and no more".⁴⁹⁶⁹ A dog tax of 5s a year had already become law in April 1778.⁴⁹⁷⁰

The inhabitants paid for their own water. By July 1775 the Council had raised £722 3s 0d by subscription to pipe Chubb's Spring to the town and crane.⁴⁹⁷¹ In July 1777 the Council reported "The waterworks at Chubb's Spring were finished".⁴⁹⁷²

The Leases Register recorded the renewals of these years. In 1770 and 1771 the Council renewed the expired leases of John Alexander, Benjamin Mason, Margaret Alcock and Nathan Campbell at 5s an acre.⁴⁹⁷³ The leave to assign had become routine. Simon Whaley's lease was renewed in April 1773 and assigned to John Price a week later.⁴⁹⁷⁴ The roll rose to £620 7s 3½d in 1770 and £628 7s in 1772.⁴⁹⁷⁵ Women's holdings on the roll rose to 14 in 1772.⁴⁹⁷⁶ In May 1782 John Bagley senior still paid half a year's rent for each new nominee in an old lease for lives.⁴⁹⁷⁷

Freehold values kept rising. By 1774 Edward Bagley set £20 an acre on 10 acres of freehold.⁴⁹⁷⁸ William Young's will of 1778 priced freehold at £15 an acre and leasehold at £5.⁴⁹⁷⁹ As later context, a will of 1792 valued freehold at £28 an acre.⁴⁹⁸⁰

The quarterly court became the main forum for slaves and property. In 1772 William Seale's runaway slave Cato was hanged for stealing Henry Bazett's sheep.⁴⁹⁸¹ By 1779 a house let to a tenant counted as the occupier's dwelling in a charge of burglary.⁴⁹⁸² In July 1781 the justices ruled by majority that "slaves' evidence would not be admitted against white people in any case whatever".⁴⁹⁸³ The Widows' Fund grew meanwhile, and its subscriptions reached £192 in 1782.⁴⁹⁸⁴

The record itself thins after 1773. The consultations end in that year and the letters in 1779. The quarterly court's register and the parish books run on to 1782 and beyond.

The Periods Compared ↑

Table 36 sets the five periods side by side.

Rent roll figures are the stated totals, checked against the entries; 1762 and 1765 fell below the usual range. Medians are of recorded sales stating acres and price.

Interpretations ↑

The evidence suggested that the decisive change of the century came in 1711, not in 1673. The first grants made freeholders but left their titles uncertain. The resurvey fixed freehold as a closed stock and drew all other ground into leasehold at a rent. Every later change worked within that frame. The re-lettings of 1738 and 1759 renewed it, and the Leases Register of 1766 recorded it in a uniform hand.

The 1740s were probably the period of greatest strain. A governor died in debt, his successor bought his land from his own council, and the planters held out over beef. The Company answered with registers and orders: the inventory book, the calling in of leases, the market rules and the ban on lending lodged money. The abatement was the price of the planters' service in defence. Its end in 1749 and the full roll of 1753 marked a return to firmer control.

The middle decades brought island custom closer to English law. The ruling of 1754 made leasehold personal estate, because no written custom said otherwise. The courts of 1762 gave property disputes to juries under English forms. The Widows' Fund of 1766 replaced the Court's case-by-case relief with a fixed pension. The widow's half survived in wills, but the words dower and thirds spread beside it.

The value of land rose in every period. It went from about £1 an acre in 1680-1699 to about £12 in 1740-1759 and £15 to £20 in the wills of the 1770s. The rent hardly moved over the same years. The pattern probably reflected a fixed stock of freehold, a rising demand from the ships and a lease rent set by policy rather than by the market.

The last period turned on scarcity rather than on law. Drought, stock losses and the stints of 1777 and 1779 tied the right to keep stock ever more closely to land held. The landless lost the commons that the landholders shared. Slaves came before the quarterly court chiefly as thieves of property, and their evidence was barred against white people. Property on the island had become the possession of a settled body of landholders, governed by their own vestry and jury as much as by the Company.

Conclusion ↑

Land and property on St Helena were shaped by a trading company that was also the island's lord. The Company granted, let, taxed and registered the land. The settlers bought, sold, mortgaged and bequeathed it under its rules. Houses, cattle, yams and slaves passed by the same deeds and wills. The sections above followed each kind of property in turn. The findings below draw them together.

Main Findings ↑

The first finding is that the Company never let go of the power to approve each change of hands. By orders of March 1677 no land was to be alienated without the Council's consent.⁴⁹⁸⁵ In 1679 London denied that any planter held in fee simple.⁴⁹⁸⁶ The settlement of 1711-1717 confirmed freeholds to the holders and their heirs for ever, but every Company lease barred disposal without consent.⁴⁹⁸⁷ Through the 1740s and 1750s planters came to the Council for leave before each sale or assignment, even of three-quarters of an acre.⁴⁹⁸⁸ The Council asked chiefly whether the buyer could pay. Leave was given "on condition that he found a tenant whom the Council judged sufficient to pay the Honourable Company's quit rent".⁴⁹⁸⁹ When the rule lapsed, the Council lost sight of its tenants. In 1745 it found that "the planters had sold their leases one to another and seldom made any assignment or registered them".⁴⁹⁹⁰ The Company could also sell land to recover its own debts, as it did with Governor Goodwin's estate in 1742.⁴⁹⁹¹

The second finding concerns rent. The lease rent of 4s an acre and 1s duty, fixed in 1711, governed Company land to the end of the period.⁴⁹⁹² It was not collected in full for a generation. From 1728 lease land paid 2s 6d an acre, and the Court confirmed the abatement in 1745 until 1750.⁴⁹⁹³ Between 1742 and 1752 the rent day brought in about £320 to £370 a year.⁴⁹⁹⁴ From 1753, with the full rent restored, the roll stood at about £560 to £628 a year.⁴⁹⁹⁵ The 5s lease rent was about half the English farm rent of the time. English farmland let for about 9s an acre in 1700-1704 and 11s 5d in 1760-1764.⁴⁹⁹⁶ The quit-rent of 1s an acre on freehold was heavy by colonial standards.⁴⁹⁹⁷ On the former French lands of St Kitts the Crown asked 6d sterling an acre in 1717.⁴⁹⁹⁸ Quit-rents in Jamaica and South Carolina ran at ½d to 1d an acre.⁴⁹⁹⁹ The Company thus took from its land much what an English landlord took, with a lord's charge on freehold far above any colonial one.

The third finding is a long rise in the value of land. The median price of land sold was about £1 2s an acre in 1680-1699.⁵⁰⁰⁰ It reached £3 13s in 1700-1719 and £4 17s in 1720-1739.⁵⁰⁰¹ In 1740-1759 it stood at £11 15s, and the few sales of 1760-1779 had a median of £18 10s.⁵⁰⁰² Wills followed the same course. Francis Wrangham valued freehold at £10 to £16 an acre in 1759, and William Young at £15 in 1778.⁵⁰⁰³ As later context, wills of 1792 valued freehold at £25 and £28 an acre.⁵⁰⁰⁴ By mid-century improved land on the island sold at about English prices. An estimate derived from Clark's series puts English farmland at about £14 11s an acre in 1750-1754.⁵⁰⁰⁵ Land near Charleston was worth about 9s 4d sterling an acre in 1755-1759.⁵⁰⁰⁶ The rise probably reflected a fixed stock of freehold, the demand of the ships and a lease rent held below the market.

The fourth finding concerns widows. The island law of 1679 gave a widow half her husband's land for life, and a third of the goods he had not disposed of.⁵⁰⁰⁷ By 1719 this was "the custom of the island".⁵⁰⁰⁸ A wife's release of 1748 recited that "by the law of the island a widow was entitled to half of the freehold or real estate for her lifetime".⁵⁰⁰⁹ The English widow took dower, a life interest in a third of her husband's freehold.⁵⁰¹⁰ The island half was thus a larger share, suited to holdings of 10 or 20 acres. In April 1754 the Council accepted that "leasehold lands were by the law of England deemed personal estate".⁵⁰¹¹ The widow then took a third of the leasehold as personal estate.⁵⁰¹² The half survived in wills into the 1780s, while the English words dower and thirds spread beside it.

The fifth finding concerns slaves as property. Slaves were the commonest movable property after cattle and often the most valuable. Appraisers of 1744-1760 valued over 220 slaves, from £1 10s for a small child to £31 for a grown man.⁵⁰¹³ The Company's own prices were steadier. It contracted for slaves at £21 a head in 1714, sold Madagascar slaves at outcry for about £21 in 1717 and booked new men at £20 in 1743.⁵⁰¹⁴ These prices sat within the Atlantic range early in the century. In Barbados in 1708 Governor Crowe put the average at about £23 8s a head.⁵⁰¹⁵ Later the island fell behind, for it had no export staple to raise the demand for labour. In a great estate slaves were a small share of the whole. Samuel Doveton's 21 slaves, at £335, made under 7 per cent of an estate of £4,841 11s 5¾d.⁵⁰¹⁶

The sixth finding concerns the direction of change. The century opened with grants on English manorial terms and closed with a body of landholders governing themselves under English law. The ruling of 1754, the courts and juries of 1762 and the Widows' Fund of 1766 brought English forms to the island.⁵⁰¹⁷ The stints of 1757 and 1779 tied the right to keep stock to the land a man held.⁵⁰¹⁸ By 1781 the justices ruled that "slaves' evidence would not be admitted against white people in any case whatever".⁵⁰¹⁹ Property had become the possession of a settled body of landholders, governed by their vestry and jury as much as by the Company.

Corrections to the Earlier Edition ↑

The fuller reading corrects the earlier edition in several places. The largest concern the rent rolls, whose own totals cannot always be trusted. In 1771 the total reads £825, but the entries and the cash account of September 1771 both give £625 0s 3d.⁵⁰²⁰ In 1772 the clerk wrote the leased acres under free land and the free acres under leased land. The rents, at 1s and 5s an acre, show that the true figures were 2,205½ acres free and 2,311½ leased.⁵⁰²¹ In 1759 the lease total of 834 acres was only the figure carried forward from the first page, and the entries give 1,585¾.⁵⁰²² The lease totals of 825 acres in 1749 and 2,983 in 1767 also disagree with their entries.⁵⁰²³ The roll of 1758 gives £860 17s 5d in its heading and £560 17s 5d at its foot.⁵⁰²⁴ The roll of 1752 was copied with the year 1732.⁵⁰²⁵ The earlier edition took Richard Goodwin's 162½ acres as the largest holding of 1744. The roll of that year gave Francis Wrangham 305½ acres.⁵⁰²⁶

The conveyance of the late Governor Goodwin's land to Governor Powell in February 1742/3 reads £8,035 in one register. The other two copies give £835, and the price was £835.⁵⁰²⁷

The order for a register of transfers and mortgages at the fort belongs to 30 November 1704, not 1702.⁵⁰²⁸ The Company's abstract of the order is dated 1702, probably a slip.⁵⁰²⁹ The Colgrove dispute of 1726 referred to "the year 1657".⁵⁰³⁰ That year fell before the Company's settlement of 1659, so the date was either a slip or a claim reaching back to the first settlers.

Several dates and values for credit and estates also change. The mortgage of the Bradley orphans' money to Robert Wright was made in June 1747 for £70 at 5 per cent, not in 1737 for £20.⁵⁰³¹ The largest estate in the inventory register was Samuel Doveton's, at £4,841 11s 5¾d in 1749, not Jonathan Doveton's £4,016 18s 9¼d.⁵⁰³² The £30 for the freedom of Katharine and her child was deposited by Stephen Lufkin in May 1744.⁵⁰³³ His heirs then refused to comply with his wish.⁵⁰³⁴

Some references change with the new reading. Mary Alexander's estate of 1749, with "a part of a fisherman" at £2 10s, is at 051/82-83.⁵⁰³⁵ Benjamin Blackledge's inventory, whose clean estate of £500 5s exceeds the whole estate of £300 6s 7d, is at 051/24.⁵⁰³⁶ The earlier edition also held that the island's rule letting orphans choose a guardian had no English equivalent. The rule at about 16 in fact echoed the English choice at 14.⁵⁰³⁷

What Remains ↑

The evidence is uneven, and several tasks remain. The registers of leases, deeds, wills and inventories have been read in full. The other volumes from 001 to 043, chiefly the consultations and letters of 1673-1742, rest on a lighter reading. Some matters of those years are known only from the letters and standing orders. A full reading of them would test the early prices, the dates of the abatement and the numbers of the Company's slaves.

The record also stops short of 1782 in two series. The consultations after 1773 and the letters after 1779 have not yet been transcribed. For those years the quarterly court's register, the Leases Register and the parish books carry the account alone. The rent rolls of 1760 and 1761 are missing, and those of 1750 to 1752 are garbled or incomplete.⁵⁰³⁸

Some figures in the manuscripts remain doubtful. James Powell's sale of 72 acres to Francis Wrangham in 1747 was entered at £3,075, more than double the going price, and may hide a clerk's slip.⁵⁰³⁹ The Bradley balance of 1754 reads £14 19s 8d in the consultation and £74 19s 8d in the cash book.⁵⁰⁴⁰ The lease total of 1758 is not supported by its entries, which point to about 1,762 acres.⁵⁰⁴¹

Every citation of an outside work is marked "To be verified". The comparative figures for England, the colonies, the Cape and India were taken from secondary works and calendars. Each needs to be checked against its source before the figures can be relied on.

Key to the Manuscript Volumes ↑

The following 89 volumes of the transcribed St Helena records are cited in this edition. Each is listed by the number used in the references, with its title and date range as given in the transcriber's Records List. The title links to the digitised images in the British Library's Endangered Archives Programme (EAP1364), with the archive reference after it. The number after the oblique stroke in a reference is the image number within the volume, not a page or folio of the original.

001 Letters from England 1673-1683 (1st Letters from England; EAP1364/1/3/2)

002 Letters from England 1673-1701 (2nd Letters from England; EAP1364/1/3/4)

003 Letters from England, Goodwins Extracts 1673-1707 (3rd Letters from England; EAP1364/1/3/1)

004 Constitution, Laws & Instructions 1673-1714 (1st Laws and Judiciary Records; EAP1364/1/6/1)

005 Records 1678-1683 (1st Consultation; EAP1364/1/1/1)

006 Laws & Constitutions 1681 (2nd Laws and Judiciary Records; EAP1364/1/6/2)

007 Leases & Deeds Register 1682-1719 (1st Leases and Deeds Records; EAP1364/1/7/19)

008 Wills Register 1682-1745 (1st Wills and Estates; EAP1364/1/7/1)

009 Records 1683-1687 (2nd Consultation; EAP1364/1/1/2)

010 Letters from England 1683-1689 (4th Letters from England; EAP1364/1/3/3)

011 Records 1687-1693 (3rd Consultation; EAP1364/1/1/3)

012 Records 1693-1696 (4th Consultation; EAP1364/1/1/4)

013 Records 1696-1699 (5th Consultation; EAP1364/1/1/5)

014 Records 1699-1703 (6th Consultation; EAP1364/1/1/6)

015 Records 1703-1704 (7th Consultation; EAP1364/1/1/7)

017 Records 1706-1709 (9th Consultation; EAP1364/1/1/9)

018 Letters to England 1706-1714 (1st Letters to England; EAP1364/1/2/1)

019 Records 1709-1712 (10th Consultation; EAP1364/1/1/10)

020 Records 1712-1715 (11th Consultation; EAP1364/1/1/11)

021 Letters from England 1713-1716 (5th Letters from England; EAP1364/1/3/5)

022 Letters to England 1714-1715 (2nd Letters to England; EAP1364/1/2/2)

023 Records 1715-1716 (12th Consultation; EAP1364/1/1/12)

024 Records 1716 (13th Consultation; EAP1364/1/1/13)

025 Records 1716-1717 (14th Consultation; EAP1364/1/1/14)

026 Letters to England 1716-1717 (3rd Letters to England; EAP1364/1/2/3)

027 Records 1717-1718 (15th Consultation; EAP1364/1/1/15)

028 Letters to England 1717-1720 (4th Letters to England; EAP1364/1/2/4)

029 Letters from England 1717-1725 (6th Letters from England; EAP1364/1/3/6)

030 Records 1718-1720 (16th Consultation; EAP1364/1/1/16)

031 Records 1720-1722 (17th Consultation; EAP1364/1/1/17)

032 Letters to England 1720-1724 (5th Letters to England; EAP1364/1/2/5)

033 Leases & Deeds Register 1720- 1731 (2nd Leases and Deeds Records; EAP1364/1/7/20)

034 Records 1723-1725 (18th Consultation; EAP1364/1/1/18)

035 Letters to England 1724-1727 (6th Letters to England; EAP1364/1/2/6)

036 Records 1725-1727 (19th Consultation; EAP1364/1/1/19)

037 Records 1727-1731 (20th Consultation; EAP1364/1/1/20)

038 Letters to England 1727-1737 (7th Letters to England; EAP1364/1/2/7)

039 Deeds Register 1729-1762 (3rd Leases and Deeds Records; EAP1364/1/7/14)

040 Records 1731-1735 (21st Consultation; EAP1364/1/1/21)

041 Records 1735-1740 (22nd Consultation; EAP1364/1/1/22)

042 Leases Register 1735-1748 (4th Leases and Deeds Records; EAP1364/1/7/5)

043 Letters to England 1738-1748 (8th Letters to England; EAP1364/1/2/8)

044 Records 1740 (23rd Consultation; EAP1364/1/1/23)

045 Records 1741-1742 (24th Consultation; EAP1364/1/1/24)

046 Records 1742a (25th Consultation; EAP1364/1/1/25)

047 Records 1742b (26th Consultation; EAP1364/1/1/26)

048 Records 1743-1744 (27th Consultation; EAP1364/1/1/27)

049 Records 1743-1745 (28th Consultation; EAP1364/1/1/28)

050 Letters from England 1744-1753 (7th Letters from England; EAP1364/1/3/7)

051 Inventories of Estates of Deceased Persons 1744-1760 (5th Wills and Estates; EAP1364/1/11/1)

052 Records 1745-1746 (29th Consultation; EAP1364/1/1/29)

053 Records 1746-1747 (30th Consultation; EAP1364/1/1/30)

054 Wills Register 1746-1793 (2nd Wills and Estates; EAP1364/1/7/2)

055 Records 1747-1748 (31st Consultation; EAP1364/1/1/31)

056 Records 1748-1750 (32nd Consultation; EAP1364/1/1/32)

057 Letters to England 1748-1758 (9th Letters to England; EAP1364/1/2/9)

058 Leases Register 1749-1765 (5th Leases and Deeds Records; EAP1364/1/7/6)

059 Records 1750-1751 (33rd Consultation; EAP1364/1/1/33)

060 Notices Register 1750-1794 (1st of the Miscelaneous Records; EAP1364/1/11/2)

061 Records 1751-1752 (34th Consultation; EAP1364/1/1/34)

062 Records 1753-1754 (35th Consultation; EAP1364/1/1/35)

063 Records 1754-1755 (36th Consultation; EAP1364/1/1/36)

064 Letters from England 1754-1761 (8th Letters from England; EAP1364/1/3/8)

065 Letters from England 1754-1777 (9th Letters from England; EAP1364/1/3/9)

066 Records 1755-1756 (37th Consultation; EAP1364/1/1/37)

067 Records 1756-1757 (38th Consultation; EAP1364/1/1/38)

068 Records 1757-1759 (39th Consultation; EAP1364/1/1/39)

069 Records 1759-1760 (40th Consultation; EAP1364/1/1/40)

070 Letters to England 1759-1766 (10th Letters to England; EAP1364/1/2/10)

071 Records 1762-1763 (41st Consultation; EAP1364/1/1/41)

072 Quarterly Court Records 1762-1782 (3rd Laws and Judiciary Records; EAP1364/1/6/11)

073 Judicial Dept Out letters 1762-1814 (4th Laws and Judiciary Records; EAP1364/1/6/4)

074 Letters from England 1762-1816 (10th Letters from England; EAP1364/1/3/10)

075 Records 1763-1764 (42nd Consultation; EAP1364/1/1/42)

076 Records 1764-1765 (43rd Consultation; EAP1364/1/1/43)

077 Records 1765-1766 (44th Consultation; EAP1364/1/1/44)

078 Records 1766-1767 (45th Consultation; EAP1364/1/1/45)

079 Letters to England 1766-1772 (11th Letters to England; EAP1364/1/2/11)

080 Leases Register 1766-1790 (6th Leases and Deeds Records; EAP1364/1/7/7)

081 Widows & Orphans Fund 1766-1837 (1st of the Society Records; EAP1364/1/11/5)

082 Records 1767-1768 (46th Consultation; EAP1364/1/1/46)

083 Records 1768-1769 (47th Consultation; EAP1364/1/1/47)

084 Records 1769 (48th Consultation; EAP1364/1/1/48)

085 Records 1770 (49th Consultation; EAP1364/1/1/49)

086 Records 1770-1771 (50th Consultation; EAP1364/1/1/50)

087 Registre de la Paroisse de Jamestown 1770-1833, in fact the vestry book and churchwardens' accounts, 1760-1834 (2nd of the Miscelaneous Records; EAP1364/1/11/3)

088 Records 1771-1772 (51st Consultation; EAP1364/1/1/51)

089 Records 1772-1773 (52nd Consultation; EAP1364/1/1/52)

090 Letters to England 1772-1779 (12th Letters to England; EAP1364/1/2/12)

Glossary ↑

This glossary explains the tenure, legal, money and island terms met in the records of St Helena between 1673 and 1782. Measures and prices are given as the records state them.

Acknowledgement. A nominal yearly rent, such as a peppercorn, paid to show that land was held of the Company rather than for its value.

Acre. The unit in which grants, leases, rents and prices of country land were reckoned. Some deeds gave measurements that cannot fit the acreage stated, so figures are as the records give them.

Administration. The management and distribution of the estate of a person who died without a valid will, under letters of administration granted by the Governor and Council. Attested from 1696.

Administration with the will annexed. A grant to administrators where a will existed but was not given full effect through its executors.

Administratrix. A woman, usually a widow, appointed to administer an estate. Attested from 1717.

Advancement. Money or property given to a child in the parent's lifetime and counted against that child's final share of the estate.

Alienation. The transfer of land from one holder to another by sale, gift or otherwise. The Company forbade it without the Council's consent.

Allotment. A parcel of land assigned to a settler by the Governor and Council rather than sold. Early allotments were 10 acres for a single man and 20 acres for a family.

Appraisers. Persons chosen or sworn to value an estate, a holding or goods, usually two neighbouring planters. Their valuation was called the appraisement. Attested from 1688.

Arrack. A spirit distilled on the island from roots and fruits and also imported from the East. Its distilling and sale were taxed and licensed.

Assignment. The transfer of a lease to another holder, usually written on the back of the lease and registered with the Council.

At valuation. Of a bequest, taken by an heir at its appraised value, the heir paying the other heirs their shares of that value.

Attorney. A person authorised to act for another, often for an absent owner, to sell land, collect debts or remit money. His power was limited to his letter of attorney.

Barn Ground. A stretch of Company waste which the justices proposed in 1781 to fence and plant with trees against a shortage of fuel.

Beat of drum. Public notice given by drum, used to call any person with a claim to come forward before a title was confirmed or a sale held. Attested from 1711.

Best bidder. The highest offer at an open sale. Leaseholds of orphans and joint holders were often sold to the best bidder.

Bill of exchange. A written order to pay a sum at a later date. Bills drawn on the Company in London, called bills on the Company, were the usual way to remit money to England.

Bill of sale. A written conveyance of land, a house or goods, entered in the island register.

Black house. The quarters of the Company's slaves in the country, also called the slave house. Attested from about 1700.

Black Square. The yard and lodgings of the Company's slaves in Jamestown, also called the slaves' square. It was locked at night.

Bond. A sealed written promise to pay a sum, usually in double the debt and void if the true sum was paid by the day set. Bonds secured loans, sales and the conduct of officers.

Bond slave. A free man sentenced to hard labour at the fortifications during the Council's pleasure.

Book value. The value at which a Company slave stood in the Company's general books. It was used as the price when such a slave was sold or freed and to write off slaves who died.

Brand. The Company's mark on its cattle. Unbranded beasts on its waste could be claimed as strays forfeit to the Company.

Butts and bounds. The boundaries of a parcel of land, described so that its extent could be fixed in a deed. Attested from about 1678.

Byname. The customary name by which a parcel was known, often that of a former holder or use.

Cabbage tree land. Upland ground carrying the island's native cabbage trees, classed and let by that timber. Attested from 1711.

The Castle. The Governor's residence and seat of government at Jamestown, where the Council sat and deeds were sealed.

Certificate. A written voucher. The Governor issued one to confirm a registered holding and the Company gave them to ship commanders for goods supplied, payable in London.

Chapel Valley. The valley in which the town stood, later called James Valley.

Chief lords of the fee. The Company in its character as overlord, of whom all land on the island was held. Also chief lords of the soil. Attested from 1687.

Chief overseer. The officer in charge of the Company's plantation and stock, paid £50 a year from 1764.

Chief rent. A fixed yearly rent reserved to the Company on land it granted.

Child's part. A share equal to one child's portion of an estate, sometimes given to a widow in place of her customary share.

Chubb's Spring. The spring piped to the town and crane by subscription in the 1770s.

Churchwardens. The parish officers chosen by the vestry. They kept the parish money and collected parish taxes.

Clear estate. The net value of an estate after debts and charges were paid. Also clean estate.

Clerk of the market. The officer who registered cattle killed and sold and supervised the garrison market.

Common field. A field kept undivided and shared by several settlers, proposed to secure a spring for all of them. Attested from 1719.

Common seal. The Company's corporate seal, under which deeds of grant were issued.

Commonage. Common grazing adjoining leased land.

The commons. Unenclosed Company ground on which planters' cattle, sheep and goats grazed by custom. Also the common or the Company's common.

Company slave. A slave owned by the East India Company and employed on its plantation, works and stores, as distinct from a planter's slave.

Company's husband. The officer who managed the Company's plantation, livestock and husbandry, a post at times held by the Lieutenant Governor. Attested from 1678.

Company's waste. Company land not granted or let, which bounded most holdings and was grazed or let on petition. Also waste land or unused land. Attested from 1683.

Conditional bill of sale. A sale of land that became void if the price was repaid by a fixed day, in effect a mortgage. Also conditional sale.

Confirmation. A Company deed confirming a holder's freehold title, with a plan annexed and a copy entered in the register.

Consultation. A recorded meeting of the Governor and Council or the minute of its business. Grants, leases, leave to sell and probate were all made in consultation.

Copyhold. In England, land held by entry on the roll of a manor court, under the lord's consent and dues.

Counterpart. The tenant's signed copy of a lease, kept by the Company.

Court of Directors. The governing body of the East India Company in London, often called the Court. Its letters set the rules of tenure on the island.

Courtesy of England. A widower's right to a life interest in his late wife's land.

Coverture. The legal condition of a married woman, whose property and capacity to act passed under her husband's control.

Custom of commoning. The planters' liberty, revocable at the Company's pleasure, to turn cattle into the Great Wood when grass was to spare.

Custom of the island. Practice claimed to have the force of law among the inhabitants. The Council accepted it only where it matched the laws or long usage.

Debts by bond. Debts secured by bond or another sealed instrument, which alone could be charged on an heir's land.

Deed in print. The standard printed Company deed of tenure, signed by the Governor and Council and attested by the register.

Deed of gift. A deed transferring property without payment, usually to a child or kinsman. Also deed of free gift.

Diana's Peak. The highest point of the island, used as a boundary mark in grants.

Distinct mark. An owner's mark set on a beast to show that it belonged to a named person, often a child.

Distress. The seizure of goods or cattle to recover a debt, rent or fine. Attested from 1683.

Division. One of the districts into which the country was divided for parish business, such as the East Division.

Double alarm. A general alarm on which owners had to send their male slaves to assigned posts and free black men had to muster.

Double duty. The doubled duty charged on any part of leased ground left unfenced.

Dower. A widow's right to a share of her late husband's land for life. On the island custom gave her half the freehold, though the English phrase dower and thirds came into the wills later. Attested from about 1707.

Drift way. A strip of open ground kept for driving stock between parcels or to water. Also driftway. Attested from about 1712.

Duty. A fixed charge added to the rent of a lease, usually 1s a year. The word was also used for a charge on land, goods or sales.

Ear mark. A registered cut in the ears of cattle, sheep or goats showing their owner. Attested from 1688.

Ebony. A native tree of the island, valued for its wood.

Encroachment. Ground occupied beyond the bounds of a grant or lease, charged at a higher rate when found.

Endorsement. An assignment written on the back of a lease, registered with the Council for security.

Engrossing. Writing a deed out in final form for sealing. The word was also used for buying up land or goods in order to control them.

Equity of redemption. A mortgagor's remaining right to recover mortgaged land by paying the debt, which could itself be sold.

Escheat. The return of land to the Company as lord when a holder died without heirs.

Escheatment. The Company's word for its taking of the inhabitants' freeholds back into leases.

Executor. The person named in a will to carry it out. A woman so named was an executrix. Attested from 1682.

Executors in trust. Executors named to manage a testator's effects in one place and remit the proceeds to the principal executor.

Fee simple. Absolute ownership of land, heritable and free to sell, the fullest estate in English law. No planter was held to own land in fee simple. Attested from 1679.

Fine. A lump sum paid to renew a lease or to insert a new life in a lease for lives, usually half a year's rent. Also called the admittance fine.

Forfeiture. The loss of land to the Company as a penalty, for failing to fence or cultivate it by the set date, for crime or for breach of a lease.

Fort James. The fort at the mouth of James Valley, which gave the town and valley their early names.

Free and common socage. The tenure by which the Company held the island of the Crown, a freehold by fixed service without military duties. Attested from 1673.

Free black. A black person who was not a slave, whether freed or free born.

Free land. Freehold land as entered on the rent roll, charged quit-rent at 1s an acre, as against lease land.

Free planter. A settler holding land in his own right, with the privileges of a free inhabitant. Also freeman. Attested from 1678.

Freehold. Land held heritably by a planter under the Company's overlordship, subject to its register, quit-rent and power of resumption.

Full blood. Kinship through both parents. Only a brother of the full blood took land by descent.

Furze. Gorse, planted as hedges along fences and on the commons but also grubbed out of pasture as a weed.

General books. The Company's main account books on the island, in which its slaves and stores were carried at a set value.

Goat range. A customary right to run goats over a defined tract of the Company's waste, bought, sold and inherited like land. Also range or range for goats.

Gore. A narrow strip of land kept for passage to a watering place.

Governor and Council. The Company's government on the island, which granted land, registered titles, proved wills and heard disputes.

Grand Council Book. The early council minute book, the only book of record before deeds were issued.

Grand jury. The jury of inhabitants at the quarterly court which presented nuisances and proposed local orders.

Great plantation. The Company's principal plantation, kept in its own hands.

Great Wood. Company woodland and pasture in the east of the island, with a gate and an overseer.

Ground rent. The yearly rent paid for a town plot or other ground let without a farm lease.

Guardian of orphans. An officer appointed to oversee orphans' estates, a duty later taken by the Governor and Council as a body.

Guinea. An English gold coin worth 21s.

Gumwood land. Ground carrying gumwood, a native tree, classed and let by that timber. Also gumwood ground.

Gut. A narrow, deep valley, as in Peak Gut.

Half-tax. A land tax of 2s an acre on the plantations, ordered in 1687 and later taken on transfers.

Hanging. A steep valley side, as the Longwood hangings. The Hanging under the Main Ridge was a named piece of common grazing.

Head money. A yearly levy on each slave held, charged alongside the land duty.

Heir at law. The person entitled by descent to the land of someone who died without a valid will.

Hogshead. A large cask, used as a unit in taxing arrack and wine. Attested from 1683.

Horse Pasture. A named Company grazing ground, later part of the commons.

House at the fort. A town house in the valley by the fort, as against a house on a country plantation.

Improving lease. A lease of waste at a reduced rent for years of improvement, the rent rising afterwards.

In right of his wife. Holding land that came to a man through his marriage.

Indifferent men. Neutral persons chosen to value land or slaves between heirs.

Indulgence. A temporary abatement of rents granted by the Company.

Intestate. Dying without a valid will. The word also describes a person who so died.

Island money. The money of account of the island, as distinct from sterling. Also current money.

James Valley. The valley in which the town of Jamestown stood, earlier called Chapel Valley.

Jamestown. The island's only town, at the mouth of James Valley. Also James Town.

Joint tenants. Co-holders of property in equal shares, the share of one passing on death to the survivors.

Jointure. A provision secured to a wife on marriage, often in place of dower.

Lady Day. 25 March, the feast of the Annunciation, a quarter day on which rents fell due and leases began. Attested from 1711.

Lease book. The Company's register of leases.

Lease for lives. A lease, also called a lease upon lives, running for the life of the longest liver of three named persons. A new life could be added on payment of a fine. Attested from 1716.

Lease land. Company land held on lease at a rent, usually 5s an acre, as against free land. Also leased land.

Leasehold. Land held of the Company for a term of years or for lives at a yearly rent.

Leasehold as personal estate. The English rule that a lease for years was a chattel real, passing with goods rather than with freehold.

Leave to assign. The consent of the Governor and Council needed before a lease could be sold or assigned. Also leave to dispose.

Lemon Valley. A valley on the north-west coast, among the early allotted lands.

Life interest. A right to hold or enjoy property for a person's lifetime only. Also life estate. Attested from 1697.

List of families. The yearly return of each household with its land, cattle and slaves, sent to London with the rent roll.

Loading duty. An addition to the Company rent of 5s a year named in a few leases.

Long Wood. The Company's woodland and pasture in the east of the island, the chief source of fuel. Also Longwood.

Lord of the manor. The Company's style as territorial lord of the island.

Lords proprietors. The Company as absolute owner and lawgiver of the island under its charters.

Lot land. A parcel originally allotted to a settler, identified by the name of its holder. Also lot. Attested from 1678.

Low wines. The weak first spirit of distilling, taxed by the gallon.

Main Ridge. The central ridge of the island, used as a boundary for many parcels.

Maldivia garden. A Company garden near the town, growing melons and yams.

Manor of East Greenwich. The royal manor in Kent of which the Company held the island, as colonial grants were commonly held. Attested from 1673.

Mansion house. The principal dwelling on a country plantation.

Manumission. The freeing of a slave by an owner, which the Council banned in 1723 and later allowed only with its consent and a bond.

Marriage portion. A sum paid with a daughter at her marriage.

Messuage. A dwelling house with its outbuildings and ground. Also tenement.

Michaelmas. 29 September, the feast of St Michael and the island's rent day. Attested from 1682.

Mortgage bond. A bond securing a debt on property, entered in the Council's register.

Neat cattle. Horned cattle, counted as a class in returns and inventories. Also black cattle. Attested from 1714.

Nominee. A person whose life measured the term of a lease for lives.

Not to be valued. Of a bequest, given over and above an heir's equal share and not counted against it.

Notes of hand. Unsecured written promises to pay, on which most parish loans were made.

On hire. Rented from the Company, especially of land held before the general leases.

One beast in 20. The planters' agreed quota of their whole stock to be sent to the market.

Original lease. A lease granted directly by the Company, as against one acquired by assignment.

Orphans' money. The money of orphans' estates, lent at interest or paid into the Company's cash under the Council's supervision.

Outcry. A public auction, also called a public outcry. Estates, stock, slaves and leases were sold at outcry.

Overseer. A person named in a will to supervise the executors. The word was also used for an officer managing Company slaves, stock or ground.

Overseers of the highways. District officers who called out labour for roads and common works.

Part of a fisherman. A fractional share in a slave employed in fishing.

Partners. Joint holders of a range, who shared its use and its charges on trespassing beasts.

Party wall. A wall or fence shared with a neighbour, whose rights passed with the property.

Pepper green. An allotment rated at 6d an acre on the rent roll. The meaning of the phrase is uncertain.

Peppercorn. A nominal rent of one peppercorn a year, charged on land granted for planting timber or on favoured holdings.

Pescionage. The due charged on beasts grazing the Company's waste unmarked, likened to a manorial claim to strays. Attested from about 1710.

Pistareen. A small Spanish silver coin, cried down to 1s in 1763.

Pistole. A gold coin, used once as a rate of rent per acre.

Plantation House. The Company's country house and the Governor's residence outside the town, surrounded by Company pastures.

Poll. A charge by head, on persons or slaves. It formed a column of the rent roll of 1755.

Poor's stock. The parish charity fund, lent out at interest. Also the poor fund.

Portion. A child's share of a parent's estate, paid in money, land, cattle or slaves.

Pound. The enclosure in which straying stock was kept until redeemed for a fee. Such stock was said to be pounded.

Prescription. The acquisition of a right, especially to land, by long continuous possession.

Probate. The proving of a will before the Governor and Council.

Provisions. Standing food crops, especially yams, conveyed with the land.

Punch house. A house licensed to retail spirits.

Quarterly court. The court of justices and grand jury sitting each quarter, which made local orders for grazing, roads and fences.

Quiet enjoyment. A covenant guaranteeing a buyer undisturbed possession. Attested from 1712.

Quit-rent. A fixed yearly rent on freehold, 1s an acre on the island, paid to the Company as lord. Attested from 1687.

Rack rent. A full market rent, as against a nominal or customary one.

Real and personal estate. Land as against goods, slaves, stock and money, in the division of a dead person's property. Attested from 1707.

Recognisance. A bond acknowledged before a magistrate to keep the peace or appear, forfeited on default.

Redwood. A native tree of the island, planted under lease covenants.

Reeve. The Company's officer over its plantation and stock.

Refusal. The right of a named heir to buy family land, a house or a slave at valuation before any outside sale. Also first refusal or first offer.

Register. The book in which grants, sales, leases and mortgages were entered, also called the register book. The register at the fort was ordered in 1704, signed by buyer and seller.

Remainder. An interest in property taking effect when a prior interest, such as a life interest, ends.

Rent book. The Company's book of chief rents and land revenues.

Rent day. The yearly day at the Castle for paying rents and dues, Michaelmas for most of the period.

Rent roll. The yearly list of rents due from freehold, lease land and town ground, sent to London.

Residue. What remains of an estate after debts, legacies and funeral costs are paid. Attested from about 1710.

Respondentia. A loan secured on a ship's cargo.

Resumption. The Company's power to take back land granted, for neglect, absence or crime.

Reversion. The return of property to the grantor or his heirs when a limited interest ends.

Rix-dollar. A Dutch silver coin used at the Cape.

Rod. A measure of length of 5½ yards. A rood was a quarter of an acre and a perch a square rod.

Royalty of the manor. A lord's reserved right, under which the Company claimed all the deer on the island.

Sandy Bay. The southern district and its valleys, one of the chief farming areas.

Secretary. The officer who kept the Council's records and registers and drew deeds and leases for a fee.

Separate use. Property given to a married woman free of her husband's control and debts.

Sheriff. An island officer chosen by the Council from nominees of the vestry, drawn from the landholders.

Shilling. A coin and unit of account, written s and worth 12d. There were 20s to the pound, written £.

Slaughter list. The planters' signed return of cattle ready for slaughter in the coming year.

Slaves for life. Convicts sent from the East Indies to serve the Company on the island as slaves.

Southwark Street. A street on the hill below the Castle in the town, with the cheaper houses.

Spanish dollar. A silver coin current on the island, usually reckoned at 6s. Also piece of eight.

Spoken will. A will made by word of mouth before witnesses, accepted on their attestation. Also verbal will.

Stamped paper. The taxed paper required for deeds in England, which deeds on the island noted could not be had.

Sterling. English money, as distinct from island money.

Stone colt. An ungelded young horse.

Store credit. A balance in the Company's store books, used as payment in place of coin. Also store pay.

Suckers. Young shoots of yams or plantains, sold by the thousand for planting.

Sufferance. Use of ground by leave that could be withdrawn at any time, not by right.

Surveyor. The officer who measured and marked out land for grants and leases. A deputy surveyor worked under him. Attested from 1691.

Tenants in common. Co-holders of undivided shares, each share passing to the holder's own heirs.

Toll book. The Company's register of sales of cattle, houses and land, kept to secure the sale dues. Attested from 1683.

Transfer due. The fee taken by the Company on each registered transfer of land.

Understorehouse. A private shop or warehouse selling goods and liquor beside the Company store.

Vestry. The meeting of inhabitants which chose churchwardens and other parish officers and voted parish money.

Watch and ward. The night guard owed by planters, commuted to 40s a year on every 20 acres of freehold.

Whole estate. The gross appraised value of an estate before debts.

Widow's third. A widow's share of one third of her husband's personal estate. Also widow's thirds.

Woody Ridge. A ridge and grazing ground where early allotments and later leases lay, closed to cattle at times under the grazing rules.

The Writing Stones. A parcel of waste in Sandy Bay.

Yam grounds. Plots planted with yams to feed a holding's slaves, passing with the land.

Bibliography ↑

Outside works cited for comparison are listed below alphabetically by author, or by title where no author is given. Manuscript sources are listed in the Key to the Manuscript Volumes. Outside works are marked "To be verified" in the footnotes, and their details should be checked against the originals before the study is relied on. Figures from other places were taken from the works listed and are reported as stated there.

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Notes ↑

1. Philip J. Stern, The Company-State: Corporate Sovereignty and the Early Modern Foundations of the British Empire in India (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011). To be verified.

2. 004/25. 1673.

3. 003/24. 1673.

4. 006/8. 1673.

5. 003/46. 1685. 006/50. 1685.

6. 001/54. 1678.

7. 006/38. 1681. 003/37. 1701.

8. 007/6-11. 1682.

9. 089/128-130. 1772.

10. 003/43. 1683.

11. 003/39. 1683.

12. 002/108. 1684.

13. 003/42. 1684.

14. 002/54. 1677.

15. 003/22. 1679.

16. 003/22. 1679.

17. 003/17. 1678.

18. 007/6. 1682. 007/100. 1711. 039/84-85. 1742. 042/100-101. 1738. 080/28-29. 1766.

19. 008/16. 1682. 054/17. 1746.

20. 051/9-17. 1744.

21. 060/11. 1750.

22. 072/5. 1762-1782.

23. 087/10. 1770-1771. 087/239. 1765.

24. 081/5-6. 1766.

25. 086/401-404. 1771. 088/124. 1771.

26. 089/128-130. 1772.

27. 069/156-158. 1759.

28. 042/147-148. 1742. 039/84-85. 1742. 047/126-127. 1742.

29. 007/6. 1682. 007/20-21. 1683. 007/102. 1711. 042/102-103. 1738.

30. 008/16. 1682.

31. 007/100. 1711.

32. 007/91. 1711.

33. 042/234-235. 1747. 053/210. 1747. 063/153. 1754.

34. 039/75-76. 1742. 039/84-85. 1742.

35. 006/155-156. 1711.

36. 007/86-87. 1711.

37. 007/90. 1711. 007/100. 1711.

38. 007/102. 1711. 007/119. 1711.

39. 042/100-101. 1738. 042/102-103. 1738.

40. 058/23-24. 1755. 080/28-29. 1766.

41. 046/160-161. 1742. 055/364-366. 1748. 061/368-371. 1752.

42. 050/66. 1749. 057/75. 1750.

43. 062/255-257. 1753. 067/50-52. 1756. 089/128-130. 1772.

44. 039/75-76. 1742.

45. Calendar of State Papers Colonial, America and West Indies, vol. 30, October 1717, item 156.i. To be verified.

46. Calendar of State Papers Colonial, America and West Indies, vol. 24, November 1709, item 827. To be verified.

47. Bob Goshorn, "Farms in the Great Valley and Southeastern Pennsylvania in the 18th Century", Tredyffrin Easttown Historical Society History Quarterly, 30 (1992), 53-62. To be verified.

48. 071/175. 1762. 077/64-67. 1765.

49. 055/364-366. 1748. 089/128-130. 1772.

50. 007/20-21. 1683. 007/28. 1690.

51. 039/122. 1745.

52. 039/138. 1747.

53. 051/117-122. 1755.

54. Gregory Clark, "Land Rental Values and the Agrarian Economy: England and Wales, 1500-1912", European Review of Economic History, 6 (2002), 281-308, Table 8. To be verified.

55. Gregory Clark, "Debt, Deficits, and Crowding Out: England, 1727-1840", European Review of Economic History, 5 (2001), 403-436, Table 3. To be verified.

56. P. C. Mancall, J. L. Rosenbloom and T. Weiss, "South Carolina Slave Prices, 1722-1809", NBER Historical Paper 123 (2000), Table 6, p. 37. To be verified.

57. 003/23. 1680. 006/87-88. 1707.

58. 054/35. 1748.

59. 055/181-183. 1748. 056/127-129. 1749.

60. 056/228-230. 1748-1749.

61. 062/166-167. 1753. 062/434. 1754.

62. 057/275. 1754.

63. 078/269-270. 1765-1766. 054/126. 1766.

64. 054/100-101. 1762.

65. 051/42-53. 1747.

66. 051/72-80. 1749.

67. 051/72-80. 1749.

68. 034/153. 1723. 035/32. 1725.

69. 054/78. 1760. 076/446. 1765.

70. 054/72. 1759.

71. 087/239. 1765.

72. 003/13. 1664.

73. 003/24. 1673.

74. 004/25. 1673. 006/20. 1679.

75. 003/21. 1673.

76. 001/10. 1673.

77. 001/11. 1673.

78. 006/8. 1673.

79. 003/46. 1685. 006/50. 1685. 002/210. 1686.

80. 007/14. 1704.

81. 006/47. 1683. 004/59. 1709.

82. 006/5. 1673.

83. 006/11. 1673.

84. 006/11. 1673.

85. 001/20. 1673. 003/19. 1673.

86. 001/21. 1673.

87. 001/21. 1673.

88. 001/49. 1678.

89. 006/11. 1673.

90. 006/11. 1673.

91. 006/11. 1673.

92. 006/12. 1673.

93. 006/12. 1673.

94. 001/26. 1673.

95. 001/26. 1673.

96. 006/17-18. 1677.

97. 006/18-19. 1677.

98. 006/18. 1677.

99. 006/18. 1677.

100. 002/54. 1677.

101. 003/17. 1678.

102. 003/17. 1678.

103. 001/52. 1678.

104. 001/51. 1678.

105. 006/20. 1679.

106. 006/21. 1679.

107. 006/21. 1679. 004/26. 1709.

108. 006/21. 1679.

109. 006/22. 1679.

110. 006/22. 1679.

111. 006/22. 1679.

112. 006/22. 1679.

113. 003/22. 1679.

114. 003/22. 1679.

115. 006/28. 1681.

116. 006/41. 1683.

117. 006/32-33. 1681. 006/85. 1707.

118. 006/34-35. 1681.

119. 005/44. 1679.

120. 005/35. 1678.

121. 005/27. 1678.

122. 005/39. 1678.

123. 005/41. 1678.

124. 001/96. 1680.

125. 001/96. 1680.

126. 005/196. 1681.

127. 007/11. 1682. 007/202. 1713.

128. 005/254. 1681.

129. 005/261. 1682.

130. 005/207. 1680.

131. 001/95. 1680.

132. 001/95. 1680.

133. 005/237. 1682.

134. 005/237. 1682.

135. 011/15. 1688.

136. 002/85. 1682.

137. 002/85. 1682.

138. 009/60. 1684.

139. 006/57. 1701.

140. 007/6. 1682.

141. 007/6. 1682.

142. 007/6. 1682. 007/11. 1682.

143. 007/6. 1682. 007/7. 1682.

144. 007/6. 1682.

145. 007/6. 1682.

146. 007/11. 1682.

147. 007/9. 1682.

148. 007/9. 1682.

149. 007/8. 1682.

150. 007/6. 1682. 007/9. 1682.

151. 007/10. 1682.

152. 007/7. 1682.

153. 007/10. 1682.

154. 007/6. 1682.

155. 007/10. 1682.

156. 007/9. 1682.

157. 007/7. 1682.

158. 006/19. 1677.

159. 005/31. 1678.

160. 006/21. 1679.

161. 006/43. 1683.

162. 006/43. 1683.

163. 002/98. 1683.

164. 006/43. 1683.

165. 006/44. 1683. 003/41. 1687.

166. 006/47. 1683.

167. 003/44. 1683.

168. 007/22. 1684.

169. 007/22. 1684.

170. 007/22. 1684.

171. 007/79. 1684.

172. 048/131-132. 1743.

173. 007/222. 1694.

174. 007/222. 1694.

175. 019/147. 1711.

176. 006/67. 1704. 003/58. 1702. 004/82. 1704.

177. 006/67. 1704.

178. 006/67. 1704.

179. 006/68. 1704.

180. 006/275-276. 1705.

181. 006/23. 1679.

182. 006/23. 1679.

183. 006/23. 1679.

184. 006/23. 1679.

185. 003/23. 1680.

186. 006/22. 1679.

187. 006/23. 1679.

188. 008/41. 1688.

189. 008/33. 1683.

190. 007/42-43. 1687.

191. 007/42-43. 1687.

192. 007/56-57. 1694. 007/44. 1694.

193. 001/95. 1680.

194. 006/43. 1683.

195. 006/43. 1683. 003/40. 1683.

196. 006/43. 1683.

197. 006/156. 1711.

198. 003/43. 1683.

199. 003/44. 1683.

200. 007/20-21. 1683.

201. 007/63. 1695.

202. 007/63. 1695.

203. 007/222. 1694.

204. 007/14. 1704. 007/16. 1695.

205. 007/92. 1701.

206. 007/55-56. 1690.

207. 007/74-75. 1703.

208. 007/24. 1705.

209. 007/54. 1686.

210. 007/37. 1694.

211. 007/26. 1698.

212. 007/64. 1705.

213. 007/21-22. 1691. 007/14. 1704. 007/17-18. 1694. 007/222. 1694. 007/16. 1695. 007/15. 1696. 007/20. 1703.

214. 007/18. 1700.

215. 007/16-17. 1694. 007/17-18. 1694.

216. 007/12. 1702.

217. 007/12. 1702.

218. 007/12. 1702.

219. 007/13. 1703.

220. 007/12. 1702. 007/13. 1703.

221. 007/24. 1705. 007/25. 1705.

222. Michael J. Jarvis, In the Eye of All Trade: Bermuda, Bermudians, and the Maritime Atlantic World, 1680-1783 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2010). To be verified.

223. Richard S. Dunn, Sugar and Slaves: The Rise of the Planter Class in the English West Indies, 1624-1713 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1972). To be verified.

224. 006/44-45. 1683. 004/54. 1709.

225. Leonard Guelke, "Freehold Farmers and Frontier Settlers, 1657-1780", in Richard Elphick and Hermann Giliomee (eds), The Shaping of South African Society, 1652-1840 (Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 1989). To be verified.

226. 002/85. 1682. 006/57. 1701.

227. J. V. Beckett, A History of Laxton: England's Last Open-Field Village (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1989). To be verified.

228. Christopher Clay, Economic Expansion and Social Change: England 1500-1700, vol. 1 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984). To be verified.

229. Philip J. Stern, The Company-State: Corporate Sovereignty and the Early Modern Foundations of the British Empire in India (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011). To be verified.

230. 001/11. 1673.

231. 006/20. 1679.

232. 006/11. 1673.

233. 006/11. 1673.

234. 006/11. 1673.

235. 006/18-19. 1677.

236. 006/11. 1673.

237. 003/19. 1673. 003/77. 1709.

238. 006/22. 1679.

239. 003/22. 1679.

240. 006/23. 1679.

241. 006/43. 1683. 003/40. 1683.

242. 003/40. 1683.

243. 006/43. 1683. 002/98. 1683.

244. 007/22. 1684.

245. 007/22. 1684.

246. 007/79. 1684.

247. 007/14. 1704.

248. 007/92. 1701.

249. 003/43. 1683.

250. 007/6. 1682.

251. 007/11. 1682.

252. 007/6. 1682.

253. 007/222. 1694.

254. 006/67. 1704.

255. 006/92-93. 1707.

256. 019/7. 1709.

257. 019/147. 1711.

258. 006/155-156. 1711.

259. 006/155-156. 1711.

260. 007/86-87. 1711.

261. 007/86-87. 1711.

262. 007/86-87. 1711.

263. 006/155-156. 1711.

264. 006/155-156. 1711.

265. 006/157. 1711.

266. 006/153-154. 1711.

267. 006/158. 1711.

268. 006/158. 1711.

269. 006/159. 1711.

270. 006/167. 1712.

271. 007/90. 1711.

272. 007/100. 1711.

273. 007/90. 1711.

274. 007/98. 1711.

275. 007/101. 1711.

276. 007/104. 1711. 007/105. 1711.

277. 007/107. 1711.

278. 007/95. 1711.

279. 007/129. 1713. 007/131. 1713. 007/133. 1713.

280. 007/131. 1713.

281. 007/163. 1713. 007/169. 1713. 007/181. 1713.

282. 006/266. 1714.

283. 007/159. 1713.

284. 007/202. 1713.

285. 019/147. 1711.

286. 007/197. 1713.

287. 007/197. 1713.

288. 007/155. 1713.

289. 007/165. 1713.

290. 007/146. 1713. 007/157. 1713.

291. 007/208. 1713.

292. 007/207. 1713. 007/208. 1713.

293. 007/212. 1713.

294. 007/251. 1719.

295. 033/203. 1726.

296. 039/52. 1740.

297. 007/113. 1711.

298. 007/113. 1711.

299. 007/119. 1711.

300. 007/128. 1713. 007/136. 1713.

301. 007/132. 1713.

302. 007/134. 1713.

303. 007/206. 1713.

304. 007/139. 1713. 007/140. 1713.

305. 007/135. 1713. 007/136. 1713.

306. 007/131. 1713.

307. 007/112. 1711.

308. 008/124. 1711.

309. 007/120. 1711.

310. 007/133. 1713. 007/134. 1713.

311. 033/71-72. 1725.

312. 008/137-138. 1714.

313. 008/149. 1718.

314. 006/48. 1683.

315. 007/66-67. 1707.

316. 007/124. 1712.

317. 007/187. 1713.

318. 006/179-180. 1712.

319. 006/200. 1712.

320. 006/203-204. 1712.

321. 007/124. 1712.

322. 007/129. 1713.

323. 007/129. 1713.

324. 007/84. 1716.

325. 007/89. 1711.

326. 033/61. 1724.

327. 033/98. 1726.

328. 033/101. 1727.

329. 033/101. 1727.

330. 033/103-106. 1727.

331. 033/103-106. 1727.

332. 033/98. 1726.

333. 039/25. 1738.

334. 039/23-24. 1738.

335. 049/118. 1744.

336. 066/199. 1755.

337. 060/74. 1773.

338. 006/44. 1683.

339. 021/160. 1716.

340. 053/58. 1746.

341. 046/53. 1742.

342. 039/75-76. 1742.

343. 039/75-76. 1742.

344. 046/72-74. 1742.

345. 046/74-75. 1742.

346. 039/84-85. 1742.

347. 042/147-148. 1742. 047/126-127. 1742.

348. 047/126-127. 1742.

349. 039/91. 1743.

350. 048/131-132. 1743.

351. 052/138-141. 1745.

352. 069/156-158. 1759.

353. 086/401-404. 1771. 088/124. 1771.

354. 062/51. 1753.

355. 006/34-35. 1681.

356. 011/15. 1688.

357. 011/15. 1688.

358. 013/126. 1698.

359. 006/159-160. 1711.

360. 006/160. 1711.

361. 046/72-74. 1742.

362. 039/194-195. 1754.

363. 039/194-195. 1754.

364. 061/450-451. 1752.

365. 063/75. 1754.

366. 067/300-301. 1757.

367. 085/471. 1770.

368. 063/171-173. 1751-1754.

369. 074/20-21. 1779.

370. 074/20-21. 1779.

371. 074/20-21. 1779.

372. 074/20-21. 1779.

373. 074/20-21. 1779.

374. 074/21-22. 1779.

375. 074/21-22. 1779.

376. 074/38. 1798.

377. 074/38. 1798.

378. 074/39-40. 1798.

379. 057/184. 1752.

380. 063/166-171. 1754.

381. Christopher Clay, Economic Expansion and Social Change: England 1500-1700, vol. 1 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984). To be verified.

382. 006/179-180. 1712.

383. J. V. Beckett, A History of Laxton: England's Last Open-Field Village (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1989). To be verified.

384. Joan Thirsk (ed.), The Agrarian History of England and Wales, vol. 5, 1640-1750 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984-1985). To be verified.

385. Gregory Clark, "Land Rental Values and the Agrarian Economy: England and Wales, 1500-1912", European Review of Economic History, 6 (2002), 281-308, Table 8. To be verified.

386. John Locke, Some Considerations of the Consequences of the Lowering of Interest (1691), part 3. To be verified.

387. Gregory Clark, "Debt, Deficits, and Crowding Out: England, 1727-1840", European Review of Economic History, 5 (2001), 403-436, Table 3. To be verified.

388. Bob Goshorn, "Farms in the Great Valley and Southeastern Pennsylvania in the 18th Century", Tredyffrin Easttown Historical Society History Quarterly, 30 (1992), 53-62. To be verified.

389. Bob Goshorn, "Farms in the Great Valley and Southeastern Pennsylvania in the 18th Century", Tredyffrin Easttown Historical Society History Quarterly, 30 (1992), 53-62. To be verified.

390. P. C. Mancall, J. L. Rosenbloom and T. Weiss, "South Carolina Slave Prices, 1722-1809", NBER Historical Paper 123 (2000), Table 6, p. 37. To be verified.

391. Calendar of State Papers Colonial, America and West Indies, vol. 24, November 1709, item 832.i. To be verified.

392. Calendar of State Papers Colonial, America and West Indies, vol. 27, May 1714, item 662. To be verified.

393. Calendar of State Papers Colonial, America and West Indies, vol. 30, October 1717, item 156. To be verified.

394. Michael J. Jarvis, In the Eye of All Trade: Bermuda, Bermudians, and the Maritime Atlantic World, 1680-1783 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2010). To be verified.

395. Richard S. Dunn, Sugar and Slaves: The Rise of the Planter Class in the English West Indies, 1624-1713 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1972). To be verified.

396. Leonard Guelke, "Freehold Farmers and Frontier Settlers, 1657-1780", in Richard Elphick and Hermann Giliomee (eds), The Shaping of South African Society, 1652-1840 (Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 1989). To be verified.

397. Philip J. Stern, The Company-State: Corporate Sovereignty and the Early Modern Foundations of the British Empire in India (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011). To be verified.

398. 052/138-141. 1745.

399. 002/85. 1682.

400. 009/60. 1684.

401. 003/39. 1683.

402. 002/98. 1683.

403. 008/62. 1697.

404. 006/57. 1701.

405. 006/57. 1701.

406. 003/51. 1705.

407. 006/158. 1711.

408. 017/210. 1707.

409. 007/41-42. 1705.

410. 007/102. 1711.

411. 007/128. 1713. 007/136. 1713. 007/196. 1713.

412. 007/184. 1713. 007/136. 1713. 007/196. 1713.

413. 007/210. 1713.

414. 045/183-184. 1742.

415. 007/102. 1711. 007/128. 1713.

416. 007/103. 1717. 007/99. 1717.

417. 007/245-246. 1719.

418. 033/18-19. 1721.

419. 033/111-112. 1724.

420. 033/172. 1726. 033/158-159. 1726.

421. 033/236. 1729.

422. 033/237-238. 1729.

423. 042/6. 1735.

424. 042/7-9. 1738.

425. 042/7-9. 1738. 042/12-15. 1731.

426. 042/25-26. 1738.

427. 042/167-168. 1744.

428. 042/216-217. 1745.

429. 042/206-207. 1743. 049/438-439. 1745.

430. 058/43-44. 1759.

431. 042/27-118. 1731-1748.

432. 042/25-26. 1738. 042/28-29. 1738. 042/33-34. 1738. 042/57-58. 1738.

433. 042/94-95. 1738.

434. 042/99-100. 1738.

435. 042/105-106. 1738-1739.

436. 042/117-118. 1738.

437. 049/437-438. 1745.

438. 049/445-446. 1745.

439. 050/20. 1745.

440. 058/43-44. 1759. 058/75-76. 1759.

441. 058/43-122. 1759.

442. 069/155. 1759.

443. 069/160. 1759. 069/165. 1759. 069/224. 1759. 069/226-227. 1759. 069/229. 1759.

444. 058/91. 1759.

445. 022/186. 1716.

446. 007/227-228. 1717.

447. 007/227-228. 1717.

448. 007/244. 1719.

449. 007/253-263. 1719.

450. 071/348. 1763.

451. 078/354. 1767.

452. 052/19. 1745. 056/300. 1749.

453. 042/105-106. 1738-1739.

454. 042/24-25. 1738.

455. 042/110-111. 1738.

456. 007/230-231. 1718. 007/231. 1697.

457. 049/188-189. 1744.

458. 049/131. 1744.

459. 049/444-445. 1745.

460. 050/15. 1745.

461. 067/62-64. 1756.

462. 084/107-108. 1769.

463. 084/87. 1769. 084/271. 1769.

464. 080/211. 1782.

465. 042/39-40. 1738.

466. 042/44-46. 1738. 042/46-47. 1738. 042/48-49. 1738.

467. 042/42-44. 1738.

468. 042/74-76. 1738.

469. 033/257. 1731.

470. 034/425-427. 1724.

471. 026/87-88. 1717.

472. 049/446-452. 1745.

473. 049/428-430. 1745. 042/268-269. 1748. 042/270-271. 1748.

474. 058/71-72. 1759.

475. 075/33-35. 1763.

476. 053/106. 1746. 068/250. 1758.

477. 057/275. 1754.

478. 033/230. 1728.

479. 033/235. 1727.

480. 042/15-16. 1737. 042/16-17. 1738. 042/18-19. 1737.

481. 042/19-20. 1737.

482. 042/137. 1742.

483. 046/79-80. 1742.

484. 042/219-220. 1746. 042/221-222. 1746. 042/224. 1746. 042/225. 1746. 042/226. 1746.

485. 042/259. 1747. 055/105-107. 1747.

486. 053/192. 1746.

487. 058/33-34. 1758.

488. 058/34-35. 1758. 058/35-36. 1758.

489. 076/71. 1764.

490. 076/77. 1764.

491. 084/148. 1769.

492. 078/289. 1766. 078/293. 1767.

493. 080/267. 1787. 080/268. 1787.

494. 080/321-323. 1788.

495. 080/11. 1817.

496. 068/7. 1757.

497. 049/336. 1744.

498. 049/367. 1744.

499. 055/422-424. 1748.

500. 068/253. 1758.

501. 069/165. 1759.

502. 078/356. 1767.

503. 083/210. 1768. 083/363. 1768.

504. 083/332-333. 1768.

505. 083/424-425. 1769.

506. 083/337-338. 1768.

507. 079/175. 1769.

508. 065/283. 1768.

509. 078/284. 1766.

510. 078/284. 1766.

511. 084/275. 1769. 084/282. 1769. 086/404. 1771. 086/405. 1771.

512. 053/213-215. 1747.

513. 056/218-219. 1749.

514. 033/158-159. 1726.

515. 058/28-29. 1757.

516. 033/236. 1729. 080/253. 1786.

517. 033/238. 1729.

518. 033/245. 1730.

519. 042/93-94. 1738.

520. 080/300-301. 1788.

521. 080/335-336. 1788.

522. 033/246. 1730.

523. 033/145-146. 1725.

524. 049/438-439. 1745. 049/543-544. 1745.

525. 042/155-157. 1744.

526. 049/442. 1745. 033/18-19. 1721. 088/147. 1771.

527. 046/153. 1742.

528. 044/45. 1740.

529. 033/33. 1721.

530. 039/36-37. 1739.

531. 039/18. 1734. 039/19. 1734.

532. 039/34-35. 1739. 039/86. 1742.

533. 039/66. 1741. 039/34. 1739.

534. 039/78. 1742. 039/110. 1745.

535. 057/184. 1752.

536. 049/210. 1744. 051/29-30. 1744.

537. 052/127. 1745.

538. 046/8. 1742.

539. 042/238. 1747.

540. 068/242. 1758.

541. 031/36. 1720.

542. 049/420-421. 1745.

543. 047/23. 1742.

544. 033/36. 1722.

545. 033/247. 1730.

546. 049/425. 1745.

547. 049/423. 1745.

548. 067/379-382. 1757.

549. 082/187. 1767.

550. 042/7-9. 1738.

551. 007/52-53. 1707.

552. 076/72. 1764.

553. 058/50-51. 1759.

554. 080/28. 1765. 080/28-29. 1766.

555. 080/28-29. 1766. 080/357-358. 1789.

556. 080/32. 1766. 080/253. 1786.

557. 080/72. 1768.

558. 080/100. 1769. 080/104. 1769.

559. 080/267. 1787. 080/270-271. 1787. 080/277-278. 1787.

560. 080/119-120. 1771.

561. 080/348-349. 1789. 080/349-351. 1789.

562. 080/4. 1830. 080/15. 1813.

563. Christopher Clay, "Lifeleasehold in the Western Counties of England 1650-1750", Agricultural History Review, 29 (1981). To be verified.

564. Joan Thirsk (ed.), The Agrarian History of England and Wales, vol. 5, 1640-1750 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984-1985). To be verified.

565. Christopher Clay, Economic Expansion and Social Change: England 1500-1700, vol. 1 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984). To be verified.

566. Michael J. Jarvis, In the Eye of All Trade: Bermuda, Bermudians, and the Maritime Atlantic World, 1680-1783 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2010). To be verified.

567. Gregory Clark, "Land Rental Values and the Agrarian Economy: England and Wales, 1500-1912", European Review of Economic History, 6 (2002), 281-308, Table 8. To be verified.

568. Gregory Clark, "Land Rental Values and the Agrarian Economy: England and Wales, 1500-1912", European Review of Economic History, 6 (2002), 281-308, Table 8. To be verified.

569. 007/113. 1711.

570. 046/160-161. 1742.

571. Gregory Clark, "Land Rental Values and the Agrarian Economy: England and Wales, 1500-1912", European Review of Economic History, 6 (2002), 281-308, Table 8. To be verified.

572. Leonard Guelke, "Freehold Farmers and Frontier Settlers, 1657-1780", in Richard Elphick and Hermann Giliomee (eds), The Shaping of South African Society, 1652-1840 (Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 1989). To be verified.

573. M. Whiting Spilhaus, "The Story of Ryk Tulbagh", Historia (University of Pretoria), p. 172. To be verified.

574. Philip J. Stern, The Company-State: Corporate Sovereignty and the Early Modern Foundations of the British Empire in India (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011). To be verified.

575. 005/30. 1678.

576. 006/22. 1679.

577. 006/22. 1679.

578. 006/44. 1683. 003/41. 1687.

579. 003/41. 1687.

580. 006/43. 1683. 003/40. 1683.

581. 006/43. 1683. 006/88-89. 1707.

582. 006/156. 1711.

583. 006/51. 1687.

584. 006/92. 1707.

585. 006/55. 1687.

586. 003/126. 1709.

587. 002/85. 1682.

588. 002/85. 1682.

589. 009/60. 1684.

590. 009/21. 1684.

591. 011/166. 1690.

592. 015/9. 1703.

593. 021/160. 1716.

594. 053/58. 1746.

595. 024/422. 1717.

596. 007/102. 1711. 007/110-111. 1711.

597. 007/134. 1713.

598. 007/91. 1711.

599. 006/157. 1711.

600. 006/158. 1711.

601. 022/185. 1716.

602. 033/151-152. 1725.

603. 033/226-227. 1727.

604. 033/186-187. 1726. 033/242. 1730.

605. 042/6-271. 1731-1748.

606. 039/45-46. 1740.

607. 039/75-76. 1742. 039/79-80. 1742. 046/74-75. 1742.

608. 039/84-85. 1742.

609. 042/147-148. 1742. 047/126-127. 1742.

610. 039/91. 1743. 048/131-132. 1743.

611. 052/18. 1745.

612. 046/160-161. 1742.

613. 046/8. 1742.

614. 052/138-141. 1745.

615. 050/5-6. 1744.

616. 050/5-6. 1744.

617. 053/168-170. 1746.

618. 053/168-170. 1746.

619. 052/10. 1745.

620. 052/53. 1745.

621. 050/66. 1749.

622. 057/75. 1750.

623. 059/23-25. 1750.

624. 059/23-25. 1750.

625. 057/184. 1752.

626. 061/29. 1751. 061/368-371. 1752.

627. 062/255-257. 1753.

628. 062/255-257. 1753.

629. 007/244. 1719.

630. 042/94-95. 1738.

631. 055/21-22. 1747.

632. 055/422-424. 1748.

633. 056/161. 1749.

634. 056/204. 1749.

635. 058/11-12. 1750.

636. 061/451. 1752.

637. 068/63. 1758.

638. 071/192. 1762.

639. 071/350. 1763.

640. 078/70. 1766.

641. 083/213. 1768.

642. 083/332-333. 1768.

643. 083/217. 1768.

644. 086/8. 1770. 086/367. 1771. 086/404. 1771.

645. 052/138-141. 1745.

646. 061/23. 1751.

647. 063/184-186. 1754.

648. 083/218-221. 1768.

649. 082/187. 1767.

650. 062/255-257. 1753.

651. 007/89. 1711.

652. 033/230. 1728.

653. 047/29-30. 1742.

654. 053/69-70. 1746. 053/206-207. 1746.

655. 076/71. 1764.

656. 058/151-152. 1764.

657. 084/148. 1769.

658. 083/422-423. 1769.

659. 083/422-423. 1769.

660. 006/42. 1683.

661. 053/91-92. 1746.

662. 046/81. 1742.

663. 046/119. 1742.

664. 055/6. 1747.

665. 056/217. 1749. 059/125. 1750. 061/14. 1751. 062/246. 1753. 063/157. 1754. 066/107. 1755. 067/37. 1756. 068/238. 1758. 069/144-145. 1759.

666. 060/16. 1752.

667. 059/125. 1750.

668. 060/32. 1757.

669. 070/158-159. 1762.

670. 071/76. 1762.

671. 075/23. 1763. 077/22. 1765.

672. 085/389-390. 1770.

673. 060/103. 1782.

674. 063/251. 1754.

675. 067/67. 1756.

676. 047/31. 1742.

677. 047/80. 1742.

678. 046/160-161. 1742.

679. 046/160-161. 1742.

680. 071/94-96. 1762. 089/128-130. 1772.

681. 052/138-141. 1745. 089/128-130. 1772.

682. 055/364-366. 1748. 089/128-130. 1772.

683. 075/33-35. 1763. 084/297-300. 1769.

684. 084/297-300. 1769.

685. 059/134-136. 1750. 086/91. 1771.

686. 048/171-172. 1743.

687. 055/364-366. 1748.

688. 056/232-234. 1749.

689. 059/134-136. 1750.

690. 059/195-196. 1750.

691. 068/250-253. 1758. 068/315. 1758.

692. 069/156-158. 1759.

693. 071/94-96. 1762. 071/175. 1762.

694. 075/33-35. 1763.

695. 070/232. 1763.

696. 082/182-184. 1767.

697. 086/401-404. 1771. 088/124. 1771.

698. 089/128-130. 1772.

699. 066/122-124. 1755.

700. 067/50-52. 1756.

701. 067/395-398. 1757.

702. 062/255-257. 1753. 067/395-398. 1757.

703. 046/160-161. 1742.

704. 049/269-272. 1744.

705. 055/364-366. 1748.

706. 062/255-257. 1753. 068/250-253. 1758.

707. 061/30-32. 1751.

708. 062/255-257. 1753. 075/33-35. 1763.

709. 086/401-404. 1771.

710. 084/297-300. 1769.

711. 087/16-20. 1771. 087/120-124. 1773.

712. 046/160-161. 1742.

713. 049/269-272. 1744.

714. 049/420-421. 1745.

715. 071/94-96. 1762.

716. 075/33-35. 1763.

717. 089/128-130. 1772.

718. 046/160-161. 1742.

719. 048/171-172. 1743. 049/269-272. 1744.

720. 052/138-141. 1745. 062/255-257. 1753. 063/184-186. 1754.

721. 075/33-35. 1763.

722. 089/128-130. 1772.

723. 066/122-124. 1755.

724. 046/153. 1742.

725. 049/437-438. 1745.

726. 049/521-531. 1745.

727. 049/521-531. 1745.

728. 052/18. 1745.

729. 041/419. 1739.

730. 065/175. 1762.

731. 065/175. 1762.

732. 068/28. 1758.

733. 049/305-309. 1744.

734. 053/160. 1746.

735. 056/294. 1749.

736. 062/319. 1753. 068/315. 1758.

737. 077/163. 1765. 078/262. 1766. 083/320. 1768. 084/413. 1769. 089/230. 1772.

738. 057/401-402. 1757.

739. 055/78-79. 1747.

740. 057/414. 1757.

741. 065/61. 1757.

742. 006/165. 1711.

743. 006/182. 1712.

744. 026/44-45. 1716.

745. 057/13. 1748.

746. 057/15. 1748. 070/26. 1759.

747. 057/55. 1749. 057/98. 1750. 057/144. 1751. 057/203. 1752. 057/249. 1753. 057/300. 1754. 057/363. 1755. 057/393. 1756. 057/426. 1757.

748. 070/19. 1759. 070/48. 1759. 070/100-101. 1760. 070/158-159. 1762. 070/214-215. 1763. 070/257. 1763. 079/49. 1766. 079/104-105. 1768. 079/160. 1769. 079/279. 1771. 090/35. 1772. 090/88. 1773. 090/142. 1774. 090/192. 1775. 090/241. 1776. 090/283-284. 1777. 090/327. 1778. 090/360. 1779.

749. 090/35. 1772.

750. 087/435-438. 1821.

751. 087/435-438. 1821.

752. Christopher Clay, Economic Expansion and Social Change: England 1500-1700, vol. 1 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984). To be verified.

753. Joan Thirsk (ed.), The Agrarian History of England and Wales, vol. 5, 1640-1750 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984-1985). To be verified.

754. J. V. Beckett, A History of Laxton: England's Last Open-Field Village (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1989). To be verified.

755. Gregory Clark, "Land Rental Values and the Agrarian Economy: England and Wales, 1500-1912", European Review of Economic History, 6 (2002), 281-308, Table 8. To be verified.

756. Gregory Clark, "Land Rental Values and the Agrarian Economy: England and Wales, 1500-1912", European Review of Economic History, 6 (2002), 281-308, Table 8. To be verified.

757. 007/113. 1711.

758. 046/160-161. 1742. 050/5-6. 1744.

759. Gregory Clark, "Land Rental Values and the Agrarian Economy: England and Wales, 1500-1912", European Review of Economic History, 6 (2002), 281-308, Table 8. To be verified.

760. 039/75-76. 1742.

761. Calendar of State Papers Colonial, America and West Indies, vol. 30, October 1717, item 156.i. To be verified.

762. Calendar of State Papers Colonial, America and West Indies, vol. 24, November 1709, item 827. To be verified.

763. Calendar of State Papers Colonial, America and West Indies, vol. 24, November 1709, item 829. To be verified.

764. Bob Goshorn, "Farms in the Great Valley and Southeastern Pennsylvania in the 18th Century", Tredyffrin Easttown Historical Society History Quarterly, 30 (1992), 53-62. To be verified.

765. Archives of Maryland, vol. 415, Land Office and Prerogative Court Records of Colonial Maryland, p. 14. To be verified.

766. Board of Trade, "State of Virginia in 1721", quoted in J. Blankenbaker, Germanna History Notes, note 1050. To be verified.

767. M. D. North-Coombes, "Labour Problems in the Sugar Industry of Ile de France or Mauritius 1790-1842" (MA thesis, University of Cape Town, 1978), p. 11. To be verified.

768. W. M. Macmillan, Bantu, Boer and Briton (1929), p. 21, quoted in Dictionary of South African English on Historical Principles, s.v. "leenings-plaats". To be verified.

769. 046/160-161. 1742. 052/138-141. 1745. 089/128-130. 1772.

770. Board of Trade, "State of Virginia in 1721", quoted in J. Blankenbaker, Germanna History Notes, note 1050. To be verified.

771. Board of Trade, "State of Virginia in 1721", quoted in J. Blankenbaker, Germanna History Notes, note 1050. To be verified.

772. Leonard Guelke, "Freehold Farmers and Frontier Settlers, 1657-1780", in Richard Elphick and Hermann Giliomee (eds), The Shaping of South African Society, 1652-1840 (Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 1989). To be verified.

773. Michael J. Jarvis, In the Eye of All Trade: Bermuda, Bermudians, and the Maritime Atlantic World, 1680-1783 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2010). To be verified.

774. Richard S. Dunn, Sugar and Slaves: The Rise of the Planter Class in the English West Indies, 1624-1713 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1972). To be verified.

775. Philip J. Stern, The Company-State: Corporate Sovereignty and the Early Modern Foundations of the British Empire in India (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011). To be verified.

776. 003/13. 1664.

777. 003/24. 1673.

778. 004/25. 1673.

779. 001/11. 1673.

780. 001/11. 1673.

781. 003/46. 1685. 006/50. 1685.

782. 002/210. 1686.

783. 006/179-180. 1712.

784. 021/114. 1716.

785. 049/37. 1744.

786. 087/244. 1795.

787. 003/22. 1679.

788. 006/11. 1673. 006/18-19. 1677.

789. 006/23. 1679.

790. 006/324. 1707.

791. 006/324. 1707.

792. 002/104. 1683.

793. 050/31-32. 1746.

794. 050/31-32. 1746.

795. 002/85. 1682.

796. 006/57. 1701.

797. 006/57. 1701.

798. 006/179-180. 1712.

799. 006/179-180. 1712.

800. 006/179-180. 1712.

801. 006/324. 1707.

802. 024/182. 1716.

803. 021/111. 1715. 021/112. 1716.

804. 026/93. 1717.

805. 026/93. 1717.

806. 029/53. 1717.

807. 029/103. 1717.

808. 027/13. 1717.

809. 030/17. 1719.

810. 030/17. 1719.

811. 023/69. 1715.

812. 007/227-228. 1717.

813. 033/61. 1724.

814. 050/5-6. 1744.

815. 052/370-371. 1746.

816. 050/5-6. 1744.

817. 050/5-6. 1744.

818. 050/5-6. 1744.

819. 052/53. 1745.

820. 050/66. 1749.

821. 050/66. 1749. 057/75. 1750.

822. 059/23-25. 1750.

823. 059/23-25. 1750.

824. 059/23-25. 1750.

825. 059/23-25. 1750.

826. 059/295. 1751.

827. 049/437-438. 1745.

828. 049/437-438. 1745.

829. 049/437-438. 1745.

830. 049/437-438. 1745.

831. 049/131. 1744.

832. 049/444-445. 1745.

833. 049/443. 1745.

834. 042/185-186. 1744. 042/189-190. 1745.

835. 050/15. 1745.

836. 050/15. 1745.

837. 067/62-64. 1756.

838. 067/62-64. 1756.

839. 084/107-108. 1769.

840. 050/20. 1745.

841. 050/21. 1745.

842. 049/438-439. 1745.

843. 049/543-544. 1745.

844. 050/19-20. 1745.

845. 050/19-20. 1745.

846. 050/35-36. 1746.

847. 050/15. 1745.

848. 050/15. 1745.

849. 050/18. 1745.

850. 050/10. 1744.

851. 050/10. 1744.

852. 050/19. 1745.

853. 050/116-117. 1751.

854. 050/116-117. 1751.

855. 057/167. 1752. 061/195. 1752.

856. 064/130-131. 1760. 065/127-128. 1760.

857. 050/127-128. 1752.

858. 050/127-128. 1752.

859. 050/128. 1752.

860. 050/128. 1752.

861. 065/283. 1768. 082/388-389. 1768.

862. 065/283. 1768.

863. 083/337-338. 1768.

864. 090/294. 1778.

865. 050/63. 1749.

866. 050/63. 1749.

867. 050/62-63. 1749.

868. 050/62-63. 1749.

869. 050/11-12. 1744.

870. 050/17. 1745. 050/39. 1747.

871. 050/28. 1746.

872. 050/38-39. 1747.

873. 064/15-16. 1754.

874. 042/147-148. 1742.

875. 042/147-148. 1742.

876. 042/147-148. 1742. 039/84. 1742. 047/126. 1742.

877. 064/139-140. 1761.

878. 064/139-140. 1761.

879. 050/66. 1749.

880. 006/28. 1681.

881. 006/41. 1683.

882. 046/104-105. 1742.

883. 046/104-105. 1742.

884. 046/104-105. 1742.

885. 074/6. 1762.

886. 074/6. 1762.

887. 070/185. 1762.

888. 073/8. 1762.

889. 073/8. 1762.

890. 073/8. 1762. 070/203-204. 1762.

891. 070/214-215. 1763.

892. 065/174. 1762.

893. 065/174. 1762.

894. 070/231. 1763.

895. 075/421-422. 1764.

896. 075/421-422. 1764.

897. 075/421-422. 1764.

898. 065/287-288. 1768.

899. 057/243-245. 1753. 074/35-37. 1753.

900. 062/166-167. 1753.

901. 062/166-167. 1753.

902. 062/170-172. 1753.

903. 062/170-172. 1753.

904. 062/170-172. 1753.

905. 057/243-245. 1753.

906. 057/243-245. 1753.

907. 057/243-245. 1753.

908. 074/32-35. 1753.

909. 074/32-35. 1753.

910. 074/32-35. 1753.

911. 074/35-37. 1753.

912. 074/35-37. 1753.

913. 050/156. 1753.

914. 050/156. 1753.

915. 050/156. 1753.

916. 062/434. 1754.

917. 062/434. 1754.

918. 057/275. 1754.

919. 057/275. 1754.

920. 054/68. 1757-1758. 068/83-84. 1758.

921. 054/68. 1757-1758.

922. 062/84. 1753.

923. 062/84. 1753.

924. 062/84. 1753. 050/136. 1752.

925. 062/87-88. 1753.

926. 062/88-89. 1753.

927. 062/88-89. 1753.

928. 064/12. 1754.

929. 062/172. 1753.

930. 056/160-162. 1749.

931. 074/20-21. 1779.

932. 074/20-21. 1779.

933. 074/20-21. 1779.

934. 074/21-22. 1779.

935. 074/21-22. 1779.

936. 074/38. 1798.

937. 074/39-40. 1798.

938. 074/40. 1792.

939. 074/40. 1792.

940. 074/41. 1792.

941. 074/44-45. 1811.

942. 074/44-45. 1811.

943. 074/45-47. 1816.

944. 074/18-19. 1781. 074/22-24. 1787. 074/25. 1792.

945. 067/395-398. 1757.

946. Robert M. Weir, Colonial South Carolina: A History (Millwood, NY: KTO Press, 1983). To be verified.

947. Gary B. Nash, Quakers and Politics: Pennsylvania, 1681-1726 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1968). To be verified.

948. Bob Goshorn, "Farms in the Great Valley and Southeastern Pennsylvania in the 18th Century", Tredyffrin Easttown Historical Society History Quarterly, 30 (1992), 53-62. To be verified.

949. Calendar of State Papers Colonial, America and West Indies, vol. 24, November 1709, item 829. To be verified.

950. 039/75-76. 1742.

951. Henry C. Wilkinson, The Adventurers of Bermuda (London: Oxford University Press, 1933). To be verified.

952. Michael J. Jarvis, In the Eye of All Trade: Bermuda, Bermudians, and the Maritime Atlantic World, 1680-1783 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2010). To be verified.

953. Leonard Guelke, "Freehold Farmers and Frontier Settlers, 1657-1780", in Richard Elphick and Hermann Giliomee (eds), The Shaping of South African Society, 1652-1840 (Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 1989). To be verified.

954. 025/17. 1716.

955. Amy Louise Erickson, Women and Property in Early Modern England (London: Routledge, 1993). To be verified.

956. Christopher Clay, Economic Expansion and Social Change: England 1500-1700, vol. 1 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984). To be verified.

957. Philip J. Stern, The Company-State: Corporate Sovereignty and the Early Modern Foundations of the British Empire in India (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011). To be verified.

958. 074/18-19. 1781.

959. 007/129. 1713.

960. 007/109. 1711. 007/157. 1713. 042/204-205. 1745. 033/203. 1726.

961. 047/36-37. 1742.

962. 007/57. 1700.

963. 008/97-98. 1706.

964. 008/97-98. 1706.

965. 056/225-228. 1749.

966. 056/225-228. 1749.

967. 054/33-34. 1749.

968. 054/51-53. 1750.

969. 051/9-17. 1744.

970. 049/393-395. 1745. 049/462-464. 1745. 049/477-478. 1745. 042/222-223. 1746.

971. 049/544-546. 1745.

972. 049/550-552. 1745.

973. 042/15-16. 1737.

974. 042/18-19. 1737.

975. 039/30-31. 1739.

976. 085/398. 1770.

977. 039/13. 1733.

978. 007/95. 1711.

979. 007/168. 1713.

980. 042/50-51. 1738.

981. 001/26. 1673.

982. 006/19. 1677.

983. 006/21. 1679.

984. 006/21. 1679. 004/26. 1709.

985. 005/27. 1678.

986. 005/31. 1678.

987. 005/31. 1678.

988. 005/35. 1678.

989. 005/261. 1682.

990. 007/6. 1682.

991. 007/6. 1682.

992. 007/6. 1682.

993. 007/6. 1682.

994. 007/6. 1682.

995. 007/7. 1682.

996. 007/11. 1682.

997. 007/11. 1682.

998. 007/11. 1682.

999. 007/43. 1707.

1000. 003/58. 1702.

1001. 006/67. 1704. 004/82. 1704.

1002. 006/67. 1704.

1003. 006/67. 1704. 006/92-93. 1707.

1004. 006/155-156. 1711.

1005. 006/155-156. 1711.

1006. 006/155-156. 1711.

1007. 006/157. 1711.

1008. 007/86-87. 1711.

1009. 007/86-87. 1711.

1010. 007/86-87. 1711.

1011. 007/86-87. 1711.

1012. 007/107. 1711.

1013. 007/90. 1711.

1014. 007/90. 1711. 007/100. 1711.

1015. 007/90. 1711.

1016. 007/100. 1711. 007/101. 1711.

1017. 007/102. 1711. 007/110-111. 1711.

1018. 007/139. 1713. 007/140. 1713.

1019. 007/153. 1713. 007/154. 1713.

1020. 008/124. 1711.

1021. 008/132. 1711.

1022. 006/180-182. 1712.

1023. 006/203. 1712.

1024. 007/207. 1713. 007/208. 1713.

1025. 007/163. 1713. 007/213. 1713.

1026. 007/102. 1711.

1027. 007/128. 1713. 007/130. 1713. 007/132. 1713.

1028. 033/191-192. 1726.

1029. 033/158-159. 1726.

1030. 042/25-26. 1738. 042/100-101. 1738.

1031. 049/452-460. 1745.

1032. 058/28-29. 1757.

1033. 053/213-215. 1747.

1034. 056/218-219. 1749.

1035. 080/60-61. 1767. 080/83. 1769. 080/158-159. 1777.

1036. 042/15-16. 1737. 042/219-220. 1746.

1037. 080/28. 1765.

1038. 080/246. 1785.

1039. 080/247. 1785. 080/248. 1785.

1040. 042/83-84. 1738.

1041. 061/27. 1751.

1042. 063/247. 1754.

1043. 071/192. 1762. 071/350. 1763. 086/88-89. 1771.

1044. 036/181. 1727.

1045. 037/34-37, 37/53, 37/120-122, 37/322-323. 1727-1729.

1046. 033/160-161. 1726.

1047. 049/355. 1744.

1048. 049/355. 1744.

1049. 049/366. 1744.

1050. 049/366. 1744.

1051. 049/437-438. 1745.

1052. 049/437-438. 1745.

1053. 049/437-438. 1745.

1054. 049/445-446. 1745.

1055. 053/304-306. 1747.

1056. 065/154. 1762.

1057. 070/254. 1763.

1058. 065/214-215. 1764.

1059. 084/152. 1769.

1060. 090/313-314. 1778.

1061. 090/313-314. 1778.

1062. 090/313-314. 1778.

1063. 090/350. 1779.

1064. 090/350. 1779.

1065. 090/182-183. 1775.

1066. 054/203-206. 1778.

1067. 054/203-206. 1778.

1068. 060/113. 1784.

1069. 013/22. 1696.

1070. 013/22. 1696.

1071. 017/68. 1706.

1072. 017/68. 1706.

1073. 027/147. 1717.

1074. 036/98-101. 1726.

1075. 036/98-101. 1726.

1076. 036/98-101. 1726.

1077. 036/108. 1726.

1078. 035/16. 1725.

1079. 038/222-223. 1731-1732.

1080. 045/93-103, 45/231, 45/254. 1741-1742.

1081. 049/118. 1744.

1082. 049/118. 1744.

1083. 049/118. 1744.

1084. 052/345-347. 1746.

1085. 052/345-347. 1746.

1086. 052/345-347. 1746.

1087. 052/359. 1746.

1088. 069/140. 1759.

1089. 030/87. 1719.

1090. 059/461-462. 1751.

1091. 067/46-49. 1756.

1092. 067/57-58. 1756.

1093. 055/7-8. 1747. 056/64. 1748.

1094. 059/202-203. 1750.

1095. 059/202-203. 1750.

1096. 061/443-444. 1752.

1097. 083/210. 1768.

1098. 083/214. 1768.

1099. 083/363. 1768.

1100. 083/363. 1768.

1101. 083/326-328. 1768. 083/332-333. 1768.

1102. 083/332-333. 1768. 083/460. 1769.

1103. 086/15. 1770.

1104. 086/15. 1770.

1105. 086/15. 1770.

1106. 086/405. 1771.

1107. 082/383-384. 1768. 082/388-389. 1768.

1108. 082/388-389. 1768.

1109. 084/414. 1769.

1110. 083/337-338. 1768.

1111. 065/283. 1768.

1112. 006/28. 1681.

1113. 006/41. 1683.

1114. 006/41. 1683.

1115. 015/31. 1703.

1116. 007/61. 1708.

1117. 006/160. 1711.

1118. 007/197. 1713.

1119. 007/229. 1717.

1120. 033/132-133. 1724.

1121. 046/101-103. 1742.

1122. 046/101-103. 1742.

1123. 046/101-103. 1742.

1124. 046/104-105. 1742.

1125. 046/104-105. 1742.

1126. 046/104-105. 1742.

1127. 046/106. 1742.

1128. 053/198-201. 1746.

1129. 053/198-201. 1746.

1130. 053/198-201. 1746.

1131. 055/252. 1748.

1132. 055/252. 1748.

1133. 012/51. 1693.

1134. 033/81-82. 1725-1784.

1135. 033/81-82. 1725-1784.

1136. 033/14. 1729.

1137. 072/367-368. 1775.

1138. 074/6. 1762.

1139. 073/8. 1762.

1140. 073/8. 1762.

1141. 065/174. 1762.

1142. 075/421-422. 1764.

1143. 075/421-422. 1764.

1144. 050/156. 1753.

1145. 073/77. 1789.

1146. 073/79. 1790.

1147. 042/141-142. 1742.

1148. 042/143-144. 1742.

1149. 058/50-51. 1759. 058/54-55. 1759.

1150. 033/92. 1725. 058/56. 1759.

1151. 042/117-118. 1738.

1152. 042/147-148. 1742.

1153. 042/147-148. 1742.

1154. 039/84-85. 1742. 047/126-127. 1742.

1155. Joan Thirsk (ed.), The Agrarian History of England and Wales, vol. 5, 1640-1750 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984-1985). To be verified.

1156. Christopher Clay, Economic Expansion and Social Change: England 1500-1700, vol. 1 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984). To be verified.

1157. J. V. Beckett, A History of Laxton: England's Last Open-Field Village (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1989). To be verified.

1158. Michael J. Jarvis, In the Eye of All Trade: Bermuda, Bermudians, and the Maritime Atlantic World, 1680-1783 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2010). To be verified.

1159. Leonard Guelke, "Freehold Farmers and Frontier Settlers, 1657-1780", in Richard Elphick and Hermann Giliomee (eds), The Shaping of South African Society, 1652-1840 (Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 1989). To be verified.

1160. Richard S. Dunn, Sugar and Slaves: The Rise of the Planter Class in the English West Indies, 1624-1713 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1972). To be verified.

1161. Philip J. Stern, The Company-State: Corporate Sovereignty and the Early Modern Foundations of the British Empire in India (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011). To be verified.

1162. 006/47. 1683.

1163. 006/47. 1683.

1164. 003/45. 1684.

1165. 004/59. 1709.

1166. 006/47. 1683.

1167. 003/44. 1683.

1168. 006/89. 1707.

1169. 007/26. 1698.

1170. 007/24. 1705.

1171. 007/13. 1703.

1172. 007/58. 1702.

1173. 033/79. 1725.

1174. 033/79. 1725.

1175. 006/289. 1706.

1176. 006/289. 1706.

1177. 026/17. 1716.

1178. 026/17. 1716.

1179. 026/17. 1716.

1180. 026/92-93. 1717.

1181. 026/92-93. 1717.

1182. 011/355. 1691.

1183. 013/112. 1698.

1184. 027/70. 1717.

1185. 030/263. 1719.

1186. 030/147. 1719.

1187. 033/145-146. 1725.

1188. 033/145-146. 1725.

1189. 033/245. 1730.

1190. 033/237-238. 1729.

1191. 002/128. 1684.

1192. 007/86-87. 1711.

1193. 006/153-154. 1711.

1194. 020/10. 1713.

1195. 024/333. 1717.

1196. 022/185. 1716.

1197. 039/30. 1738.

1198. 039/30. 1738.

1199. 031/441-442. 1722.

1200. 046/110-111. 1742.

1201. 046/110-111. 1742.

1202. 046/110-111. 1742.

1203. 046/110-111. 1742.

1204. 046/110-111. 1742.

1205. 046/119. 1742.

1206. 047/24-27. 1742.

1207. 047/24-27. 1742.

1208. 047/24-27. 1742.

1209. 047/24-27. 1742.

1210. 047/24-27. 1742.

1211. 047/26. 1742.

1212. 047/26. 1742.

1213. 047/26. 1742.

1214. 047/26. 1742.

1215. 047/26. 1742.

1216. 047/26. 1742.

1217. 048/63. 1743.

1218. 055/262-268. 1748.

1219. 063/175-180. 1754.

1220. 063/175-180. 1754.

1221. 048/152-153. 1743.

1222. 049/421-423. 1745.

1223. 055/107-113. 1748.

1224. 061/20-21. 1751.

1225. 063/164. 1754.

1226. 051/139. 1756.

1227. 078/175. 1766.

1228. 084/121. 1769.

1229. 061/4. 1751.

1230. 061/4. 1751.

1231. 061/4. 1751.

1232. 061/9-11. 1751.

1233. 061/9-11. 1751.

1234. 061/9-11. 1751.

1235. 061/9-11. 1751.

1236. 053/177-178. 1746.

1237. 053/177-178. 1746.

1238. 006/153. 1711.

1239. 006/233-234. 1713.

1240. 006/233-234. 1713.

1241. 049/256. 1744.

1242. 049/261. 1744.

1243. 049/261. 1744.

1244. 049/315-316. 1744.

1245. 049/315-316. 1744.

1246. 049/315-316. 1744.

1247. 049/335. 1744.

1248. 049/335. 1744.

1249. 049/426. 1745.

1250. 049/436. 1745.

1251. 049/115. 1744.

1252. 050/15. 1745.

1253. 050/15. 1745.

1254. 052/28. 1745.

1255. 052/28. 1745.

1256. 060/24. 1755.

1257. 060/38. 1758.

1258. 066/129. 1755.

1259. 083/31. 1768.

1260. 083/44. 1768.

1261. 088/166. 1771.

1262. 060/130. 1789.

1263. 060/130. 1789.

1264. 060/130. 1789. 060/133. 1789.

1265. 047/31-32. 1742.

1266. 057/130. 1751.

1267. 050/116-117. 1751.

1268. 057/167. 1752.

1269. 060/14. 1751.

1270. 060/33. 1757.

1271. 068/19-21. 1757.

1272. 068/19-21. 1757.

1273. 068/19-21. 1757.

1274. 068/19-21. 1757.

1275. 068/19-21. 1757.

1276. 068/19-21. 1757.

1277. 068/31. 1758.

1278. 068/71. 1758. 060/34. 1758.

1279. 068/78. 1758.

1280. 068/414. 1759.

1281. 069/151. 1759.

1282. 069/151. 1759.

1283. 060/43. 1759. 069/151. 1759.

1284. 060/43-44. 1759.

1285. 060/43-44. 1759.

1286. 069/311. 1760.

1287. 069/311. 1760.

1288. 065/127-128. 1760.

1289. 083/322-323. 1768.

1290. 083/322-323. 1768.

1291. 083/322-323. 1768.

1292. 083/322-323. 1768.

1293. 072/388-389. 1777.

1294. 072/429. 1779.

1295. 072/429. 1779. 072/446-447. 1779.

1296. 072/446-447. 1779.

1297. 072/446-447. 1779.

1298. 072/446-447. 1779.

1299. 072/446-447. 1779.

1300. 072/446-447. 1779.

1301. 072/480. 1781. 072/503. 1782.

1302. 087/110-112. 1781-1783.

1303. 050/19-20. 1745.

1304. 050/19-20. 1745.

1305. 050/35-36. 1746.

1306. 049/266-268. 1744.

1307. 047/101. 1742.

1308. 063/263-264. 1754.

1309. 063/83. 1754.

1310. 063/83. 1754.

1311. 060/38. 1758.

1312. 069/159. 1759.

1313. 086/190. 1771.

1314. 069/309. 1760.

1315. 069/309. 1760.

1316. 060/46. 1760.

1317. 071/272. 1763.

1318. 060/66. 1769.

1319. 005/207. 1680.

1320. 033/186-187. 1726.

1321. 053/45-51. 1746.

1322. 068/19-21. 1757.

1323. 058/158-159. 1764.

1324. 072/456. 1780.

1325. 072/456. 1780.

1326. 072/456. 1780.

1327. 060/107. 1783.

1328. 060/30. 1756.

1329. 069/400. 1760.

1330. 052/345-347. 1746.

1331. 052/345-347. 1746.

1332. 052/359. 1746.

1333. 069/140. 1759.

1334. 069/140. 1759.

1335. 072/394-396. 1777.

1336. 072/394-396. 1777.

1337. 072/394-396. 1777.

1338. 061/297. 1752.

1339. 066/111. 1755.

1340. 066/111. 1755.

1341. 086/8-9. 1770.

1342. 086/11-12. 1770.

1343. 086/11-12. 1770.

1344. 086/11-12. 1770.

1345. 072/406-407. 1778.

1346. 072/408-410. 1778.

1347. 072/411-412. 1778.

1348. 087/110-112. 1781-1783.

1349. 049/367. 1744.

1350. 056/161. 1749. 056/218-219. 1749.

1351. 056/64. 1748.

1352. 086/8. 1770. 086/404. 1771.

1353. 059/202-203. 1750.

1354. 059/202-203. 1750.

1355. 061/443-444. 1752.

1356. 061/443-444. 1752.

1357. 061/443-444. 1752.

1358. 078/278-280. 1766.

1359. 082/278. 1767.

1360. 082/278. 1767.

1361. 082/382. 1768.

1362. 078/284. 1766.

1363. 078/284. 1766.

1364. 083/213. 1768.

1365. 082/383-384. 1768.

1366. 082/383-384. 1768.

1367. 082/388-389. 1768.

1368. 082/388-389. 1768.

1369. 082/388-389. 1768.

1370. 083/337-338. 1768.

1371. 083/337-338. 1768.

1372. 083/337-338. 1768.

1373. 079/175. 1769.

1374. 083/341-342. 1768.

1375. 083/434. 1769.

1376. 083/439. 1769.

1377. 065/283. 1768.

1378. 065/283. 1768.

1379. 084/296-297. 1769.

1380. 084/414. 1769.

1381. 084/414. 1769.

1382. 084/414. 1769.

1383. 085/81-82. 1770.

1384. 080/112. 1770.

1385. 080/112. 1770.

1386. 073/118. 1802.

1387. 073/118. 1802.

1388. 060/47. 1760.

1389. 060/50. 1762.

1390. 076/67. 1764.

1391. 076/67. 1764.

1392. 076/72. 1764.

1393. 076/72. 1764.

1394. 090/263-264. 1777.

1395. 090/263-264. 1777.

1396. 090/263-264. 1777.

1397. 090/263-264. 1777.

1398. 090/264-265. 1777.

1399. 090/294-295. 1778.

1400. 090/294. 1778.

1401. 090/313-314. 1778.

1402. 090/313-314. 1778.

1403. 090/313-314. 1778.

1404. 090/313-314. 1778.

1405. 090/350. 1779.

1406. 090/350. 1779.

1407. 060/96. 1779.

1408. 072/480. 1781.

1409. 072/480. 1781.

1410. 060/119. 1786.

1411. 060/152. 1794.

1412. Joan Thirsk (ed.), The Agrarian History of England and Wales, vol. 5, 1640-1750 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984-1985). To be verified.

1413. J. V. Beckett, A History of Laxton: England's Last Open-Field Village (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1989). To be verified.

1414. J. M. Neeson, Commoners: Common Right, Enclosure and Social Change in England, 1700-1820 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993). To be verified.

1415. Michael J. Jarvis, In the Eye of All Trade: Bermuda, Bermudians, and the Maritime Atlantic World, 1680-1783 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2010). To be verified.

1416. Richard S. Dunn, Sugar and Slaves: The Rise of the Planter Class in the English West Indies, 1624-1713 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1972). To be verified.

1417. Leonard Guelke, "Freehold Farmers and Frontier Settlers, 1657-1780", in Richard Elphick and Hermann Giliomee (eds), The Shaping of South African Society, 1652-1840 (Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 1989). To be verified.

1418. Richard H. Grove, Green Imperialism: Colonial Expansion, Tropical Island Edens and the Origins of Environmentalism, 1600-1860 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995). To be verified.

1419. 007/20-21. 1683.

1420. 007/28. 1690.

1421. 007/116. 1712.

1422. 033/26-27. 1721.

1423. 039/211. 1756.

1424. 007/28. 1690.

1425. 007/69. 1704.

1426. 039/127. 1718.

1427. 007/12. 1702.

1428. 008/97-98. 1706.

1429. 008/192-194. 1729.

1430. 008/192-194. 1729.

1431. 055/107-113. 1748.

1432. 054/20-23. 1747.

1433. 054/51-53. 1750.

1434. 063/371-374. 1750-1755.

1435. 067/310-311. 1751.

1436. 056/225-228. 1749.

1437. 019/118. 1711.

1438. 026/17. 1716.

1439. 026/100. 1717.

1440. 006/325-326. 1706.

1441. 006/327. 1706.

1442. 030/147. 1719.

1443. 033/101. 1727.

1444. 033/238. 1729.

1445. 033/241. 1730.

1446. 033/245. 1730.

1447. 042/7-9. 1738.

1448. 049/118. 1744.

1449. 067/379-382. 1757.

1450. 067/379-382. 1757.

1451. 058/31-32. 1757.

1452. 078/284. 1766.

1453. 083/363. 1768.

1454. 082/305-306. 1767.

1455. 080/112. 1770.

1456. 080/335-336. 1788.

1457. 031/460. 1723.

1458. 033/81-82. 1725-1784.

1459. 033/81-82. 1725-1784.

1460. 042/152-153. 1743.

1461. 042/152-153. 1743.

1462. 055/252. 1748.

1463. 055/252. 1748.

1464. 067/46-49. 1756.

1465. 067/46-49. 1756.

1466. 067/53-56. 1756.

1467. 067/61. 1756.

1468. 067/62-64. 1756.

1469. 056/162. 1749. 056/166. 1749.

1470. 059/202-203. 1750.

1471. 059/202-203. 1750.

1472. 066/199. 1755.

1473. 066/317-324. 1756.

1474. 069/220. 1759.

1475. 090/264-265. 1777.

1476. 090/294-295. 1778.

1477. 048/23. 1743.

1478. 048/92. 1743.

1479. 042/21-22. 1737.

1480. 042/151. 1743.

1481. 033/235. 1727.

1482. 042/145. 1742.

1483. 042/262. 1748.

1484. 042/19-20. 1737.

1485. 066/33-34. 1755.

1486. 066/107. 1755.

1487. 068/133. 1758.

1488. 060/39. 1758.

1489. 072/130, 139-142. 1765.

1490. 083/52. 1768.

1491. 056/447-449. 1750.

1492. 066/416. 1756.

1493. 067/112-114. 1756.

1494. 070/243. 1763. 065/199. 1763.

1495. 078/349-350. 1767. 078/365. 1767.

1496. 085/208. 1770.

1497. 072/305. 1772.

1498. 089/132. 1772.

1499. 050/11. 1744.

1500. 033/247. 1730. 058/28-29. 1757.

1501. 090/182-183. 1775.

1502. 090/182-183. 1775.

1503. 065/374. 1775. 090/216. 1776.

1504. 090/216. 1776.

1505. 065/377. 1776.

1506. 090/225-226. 1776.

1507. 090/233-234. 1776.

1508. 090/240. 1776.

1509. 090/268. 1777.

1510. 090/264-265. 1777. 090/294-295. 1778.

1511. 006/46-47. 1683.

1512. 006/90. 1707.

1513. 013/156. 1698.

1514. 026/97-98. 1717.

1515. 044/45. 1740.

1516. 052/377. 1746.

1517. 059/210. 1750. 060/11. 1750.

1518. 072/269. 1770. 072/350. 1774.

1519. 072/191. 1767.

1520. 072/343-344. 1774.

1521. 072/480. 1781.

1522. 060/114. 1784.

1523. 087/320-321. 1808.

1524. 066/107. 1755.

1525. 060/37. 1758.

1526. 060/50. 1762. 060/60. 1766.

1527. 075/418-419. 1764.

1528. 075/421-422. 1764.

1529. 075/421-422. 1764.

1530. 075/425-426. 1764.

1531. 076/71. 1764.

1532. 072/275. 1770.

1533. 086/413-414. 1771.

1534. 088/226-238. 1771. 088/353-364. 1772.

1535. 088/142. 1771.

1536. 060/70. 1772.

1537. 018/138. 1712.

1538. 018/138. 1712.

1539. 031/62. 1721.

1540. 007/227-228. 1717.

1541. 042/93-94. 1738.

1542. 042/7-9. 1738.

1543. 062/50. 1753.

1544. 060/25. 1755. 067/131. 1756. 069/32. 1759. 069/400. 1760. 060/76. 1774. 060/83. 1776.

1545. 067/131. 1756.

1546. 080/300-301. 1788. 080/303-304. 1788.

1547. 062/247. 1753.

1548. 063/83. 1754.

1549. 060/50. 1762.

1550. 060/92. 1779.

1551. 088/248. 1772.

1552. 033/249. 1731.

1553. 059/461-462. 1751.

1554. 085/373. 1770.

1555. 042/259. 1747. 055/105-107. 1747.

1556. 054/159-161. 1772. 089/113-116. 1772.

1557. Sidney and Beatrice Webb, English Local Government: The Story of the King's Highway (London: Longmans, Green, 1913). To be verified.

1558. A. W. B. Simpson, A History of the Land Law, 2nd edn (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986). To be verified.

1559. Michael J. Jarvis, In the Eye of All Trade: Bermuda, Bermudians, and the Maritime Atlantic World, 1680-1783 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2010). To be verified.

1560. Richard S. Dunn, Sugar and Slaves: The Rise of the Planter Class in the English West Indies, 1624-1713 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1972). To be verified.

1561. Leonard Guelke, "Freehold Farmers and Frontier Settlers, 1657-1780", in Richard Elphick and Hermann Giliomee (eds), The Shaping of South African Society, 1652-1840 (Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 1989). To be verified.

1562. Richard H. Grove, Green Imperialism: Colonial Expansion, Tropical Island Edens and the Origins of Environmentalism, 1600-1860 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995). To be verified.

1563. 003/17. 1678.

1564. 006/44. 1683.

1565. 006/48. 1683.

1566. 007/20-21. 1683.

1567. 008/53-54. 1696.

1568. 007/36. 1707.

1569. 007/71. 1709.

1570. 020/151. 1714.

1571. 006/56. 1698.

1572. 006/91. 1707.

1573. 006/275-276. 1705.

1574. 006/109. 1708.

1575. 018/77. 1710.

1576. 006/153. 1711.

1577. 006/153-154. 1711.

1578. 006/154. 1711.

1579. 006/201. 1712. 006/267. 1714.

1580. 006/265. 1714.

1581. 026/17. 1716.

1582. 026/17. 1716.

1583. 022/117. 1715.

1584. 025/77. 1716.

1585. 025/77. 1716.

1586. 026/77-78. 1717.

1587. 026/77-78. 1717.

1588. 026/77-78. 1717.

1589. 026/92-93. 1717.

1590. 026/92-93. 1717.

1591. 028/85. 1717.

1592. 028/85. 1717.

1593. 026/93-94. 1717.

1594. 026/93-94. 1717.

1595. 021/112. 1716.

1596. 022/186. 1716.

1597. 007/101. 1711. 007/102. 1711.

1598. 007/104. 1711. 007/106. 1711.

1599. 007/98. 1711.

1600. 007/102. 1711.

1601. 007/103. 1717.

1602. 007/99. 1717.

1603. 007/227-228. 1717.

1604. 007/245-246. 1719. 007/249. 1719.

1605. 007/253-263. 1719.

1606. 033/18-19. 1721.

1607. 033/134-135. 1724.

1608. 033/189-190. 1726.

1609. 033/111-112. 1724.

1610. 033/172. 1726. 033/176-177. 1726.

1611. 033/151-152. 1725. 033/226-227. 1727.

1612. 033/237-238. 1729.

1613. 033/237-238. 1729.

1614. 033/240. 1730.

1615. 033/243. 1730. 033/251. 1731.

1616. 036/181. 1727. 036/200-206. 1727.

1617. 037/34-37, 37/53, 37/120-122, 37/322-323. 1727-1729.

1618. 037/341-342. 1730.

1619. 036/211. 1727.

1620. 042/6. 1735.

1621. 042/6. 1735.

1622. 042/6. 1735.

1623. 042/7-9. 1738.

1624. 042/7-9. 1738.

1625. 042/7-9. 1738.

1626. 042/6-271. 1731-1748.

1627. 042/25-26. 1738.

1628. 042/25-26. 1738.

1629. 043/258. 1741.

1630. 041/413. 1739.

1631. 044/45. 1740.

1632. 044/45. 1740.

1633. 046/76-77. 1742. 047/39-40. 1742.

1634. 042/155-157. 1744.

1635. 048/256. 1744.

1636. 042/162-163. 1744. 042/164-165. 1744.

1637. 049/184-186. 1744. 049/335-338. 1744.

1638. 042/161-162. 1744.

1639. 049/211-213. 1744.

1640. 048/16. 1743.

1641. 049/479-480. 1745. 049/488-490. 1745. 049/491-494. 1745. 049/547-548. 1745.

1642. 049/438-439. 1745.

1643. 049/438-439. 1745.

1644. 049/206. 1744.

1645. 049/438-439. 1745.

1646. 049/543-544. 1745.

1647. 049/543-544. 1745.

1648. 053/205-206. 1746.

1649. 042/216-217. 1745. 053/213-215. 1747.

1650. 058/43-44. 1759.

1651. 058/92-93. 1750.

1652. 058/136-137. 1763.

1653. 080/5. 1799.

1654. 053/56. 1746.

1655. 053/56. 1746.

1656. 053/119. 1746.

1657. 057/5-6. 1748.

1658. 006/233-234. 1713.

1659. 033/145-146. 1725.

1660. 046/110-111. 1742.

1661. 046/110-111. 1742.

1662. 047/24-27. 1742.

1663. 047/24-27. 1742.

1664. 047/26. 1742.

1665. 049/256. 1744.

1666. 049/261. 1744.

1667. 049/315-316. 1744.

1668. 049/315-316. 1744.

1669. 049/315-316. 1744.

1670. 049/335. 1744. 049/366. 1744.

1671. 049/436. 1745.

1672. 050/15. 1745.

1673. 050/19-20. 1745. 050/35-36. 1746.

1674. 052/28. 1745.

1675. 060/24. 1755.

1676. 060/38. 1758.

1677. 060/130. 1789.

1678. 053/61. 1746.

1679. 053/45-51. 1746.

1680. 055/388-405. 1748.

1681. 052/323. 1746.

1682. 053/197. 1746.

1683. 057/342. 1755.

1684. 064/34. 1755.

1685. 063/83. 1754.

1686. 076/67. 1764. 076/72. 1764.

1687. 083/439. 1769.

1688. 060/21. 1753. 062/247. 1753.

1689. 059/210. 1750. 060/11. 1750.

1690. 060/39. 1758.

1691. 068/384. 1759.

1692. 069/165. 1759.

1693. 069/226. 1759.

1694. 060/47. 1760.

1695. 060/50. 1762.

1696. 060/61. 1767.

1697. 060/62. 1767.

1698. 060/69. 1771.

1699. 060/102. 1781.

1700. 057/384. 1756.

1701. 064/51. 1756. 065/44. 1756.

1702. 070/113-114. 1761.

1703. 070/113-114. 1761.

1704. 064/151. 1761. 065/150. 1762.

1705. 070/180-181. 1762.

1706. 065/193. 1763. 070/268. 1764.

1707. 075/260-263. 1764. 076/142-144. 1764.

1708. 076/319-321. 1765.

1709. 076/319-321. 1765.

1710. 070/332. 1765.

1711. 077/181-184. 1765.

1712. 077/181-184. 1765.

1713. 076/223-226. 1765.

1714. 065/238-239. 1765.

1715. 065/238-239. 1765.

1716. 065/238-239. 1765.

1717. 079/14. 1766.

1718. 079/14. 1766.

1719. 063/357. 1755. 063/403-408. 1755.

1720. 070/184. 1762.

1721. 079/263. 1770.

1722. 070/330. 1765.

1723. 082/278. 1767.

1724. 082/278. 1767.

1725. 090/263-264. 1777.

1726. 090/263-264. 1777.

1727. 090/263-264. 1777.

1728. 090/263-264. 1777.

1729. 090/294. 1778.

1730. 090/313-314. 1778.

1731. 090/350. 1779.

1732. 090/350. 1779.

1733. 090/350. 1779.

1734. 060/96. 1779.

1735. 072/480. 1781.

1736. 072/480. 1781.

1737. 072/480. 1781.

1738. 060/124. 1788.

1739. 080/321-323. 1788.

1740. 060/129. 1789.

1741. 060/129. 1789.

1742. 060/131-132. 1789.

1743. Richard H. Grove, Green Imperialism: Colonial Expansion, Tropical Island Edens and the Origins of Environmentalism, 1600-1860 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995). To be verified.

1744. Q. C. B. Cronk, The Endemic Flora of St Helena (Oswestry: Anthony Nelson, 2000). To be verified.

1745. Oliver Rackham, Trees and Woodland in the British Landscape (London: Dent, 1976). To be verified.

1746. John Evelyn, Sylva, or a Discourse of Forest-Trees (London: Royal Society, 1664). To be verified.

1747. Richard S. Dunn, Sugar and Slaves: The Rise of the Planter Class in the English West Indies, 1624-1713 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1972). To be verified.

1748. Michael J. Jarvis, In the Eye of All Trade: Bermuda, Bermudians, and the Maritime Atlantic World, 1680-1783 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2010). To be verified.

1749. Leonard Guelke, "Freehold Farmers and Frontier Settlers, 1657-1780", in Richard Elphick and Hermann Giliomee (eds), The Shaping of South African Society, 1652-1840 (Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 1989). To be verified.

1750. 001/23. 1678.

1751. 001/54. 1678.

1752. 001/184. 1681. 002/80. 1682.

1753. 001/95. 1680.

1754. 007/9. 1682.

1755. 007/26-27. 1705.

1756. 007/71. 1709.

1757. 003/45. 1684.

1758. 006/48. 1683.

1759. 006/48. 1683.

1760. 006/48. 1683.

1761. 011/372. 1692.

1762. 007/66-67. 1707.

1763. 003/48. 1687.

1764. 004/64. 1687.

1765. 006/55. 1687.

1766. 006/55. 1687.

1767. 008/62. 1697.

1768. 006/57. 1701.

1769. 006/57. 1701.

1770. 003/51. 1705.

1771. 003/126. 1709.

1772. 007/52-53. 1707.

1773. 007/52-53. 1707.

1774. 007/52-53. 1707.

1775. 026/117-118. 1717.

1776. 006/161. 1711.

1777. 006/152-153. 1711.

1778. 006/179-180. 1712.

1779. 006/179-180. 1712.

1780. 006/194-196. 1712.

1781. 006/202. 1712.

1782. 006/225-226. 1713.

1783. 006/328. 1706.

1784. 006/326. 1706.

1785. 006/314. 1707.

1786. 006/310. 1706.

1787. 022/186. 1716.

1788. 007/124. 1712.

1789. 007/187. 1713.

1790. 007/129. 1713.

1791. 033/36. 1722.

1792. 029/99. 1717.

1793. 033/61. 1724.

1794. 033/101. 1727.

1795. 033/103-106. 1727.

1796. 007/167. 1713.

1797. 007/171. 1713.

1798. 007/187. 1713.

1799. 007/201. 1713.

1800. 007/244. 1719. 033/77-78. 1725. 039/158-159. 1748.

1801. 042/246-247. 1747. 071/195. 1762. 080/120-121. 1771.

1802. 060/25. 1755.

1803. 006/154. 1711.

1804. 006/327. 1706.

1805. 026/17. 1716.

1806. 026/97. 1717.

1807. 026/100. 1717.

1808. 062/221-223. 1753. 084/347. 1769. 065/311. 1770.

1809. 068/272-277. 1758. 084/53-54. 1769.

1810. 052/337-344. 1746. 083/155-169. 1768.

1811. 063/263-264. 1754.

1812. 052/259-260. 1746.

1813. 052/259-260. 1746. 071/311-312. 1763. 059/250-251. 1750.

1814. 047/24-27. 1742.

1815. 060/14. 1751.

1816. 063/83. 1754.

1817. 069/159. 1759.

1818. 060/25. 1755. 060/30. 1756. 060/83. 1776.

1819. 060/16. 1752. 060/35. 1758. 068/135. 1758.

1820. 062/245. 1753.

1821. 026/5. 1706.

1822. 026/7. 1707.

1823. 026/83-84. 1716.

1824. 020/229. 1714.

1825. 046/18. 1742.

1826. 047/24. 1742.

1827. 047/31. 1742.

1828. 047/101. 1742.

1829. 049/537-538. 1745.

1830. 049/537-538. 1745.

1831. 052/259-260. 1746.

1832. 053/381. 1747.

1833. 053/393-394. 1747.

1834. 055/70-77. 1747.

1835. 055/100. 1747.

1836. 055/358. 1748.

1837. 055/442. 1748.

1838. 055/437-440. 1748.

1839. 056/119. 1749.

1840. 063/263-264. 1754.

1841. 057/410. 1757.

1842. 077/189. 1765.

1843. 090/314. 1778.

1844. 090/314. 1778.

1845. 044/41. 1740.

1846. 052/254-255. 1746.

1847. 053/40. 1746.

1848. 053/61. 1746.

1849. 053/119-125. 1746.

1850. 053/252-265. 1746.

1851. 053/338-351. 1747.

1852. 053/296-297. 1747.

1853. 055/222-239. 1748.

1854. 070/242. 1763.

1855. 049/306-314. 1744.

1856. 049/306-314. 1744.

1857. 049/355. 1744.

1858. 049/366. 1744. 052/157. 1745.

1859. 050/19. 1745.

1860. 057/236-238. 1753.

1861. 057/115. 1751.

1862. 048/16. 1743.

1863. 052/276-277. 1745.

1864. 052/399. 1746.

1865. 049/19-21. 1744.

1866. 069/122. 1759.

1867. 069/307. 1759-1760. 076/419. 1765.

1868. 068/315. 1758.

1869. 011/17. 1688.

1870. 006/146. 1711.

1871. 006/224. 1713.

1872. 049/127-128. 1744.

1873. 050/9. 1744.

1874. 049/266-268. 1744.

1875. 049/263. 1744.

1876. 049/372-384. 1744.

1877. 047/100. 1742. 048/22. 1743.

1878. 052/337-344. 1746.

1879. 052/348-350. 1746.

1880. 052/490-491. 1746.

1881. 053/367. 1747.

1882. 055/388-405. 1748.

1883. 061/200. 1752.

1884. 050/130. 1752.

1885. 064/97. 1759. 064/100. 1759. 065/87-88. 1759. 065/90-91. 1759.

1886. 064/97. 1759.

1887. 065/217-218. 1764.

1888. 065/300-301. 1769.

1889. 063/76. 1754. 063/78. 1754.

1890. 063/382. 1755.

1891. 062/168. 1753.

1892. 069/118. 1759. 071/46. 1762.

1893. 075/294. 1764.

1894. 076/327. 1765.

1895. 077/197. 1766.

1896. 090/293. 1778.

1897. 026/16. 1716.

1898. 049/19-21. 1744.

1899. 047/101. 1742.

1900. 068/272-277. 1758. 071/50. 1762.

1901. 049/71. 1744.

1902. 049/115. 1744.

1903. 049/115. 1744.

1904. 049/72-73. 1742-1744.

1905. 049/114. 1744.

1906. 047/150-151. 1742.

1907. 047/150-151. 1742.

1908. 048/145. 1743.

1909. 049/118. 1744.

1910. 049/118. 1744.

1911. 048/175. 1743.

1912. 083/98-100. 1768.

1913. 083/155-169. 1768.

1914. 083/172. 1768.

1915. 065/300. 1769.

1916. 065/300. 1769.

1917. 083/21-22. 1768.

1918. 006/48. 1683.

1919. 006/52-53. 1687.

1920. 006/111. 1708.

1921. 076/302. 1765.

1922. 047/100. 1742. 083/92. 1768.

1923. 006/264-265. 1714.

1924. 026/83-84. 1716.

1925. 044/14. 1740. 053/203. 1746.

1926. 052/433-436. 1746.

1927. 053/385. 1747.

1928. 053/378. 1747.

1929. 065/79. 1759.

1930. 059/17. 1750. 062/60. 1753.

1931. 049/535-536. 1745.

1932. 052/37-38. 1745.

1933. 052/433-436. 1746.

1934. 050/149. 1753.

1935. 047/31-32. 1742.

1936. 070/35. 1759.

1937. 070/47-48. 1759.

1938. 069/162. 1759. 069/410. 1760.

1939. 070/81-82. 1760.

1940. 070/93-94. 1760.

1941. 070/145. 1761. 070/156. 1762.

1942. 070/186. 1762.

1943. 064/152. 1761. 065/172-173. 1762.

1944. 070/213-214. 1763.

1945. 078/14-16. 1766.

1946. 078/360. 1767. 082/317. 1768.

1947. 084/311-312. 1769.

1948. 084/311-312. 1769.

1949. 079/275. 1771.

1950. 086/25. 1770.

1951. 086/133. 1771.

1952. 090/37. 1773.

1953. 089/464. 1773. 089/447-448. 1773.

1954. 090/69-70. 1773.

1955. 090/126. 1774. 060/80. 1775.

1956. 048/98. 1743.

1957. 066/199. 1755. 066/245-246. 1755-1756.

1958. 066/199. 1755.

1959. 076/67. 1764. 076/72. 1764.

1960. 083/439. 1769.

1961. 083/424-425. 1769.

1962. 086/390-391. 1771.

1963. 060/74. 1773.

1964. 060/152. 1794.

1965. 060/152. 1794.

1966. 060/153. 1794.

1967. 060/153. 1794.

1968. 060/154. 1794.

1969. 060/154. 1794.

1970. 080/15. 1813.

1971. Leonard Guelke, "Freehold Farmers and Frontier Settlers, 1657-1780", in Richard Elphick and Hermann Giliomee (eds), The Shaping of South African Society, 1652-1840 (Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 1989). To be verified.

1972. Nigel Worden, Slavery in Dutch South Africa (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985). To be verified.

1973. Joan Thirsk (ed.), The Agrarian History of England and Wales, vol. 5, 1640-1750 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984-1985). To be verified.

1974. Christopher Clay, Economic Expansion and Social Change: England 1500-1700, vol. 1 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984). To be verified.

1975. 068/272-277. 1758. 071/50. 1762.

1976. Gregory Clark, "Farm Wages and Living Standards in the Industrial Revolution: England, 1670-1850", Economic History Review, 54 (2001), 477-505, Table 5. To be verified.

1977. Sir Dalby Thomas, An Historical Account of the Rise and Growth of the West-India Collonies (1690), as reported in Bristol Museums, "The plantation economy". To be verified.

1978. Richard B. Sheridan, "The Slave Trade to Jamaica, 1702-1808", in B. W. Higman (ed.), Trade, Government and Society in Caribbean History (1983), p. 8. To be verified.

1979. P. J. Marshall, East Indian Fortunes: The British in Bengal in the Eighteenth Century (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1976). To be verified.

1980. Philip J. Stern, The Company-State: Corporate Sovereignty and the Early Modern Foundations of the British Empire in India (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011). To be verified.

1981. Richard H. Grove, Green Imperialism: Colonial Expansion, Tropical Island Edens and the Origins of Environmentalism, 1600-1860 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995). To be verified.

1982. Q. C. B. Cronk, The Endemic Flora of St Helena (Oswestry: Anthony Nelson, 2000). To be verified.

1983. 001/20. 1673. 006/11. 1673.

1984. 001/20. 1673. 003/19. 1673. 003/17. 1678.

1985. 006/22. 1679.

1986. 007/6. 1682. 007/9. 1682. 007/11. 1682.

1987. 007/6. 1682.

1988. 007/9. 1682.

1989. 005/31. 1678. 005/35. 1678.

1990. 007/20-21. 1683.

1991. 007/14. 1704.

1992. 007/50-51. 1704. 007/13. 1703.

1993. 007/55. 1690.

1994. 007/46. 1693.

1995. 007/111. 1713.

1996. 007/50. 1704.

1997. 007/38-39. 1705.

1998. 033/37. 1722.

1999. 007/68. 1687.

2000. 039/225-226. 1758.

2001. 039/254-257. 1760-1761.

2002. 039/193-194. 1754.

2003. 059/133. 1750.

2004. 033/18-19. 1721. 042/129-130. 1742. 049/442. 1745.

2005. 003/22. 1679. 003/41. 1687.

2006. 007/231. 1697.

2007. 046/153. 1742.

2008. 049/131. 1744.

2009. 049/443. 1745.

2010. 049/437-438. 1745.

2011. 055/84. 1747.

2012. 059/124. 1750.

2013. 059/214. 1750.

2014. 078/285-286. 1766.

2015. 088/147. 1771. 088/151. 1771. 088/162. 1772. 088/397. 1772. 088/427. 1772.

2016. 061/450-451. 1752.

2017. 067/300-301. 1757.

2018. 085/471. 1770.

2019. 067/202. 1757.

2020. 006/19. 1677.

2021. 006/21. 1679.

2022. 006/22. 1679. 003/41. 1687. 006/92. 1707.

2023. 019/7. 1709.

2024. 019/147. 1711.

2025. 039/223. 1751-1758.

2026. 068/225. 1758.

2027. 082/178. 1767.

2028. 071/59. 1762.

2029. 049/485-486. 1745.

2030. 050/20. 1745.

2031. 039/94. 1744. 042/199. 1745.

2032. 008/69-70. 1699.

2033. 008/135. 1714.

2034. 008/208-209. 1734.

2035. 033/38-39. 1722.

2036. 031/217-220. 1721.

2037. 029/99. 1717.

2038. 007/242-243. 1718.

2039. 007/233-234. 1717. 007/236. 1717. 007/237. 1717.

2040. 007/242-243. 1718.

2041. 052/135-136. 1745.

2042. 053/198-201. 1746.

2043. 051/141. 1752-1756.

2044. 059/43-44. 1750.

2045. 083/222-226. 1768.

2046. 060/30. 1756. 067/126-127. 1756.

2047. 060/32. 1757.

2048. 067/215-216. 1757.

2049. 067/274. 1757. 067/359. 1757.

2050. 039/246-247. 1757. 039/247. 1757.

2051. 051/29-30. 1744.

2052. 062/231-232. 1753.

2053. 075/208-209. 1764.

2054. 077/293. 1766. 085/245. 1770.

2055. 082/287. 1767.

2056. 084/95. 1769.

2057. 084/106. 1769.

2058. 084/143. 1769.

2059. 088/150. 1771.

2060. 047/126-127. 1742.

2061. 046/8. 1742.

2062. 046/37. 1742.

2063. 046/52. 1742.

2064. 046/53. 1742.

2065. 046/53-54. 1742.

2066. 046/54-60. 1742. 046/60-64. 1742. 046/64-65. 1742.

2067. 046/65. 1742.

2068. 046/80. 1742.

2069. 047/28. 1742.

2070. 047/123. 1743. 048/19. 1743. 048/32. 1743. 061/267. 1752.

2071. 039/75-76. 1742.

2072. 039/79-80. 1742.

2073. 039/76-77. 1742. 039/77. 1742.

2074. 039/84-85. 1742. 047/126-127. 1742.

2075. 042/147-148. 1742.

2076. 047/126-127. 1742.

2077. 039/38-44. 1739. 039/43. 1739.

2078. 048/147. 1743. 046/144. 1742.

2079. 047/79. 1742.

2080. 052/232-234. 1745.

2081. 050/11-12. 1744. 052/462-463. 1746.

2082. 007/222. 1694. 007/14. 1704. 033/98. 1726.

2083. 039/92. 1744. 039/248. 1761. 039/253-254. 1762.

2084. 007/222. 1694.

2085. 007/223. 1714.

2086. 007/23. 1704. 007/23-24. 1706.

2087. 013/55. 1698.

2088. 007/149. 1719.

2089. 033/57-58. 1719.

2090. 033/55. 1723.

2091. 033/11. 1730.

2092. 039/13. 1733.

2093. 039/211. 1756.

2094. 037/54. 1727.

2095. 033/98. 1726.

2096. 033/103-106. 1727.

2097. 039/25. 1738.

2098. 039/92. 1744.

2099. 039/136-137. 1747.

2100. 039/138. 1747.

2101. 039/185-186. 1754.

2102. 039/240. 1758.

2103. 057/184. 1752.

2104. 039/174-175. 1748. 039/175-176. 1750. 039/176-177. 1752. 039/173. 1752.

2105. 039/34. 1739.

2106. 039/164-165. 1749.

2107. 039/66. 1741.

2108. 039/12. 1732.

2109. 054/88-92. 1759.

2110. 063/166-171. 1754. 051/142-144. 1759.

2111. 054/176-177. 1774.

2112. 054/203-206. 1778.

2113. 054/200-202. 1779.

2114. 054/258-262. 1792.

2115. 007/221. 1715.

2116. 033/48-49. 1723.

2117. 039/125. 1746.

2118. 007/108. 1715.

2119. 033/51-52. 1733.

2120. 039/220-221. 1757.

2121. 039/196-197. 1754. 039/203. 1756.

2122. 007/54. 1686.

2123. 007/34-35. 1699.

2124. 007/64. 1705.

2125. 007/26. 1698.

2126. 007/70. 1712.

2127. 007/218. 1714.

2128. 007/79. 1684.

2129. 024/276. 1716.

2130. 007/74. 1705.

2131. 007/37. 1694.

2132. 033/89-90. 1725.

2133. 033/42-43. 1722.

2134. 007/23-24. 1706.

2135. 007/29. 1706.

2136. 039/37-38. 1739. 039/81. 1742.

2137. 039/30-31. 1739.

2138. 039/101-102. 1744.

2139. 033/99-100. 1727.

2140. 033/61. 1724.

2141. 006/179-180. 1712.

2142. 026/93. 1717.

2143. 027/66. 1717.

2144. 039/38-44. 1739. 039/84-85. 1742.

2145. 039/194-195. 1754.

2146. 063/175-180. 1754.

2147. 039/195-196. 1754.

2148. 039/205-206. 1756.

2149. 007/56-57. 1694.

2150. 053/374. 1747. 039/140. 1747.

2151. 053/380. 1747.

2152. 039/49-50. 1740.

2153. 039/82. 1742. 039/83. 1742. 047/131-133. 1742.

2154. 039/87. 1742.

2155. 039/190-191. 1753.

2156. 039/131-132. 1746. 039/132. 1746.

2157. 039/169-170. 1751.

2158. 008/235. 1740.

2159. 046/8. 1742.

2160. 061/190. 1752.

2161. 063/75. 1754. 063/92. 1754.

2162. 082/167. 1767.

2163. 033/53. 1723. 033/56. 1723.

2164. 039/74. 1742.

2165. 039/241-242. 1759. 069/145. 1759.

2166. 033/72-73. 1724.

2167. Gregory Clark, "Land Rental Values and the Agrarian Economy: England and Wales, 1500-1912", European Review of Economic History 6 (2002), 281-308, Table 8; Gregory Clark, "Debt, Deficits, and Crowding Out: England, 1727-1840", European Review of Economic History 5 (2001), 403-436, Table 3. England prices derived by multiplying rent by years' purchase; Clark's rents include tithe. To be verified.

2168. The Papers of George Washington, Colonial Series, vol. 6, Washington's letter of 1760 on the Clifton's Neck purchase and editorial note. To be verified.

2169. P. C. Mancall, J. L. Rosenbloom and T. Weiss, "South Carolina Slave Prices, 1722-1809", NBER Historical Paper 123 (2000), Table 6, p. 37; sterling figures derived at the paper's rate of $4.44 to the pound. To be verified.

2170. J. Easaw and A. Ghoshray, "On the Trend and Variability of 18th Century British Transatlantic Slave Prices", Cliodynamics 17 (2026), p. 120, citing Richard S. Dunn, A Tale of Two Plantations (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014); currency not stated. To be verified.

2171. Leonard Guelke, "Freehold Farmers and Frontier Settlers, 1657-1780", in Richard Elphick and Hermann Giliomee (eds), The Shaping of South African Society, 1652-1840 (Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 1989). To be verified.

2172. 001/99. 1679.

2173. 001/99. 1679.

2174. 006/43. 1683.

2175. 002/107. 1684.

2176. 010/109. 1685.

2177. 009/396. 1686.

2178. 011/166. 1690.

2179. 006/52. 1687.

2180. 006/52. 1687.

2181. 003/48. 1687. 004/64. 1687.

2182. 011/32. 1688.

2183. 008/16. 1682.

2184. 006/143-144. 1711.

2185. 020/233, 20/234. 1714-1715. 020/237. 1714.

2186. 020/320. 1714.

2187. 021/169. 1715.

2188. 006/228. 1713.

2189. 006/259. 1714.

2190. 026/18-19. 1716.

2191. 026/74-75. 1717.

2192. 007/26. 1698.

2193. 007/70. 1712.

2194. 008/74. 1701.

2195. 006/223. 1713.

2196. 006/309. 1706. 006/315. 1706.

2197. 006/314. 1707.

2198. 006/316. 1706.

2199. 063/49-50. 1754.

2200. 075/15. 1763.

2201. 009/143. 1684.

2202. 015/179. 1704.

2203. 006/67. 1704.

2204. 006/67. 1704.

2205. 006/68. 1704.

2206. 006/92-93. 1707.

2207. 007/65-66. 1708.

2208. 007/65-66. 1708.

2209. 007/60. 1708.

2210. 007/80. 1709.

2211. 033/11. 1730.

2212. 039/47-48. 1740.

2213. 039/47-48. 1740.

2214. 039/99. 1744.

2215. 039/180-181. 1753.

2216. 033/70. 1722.

2217. 033/70. 1722.

2218. 039/179-180. 1753.

2219. 039/179-180. 1753.

2220. 039/206-207. 1756.

2221. 042/238. 1747.

2222. 033/35-36. 1722.

2223. 033/102-103. 1727.

2224. 039/198-200. 1756.

2225. 054/47. 1754.

2226. 039/198-200. 1756.

2227. 039/198-200. 1756.

2228. 008/262. 1745.

2229. 044/40. 1740.

2230. 067/198. 1757. 069/328. 1760. 077/180. 1765. 083/34-35. 1768.

2231. 089/324. 1773.

2232. 063/171-173. 1751-1754.

2233. 063/171-173. 1751-1754.

2234. 042/237. 1747.

2235. 042/237. 1747.

2236. 053/403-404. 1747.

2237. 008/17. 1682.

2238. 019/136. 1710.

2239. 007/23-24. 1706.

2240. 033/61. 1724.

2241. 033/35-36. 1722.

2242. 039/209-210. 1756.

2243. 039/209-210. 1756.

2244. 039/232. 1758.

2245. 008/233-234. 1740.

2246. 039/153. 1747.

2247. 020/111. 1714.

2248. 052/133. 1745.

2249. 052/475-478. 1746.

2250. 053/78. 1746.

2251. 039/73. 1741.

2252. 006/160. 1711.

2253. 046/162-163. 1742.

2254. 074/15-17. 1763.

2255. 057/41. 1749. 064/14-15. 1754.

2256. 070/232. 1763.

2257. 069/27. 1759.

2258. 068/29. 1758.

2259. 057/424-425. 1757.

2260. 060/45. 1759.

2261. 006/58. 1701.

2262. 003/52. 1705.

2263. 008/169. 1722.

2264. 007/217. 1714.

2265. 053/178. 1746.

2266. 066/374. 1756.

2267. 051/131. 1756.

2268. 007/243. 1718.

2269. 053/391. 1747.

2270. 053/391. 1747. 050/22. 1745.

2271. 042/238. 1747.

2272. 042/238. 1747. 058/6. 1749.

2273. 055/286-289. 1748.

2274. 055/286-289. 1748.

2275. 050/62-63. 1749.

2276. 050/63. 1749.

2277. 057/73. 1750.

2278. 057/84. 1750. 059/105. 1750.

2279. 059/105. 1750.

2280. 056/156. 1749.

2281. 087/192. 1760.

2282. 087/213-214. 1760-1761.

2283. 087/213-214. 1760-1761.

2284. 087/213-214. 1760-1761.

2285. 087/213-214. 1760-1761.

2286. 087/195-196. 1760-1771. 087/197-198. 1760-1762. 087/199-200. 1760-1767.

2287. 087/207. 1760-1770. 087/205-206. 1760-1771.

2288. 087/193-194. 1760-1768.

2289. 087/215-218. 1761-1762. 087/225. 1766-1767.

2290. 079/218-219. 1769.

2291. 087/10. 1770-1771.

2292. 081/5-6. 1766. 081/7. 1766.

2293. 081/7. 1766. 081/11. 1766.

2294. 085/399. 1770.

2295. 081/36. 1789.

2296. 081/40. 1792.

2297. 081/64. 1811. 081/65. 1811.

2298. 081/98-99. 1825.

2299. 081/136. 1837.

2300. 081/165-166. 1837.

2301. 081/168-169. 1837.

2302. 007/55-56. 1690.

2303. 007/29. 1706.

2304. 026/43-44. 1716.

2305. 039/43-44. 1739.

2306. 026/38. 1716.

2307. 050/11. 1744.

2308. 052/472. 1746.

2309. 064/70. 1757.

2310. 057/418. 1757.

2311. 070/95. 1760. 070/138. 1761. 070/173. 1762.

2312. 079/20. 1766. 079/181. 1769. 079/325. 1772.

2313. 079/181. 1769. 079/325. 1772.

2314. 090/121. 1774. 090/220. 1776.

2315. 079/39. 1766.

2316. 082/167. 1767.

2317. 079/143-144. 1768.

2318. 090/315-316. 1778.

2319. 090/355. 1779.

2320. 057/22-23. 1749.

2321. 070/188. 1762. 065/155. 1762.

2322. 006/28. 1681.

2323. 044/36. 1740.

2324. 046/11. 1742.

2325. 048/33. 1743. 048/41. 1743.

2326. 064/139-140. 1761.

2327. 052/98. 1745.

2328. 090/275. 1777.

2329. 033/38-39. 1722.

2330. 029/99. 1717.

2331. 039/75-76. 1742. 039/76-77. 1742. 039/79-80. 1742. 039/84-85. 1742.

2332. 039/76-77. 1742. 039/84-85. 1742.

2333. 042/147-148. 1742.

2334. 050/11-12. 1744.

2335. 063/82. 1754.

2336. 064/15-16. 1754. 063/385-386. 1755.

2337. 057/42. 1749.

2338. 057/42. 1749.

2339. 057/113. 1751.

2340. 048/144. 1743.

2341. 048/240-242. 1744.

2342. 075/269-272. 1764.

2343. 075/269-272. 1764.

2344. 070/275. 1764.

2345. 051/167-171. 1760.

2346. 039/43. 1739.

2347. 051/17-18. 1744.

2348. 051/109-111. 1754.

2349. Joan Thirsk (ed.), The Agrarian History of England and Wales, vol. 5, 1640-1750, part 2 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985). To be verified.

2350. Gregory Clark, "Debt, Deficits, and Crowding Out: England, 1727-1840", European Review of Economic History 5(3) (2001), Table 3, p. 37. To be verified.

2351. John Locke, Some Considerations of the Consequences of the Lowering of Interest (1691), part 3. To be verified.

2352. Jacob M. Price, Capital and Credit in British Overseas Trade: The View from the Chesapeake, 1700-1776 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1980). To be verified.

2353. Richard S. Dunn, Sugar and Slaves: The Rise of the Planter Class in the English West Indies, 1624-1713 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1972). To be verified.

2354. Leonard Guelke, "Freehold farmers and frontier settlers, 1657-1780", in Richard Elphick and Hermann Giliomee (eds), The Shaping of South African Society, 1652-1840 (Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 1989). To be verified.

2355. P. J. Marshall, East Indian Fortunes: The British in Bengal in the Eighteenth Century (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1976). To be verified.

2356. 008/27-28. 1681.

2357. 008/16. 1682.

2358. 008/270. 1745.

2359. 054/266-267. 1793. 054/236. 1793.

2360. 006/21. 1679.

2361. 006/43. 1683.

2362. 047/118-119. 1742. 089/113-116. 1772.

2363. 006/126. 1710.

2364. 006/127. 1710.

2365. 006/237-239. 1714.

2366. 008/92. 1705.

2367. 049/17-18. 1744.

2368. 049/427-428. 1745.

2369. 049/13-14. 1744.

2370. 008/23. 1682.

2371. 008/60-61. 1697. 008/69-70. 1699. 008/135-136. 1713. 008/153-155. 1719.

2372. 008/236-238. 1735-1739. 008/228-229. 1735. 055/81-82. 1747. 084/119-122. 1769.

2373. 008/55-56. 1696.

2374. 008/18. 1682.

2375. 008/120. 1710.

2376. 054/36. 1749.

2377. 075/12-14. 1763.

2378. 054/81. 1760. 054/82. 1760.

2379. 008/176-177. 1724.

2380. 063/73. 1754.

2381. 008/19. 1682.

2382. 008/50. 1694.

2383. 054/104. 1762.

2384. 083/182-183. 1768.

2385. 054/211. 1782.

2386. 054/215-216. 1786.

2387. 008/106-109. 1707.

2388. 008/130-131. 1713.

2389. 008/251-253. 1743.

2390. 054/181. 1774.

2391. 008/16. 1682. 008/197-198. 1733. 056/315. 1749.

2392. 008/56. 1696.

2393. 008/196-197. 1732.

2394. 008/40. 1687.

2395. 008/43. 1693.

2396. 008/42. 1690.

2397. 008/135-136. 1713.

2398. 008/146. 1718.

2399. 069/319-320. 1760.

2400. 075/112. 1763.

2401. 008/133. 1713. 008/143. 1716. 047/129-130. 1742. 089/92-93. 1772.

2402. 083/182-183. 1768.

2403. 055/179-180. 1748.

2404. 008/156-157. 1718.

2405. 008/145-146. 1718.

2406. 061/5-6. 1751.

2407. 089/120. 1772.

2408. 063/162. 1754.

2409. 054/216. 1786.

2410. 008/37. 1684.

2411. 008/56. 1696.

2412. 017/135. 1707.

2413. 052/108-110. 1744-1745.

2414. 048/151. 1743.

2415. 017/58. 1707.

2416. 017/151. 1707.

2417. 061/22. 1751. 056/298. 1749.

2418. 008/205-206. 1733.

2419. 008/71-72. 1700.

2420. 052/362-363. 1746.

2421. 068/248. 1758. 078/53. 1766.

2422. 008/204-205. 1733-1735.

2423. 047/103-104. 1742.

2424. 055/179-180. 1748.

2425. 063/76. 1754. 063/156. 1754.

2426. 054/250-253. 1792.

2427. 057/187. 1752.

2428. 008/24-25. 1682.

2429. 008/60-61. 1697.

2430. 008/150-151. 1719.

2431. 008/76-77. 1703.

2432. 067/392-393. 1757.

2433. 054/186-187. 1775.

2434. 008/192-194. 1729.

2435. 054/100-101. 1762. 055/181-183. 1748. 054/222-224. 1786.

2436. 078/178. 1766.

2437. 039/167-168. 1750.

2438. 073/81-83. 1791.

2439. 006/87-88. 1707.

2440. 046/104-105. 1742.

2441. 008/17. 1682.

2442. 008/20-21. 1682.

2443. 008/29. 1683.

2444. 008/76-77. 1703.

2445. 008/57. 1696.

2446. 008/110-111. 1707.

2447. 008/155-156. 1718.

2448. 008/163-164. 1719.

2449. 008/208-209. 1734.

2450. 008/229-230. 1737.

2451. 008/211-212. 1733.

2452. 047/178-179. 1743.

2453. 054/25-26. 1747.

2454. 066/276-277. 1756.

2455. 055/107-113. 1748.

2456. 056/225-228. 1749.

2457. 008/192-194. 1729.

2458. 054/23-24. 1747.

2459. 054/51-53. 1750.

2460. 008/97-98. 1706.

2461. 054/88-92. 1759.

2462. 054/93-95. 1759.

2463. 054/176-177. 1774.

2464. 054/203-206. 1778.

2465. 054/258-262. 1792.

2466. 033/28. 1720. 033/29. 1720. 033/30. 1720. 033/31. 1720.

2467. 039/55. 1738. 039/60-61. 1738. 039/61-62. 1738.

2468. 015/31. 1703.

2469. 008/143-144. 1713.

2470. 054/131-133. 1765. 054/198. 1776.

2471. 089/455. 1769-1773.

2472. 008/180-181. 1724.

2473. 062/84. 1753.

2474. 062/88-89. 1753.

2475. 056/160-162. 1749.

2476. 008/27-28. 1681.

2477. 008/35. 1684.

2478. 008/44. 1693.

2479. 008/47-48. 1692.

2480. 008/121-123. 1700.

2481. 033/80. 1725.

2482. 039/111-112. 1745. 039/113-114. 1745.

2483. 008/175-176. 1723.

2484. 054/189-191. 1777.

2485. 054/159-161. 1772.

2486. 008/27-28. 1681.

2487. 008/20-21. 1682.

2488. 008/126-127. 1711.

2489. 008/137-138. 1714. 008/148. 1718.

2490. 008/202. 1732.

2491. 008/80. 1703.

2492. 008/85-86. 1703.

2493. 008/53-54. 1696.

2494. 047/26. 1742.

2495. 039/30. 1738.

2496. 061/4. 1751. 061/9-11. 1751.

2497. 049/421-423. 1745.

2498. 066/367-368. 1756. 051/139. 1756.

2499. 054/128-129. 1766.

2500. 008/16. 1682.

2501. 008/27-28. 1681.

2502. 008/186. 1726.

2503. 008/190. 1727.

2504. 053/172. 1746.

2505. 008/100-101. 1706. 008/228-229. 1735.

2506. 050/28. 1746.

2507. 065/13-14. 1754.

2508. 053/87. 1746.

2509. 075/12-14. 1763.

2510. 082/65-66. 1767.

2511. 054/210. 1782.

2512. 071/187-188. 1762.

2513. 008/220-221. 1738. 008/233-234. 1740.

2514. 008/59. 1698.

2515. 008/76-77. 1703.

2516. 008/171. 1723.

2517. 033/98. 1726.

2518. 008/153-155. 1719.

2519. 046/103-104. 1736-1742.

2520. 054/128-129. 1766.

2521. 054/175-176. 1774. 054/181-182. 1775.

2522. 062/334-335. 1753.

2523. 065/322-323. 1770.

2524. 085/237. 1770.

2525. 090/276. 1777.

2526. 060/87. 1778.

2527. 090/313. 1778.

2528. Amy Louise Erickson, Women and Property in Early Modern England (London: Routledge, 1993). To be verified.

2529. William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England, vol. 2 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1766). To be verified.

2530. 006/22. 1679. 062/82-83. 1753.

2531. Lloyd Bonfield, Marriage Settlements, 1601-1740: The Adoption of the Strict Settlement (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983). To be verified.

2532. 049/13-14. 1744.

2533. Joan Thirsk (ed.), The Agrarian History of England and Wales, vol. 5, 1640-1750 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984-1985). To be verified.

2534. Richard S. Dunn, Sugar and Slaves: The Rise of the Planter Class in the English West Indies, 1624-1713 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1972). To be verified.

2535. Sir Dalby Thomas, An Historical Account of the Rise and Growth of the West-India Collonies (1690), as reported in Bristol Museums, "The plantation economy". To be verified.

2536. Leonard Guelke, "Freehold Farmers and Frontier Settlers, 1657-1780", in Richard Elphick and Hermann Giliomee (eds), The Shaping of South African Society, 1652-1840 (Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 1989). To be verified.

2537. Nigel Worden, Slavery in Dutch South Africa (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985). To be verified.

2538. J. Fourie, "Die relatiewe welvaart van die vroeë Kaapse setlaars", LitNet Akademies 9(2) (2012), Table 2, pp. 452-453. To be verified.

2539. J. Fourie, "The Remarkable Wealth of the Dutch Cape Colony: Measurements from Eighteenth-Century Probate Inventories", ERSA WP 268 (2012), p. 21. To be verified.

2540. P. J. Marshall, East Indian Fortunes: The British in Bengal in the Eighteenth Century (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1976). To be verified.

2541. 052/472. 1746.

2542. 065/322-323. 1770.

2543. 006/22. 1679.

2544. 006/22. 1679.

2545. 003/77. 1709.

2546. 006/87-88. 1707. 006/88. 1707.

2547. 003/23. 1680.

2548. 005/207. 1680.

2549. 017/138. 1707.

2550. 008/52. 1695.

2551. 008/64. 1699.

2552. 008/57. 1696.

2553. 008/105. 1707.

2554. 008/83-84. 1703.

2555. 008/118-119. 1710.

2556. 008/137-138. 1714.

2557. 008/126-127. 1711. 008/180-181. 1724.

2558. 008/198-199. 1737.

2559. 008/150-151. 1719.

2560. 033/37. 1722.

2561. 033/24. 1726.

2562. 008/192-194. 1729.

2563. 008/204-205. 1733-1735. 008/206-207. 1733. 008/213-214. 1735.

2564. 008/250. 1737. 008/229-230. 1737. 008/222-223. 1738. 008/220-221. 1738.

2565. 008/240. 1741. 008/242. 1741. 008/248-249. 1742. 047/118-119. 1742. 048/152-153. 1743.

2566. 056/127-129. 1749. 063/164. 1754. 066/276-277. 1756. 066/367-368. 1756. 071/80-81. 1762. 071/366-367. 1763.

2567. 039/22-23. 1738.

2568. 039/244-245. 1761.

2569. 033/51-52. 1733.

2570. 066/367-368. 1756.

2571. 042/39-40. 1738.

2572. 057/243-245. 1753.

2573. 056/228-230. 1748-1749.

2574. 054/35. 1748.

2575. 054/35. 1748.

2576. 054/31-32. 1749.

2577. 056/226. 1749. 056/229. 1749.

2578. 056/225-228. 1749.

2579. 056/225-228. 1749. 056/228-230. 1748-1749.

2580. 054/19. 1747. 055/85. 1747.

2581. 054/83. 1760. 054/85. 1760.

2582. 063/371-374. 1750-1755.

2583. 074/35-37. 1753.

2584. 008/20-21. 1682. 008/21. 1682.

2585. 008/35. 1684.

2586. 008/24-25. 1682.

2587. 008/93. 1705. 008/94. 1706.

2588. 014/148. 1700.

2589. 022/185. 1716.

2590. 007/227-228. 1717.

2591. 047/118-119. 1742.

2592. 063/90-91. 1754. 054/48-49. 1754.

2593. 069/315-317. 1760. 078/174. 1766.

2594. 054/188. 1776.

2595. 054/23-24. 1747. 054/207. 1780.

2596. 008/106-109. 1707.

2597. 008/87-89. 1704.

2598. 008/126-127. 1711.

2599. 008/90-91. 1704.

2600. 008/102. 1706. 008/103. 1706. 008/95-96. 1706. 008/132. 1711.

2601. 008/128. 1712.

2602. 027/497. 1718.

2603. 007/216. 1713.

2604. 007/243. 1718.

2605. 039/69-70. 1741.

2606. 047/137-138. 1742.

2607. 019/217. 1710. 006/160. 1711.

2608. 047/22-23. 1742.

2609. 055/83. 1747.

2610. 008/140-141. 1715. 008/219. 1737.

2611. 055/181-183. 1748.

2612. 055/181-183. 1748.

2613. 074/35-37. 1753.

2614. 062/166-167. 1753.

2615. 062/170-172. 1753.

2616. 057/243-245. 1753.

2617. 057/243-245. 1753.

2618. 074/32-35. 1753.

2619. 074/35-37. 1753.

2620. 074/35-37. 1753.

2621. 062/434. 1754.

2622. 057/275. 1754.

2623. 063/90-91. 1754.

2624. 054/98-100. 1762. 054/100-101. 1762. 054/141-144. 1769.

2625. 073/29-30. 1770.

2626. 054/191-192. 1777.

2627. 054/68. 1757-1758. 068/83-84. 1758.

2628. 054/68. 1757-1758.

2629. 063/171-173. 1751-1754.

2630. 039/213-215. 1756.

2631. 054/131-133. 1765. 078/269-270. 1765-1766.

2632. 054/183-184. 1776.

2633. 054/207. 1780.

2634. 054/183-184. 1776.

2635. 054/262-265. 1785.

2636. 054/224-226. 1786.

2637. 054/222-224. 1786.

2638. 039/28-29. 1738. 039/116. 1744.

2639. 078/174. 1766.

2640. 054/136-137. 1769.

2641. 054/126. 1766.

2642. 049/179-181. 1744.

2643. 011/15. 1688.

2644. 007/104. 1711. 007/105. 1711. 007/106. 1711.

2645. 031/74, 31/78. 1721.

2646. 033/37. 1722.

2647. 007/175. 1713. 007/161. 1713. 007/155. 1713. 007/195. 1713. 007/189. 1713. 007/185. 1713.

2648. 007/210. 1713.

2649. 027/66. 1717.

2650. 007/149. 1719. 033/32. 1721.

2651. 055/438. 1748.

2652. 059/12. 1750. 061/22. 1751. 066/10. 1755. 075/130. 1763.

2653. 068/248. 1758.

2654. 063/76. 1754.

2655. 042/151. 1743.

2656. 052/334-335. 1746. 052/362-363. 1746.

2657. 053/223. 1747. 053/378-391. 1747.

2658. 061/15-16. 1751.

2659. 054/88-92. 1759.

2660. 082/383-384. 1768. 084/296-297. 1769. 080/119-120. 1771. 086/367. 1771.

2661. 042/227. 1746. 042/228. 1746.

2662. 058/21-22. 1755. 058/142-143. 1764.

2663. 067/379-382. 1757. 058/31-32. 1757.

2664. 046/145-146. 1742. 052/138-141. 1745.

2665. 023/92. 1715.

2666. 007/226. 1718.

2667. 049/172-176. 1744.

2668. 061/442-443. 1752.

2669. 046/36. 1742. 048/92. 1743.

2670. 049/92-107. 1744. 049/509-520. 1745.

2671. 052/338-339. 1746.

2672. 052/338-339. 1746.

2673. 050/29. 1746.

2674. 050/56. 1748. 057/39. 1749.

2675. 065/113. 1760. 064/120. 1760.

2676. 070/80. 1760. 071/42. 1762. 071/122. 1762.

2677. 079/141-142. 1768. 083/76-79. 1768.

2678. 079/141-142. 1768.

2679. 065/284. 1768. 079/175. 1769.

2680. 085/186-206. 1770.

2681. 065/358. 1773. 065/362. 1774.

2682. 081/5-6. 1766.

2683. 081/7. 1766.

2684. 081/8-9. 1766. 081/11. 1766.

2685. 065/254. 1766.

2686. 081/13. 1768.

2687. 085/399. 1770. 081/18. 1772. 081/30. 1782.

2688. 081/21-22. 1774.

2689. 065/323-325. 1770.

2690. 065/377-378. 1776.

2691. 090/219. 1776. 090/253. 1777. 090/276. 1777.

2692. 090/301. 1778.

2693. 060/87. 1778. 090/313. 1778.

2694. 081/114. 1831. 081/42-43. 1794.

2695. 062/255-257. 1753.

2696. Amy Louise Erickson, Women and Property in Early Modern England (London: Routledge, 1993). To be verified.

2697. Joan Thirsk (ed.), The Agrarian History of England and Wales, vol. 5 (1640-1750) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984-1985). To be verified.

2698. Amy Louise Erickson, Women and Property in Early Modern England (London: Routledge, 1993). To be verified.

2699. Lloyd Bonfield, Marriage Settlements, 1601-1740: The Adoption of the Strict Settlement (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983). To be verified.

2700. Susan Staves, Married Women's Separate Property in England, 1660-1833 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1990). To be verified.

2701. Marylynn Salmon, Women and the Law of Property in Early America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1986). To be verified.

2702. Nigel Worden, Slavery in Dutch South Africa (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985). To be verified.

2703. Leonard Guelke, "Freehold Farmers and Frontier Settlers, 1657-1780", in Richard Elphick and Hermann Giliomee (eds), The Shaping of South African Society, 1652-1840 (Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 1989). To be verified.

2704. P. J. Marshall, East Indian Fortunes: The British in Bengal in the Eighteenth Century (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1976). To be verified.

2705. 006/23. 1679.

2706. 008/29. 1683.

2707. 008/60-61. 1697.

2708. 008/76-77. 1703.

2709. 006/315. 1706.

2710. 006/315. 1706. 006/266. 1714.

2711. 031/41-43. 1721. 031/320. 1722.

2712. 037/210. 1728.

2713. 049/138-139. 1744.

2714. 039/100. 1740.

2715. 054/67. 1757. 067/392-393. 1757.

2716. 037/349-354. 1730.

2717. 041/241-246. 1737.

2718. 049/13-14. 1744.

2719. 006/58. 1701.

2720. 003/52. 1705.

2721. 008/169. 1722.

2722. 047/137-138. 1742.

2723. 047/166-168. 1742.

2724. 047/137-138. 1742.

2725. 048/131. 1743.

2726. 049/275. 1744. 049/306-314. 1744.

2727. 052/38-39. 1745.

2728. 053/82. 1746.

2729. 053/383. 1747.

2730. 062/408. 1754.

2731. 062/408. 1754. 062/424-425. 1754.

2732. 053/391. 1747.

2733. 042/238. 1747.

2734. 055/286-289. 1748. 057/42. 1749.

2735. 050/63. 1749.

2736. 057/84. 1750. 059/105. 1750.

2737. 058/6. 1749. 042/238. 1747.

2738. 052/472. 1746.

2739. 052/472. 1746. 056/156. 1749. 057/43. 1749.

2740. 079/209. 1769. 079/271. 1770.

2741. 064/116. 1759.

2742. 051/131. 1756.

2743. 039/179-180. 1753.

2744. 039/206-207. 1756.

2745. 057/287. 1754.

2746. 057/290. 1754.

2747. 087/85-87. 1799-1800.

2748. 087/488. 1799-1804.

2749. 087/81-82. 1798-1805.

2750. 009/109. 1684.

2751. 008/97-98. 1706.

2752. 033/58-59. 1722.

2753. 033/58-59. 1722.

2754. 039/45-46. 1740.

2755. 042/39-40. 1738. 042/42-44. 1738. 042/44-46. 1738. 042/60-61. 1738. 042/80-81. 1738. 042/90-91. 1738. 042/91-92. 1738.

2756. 042/39-40. 1738.

2757. 042/44-46. 1738. 042/46-47. 1738. 042/48-49. 1738.

2758. 049/428-430. 1745.

2759. 058/71-72. 1759. 058/91. 1759. 080/43-44. 1767. 080/110-111. 1770.

2760. 033/74-75. 1725. 033/97. 1726.

2761. 053/106. 1746.

2762. 059/23. 1750. 059/70. 1750.

2763. 062/231-232. 1753.

2764. 068/250. 1758.

2765. 039/249. 1761.

2766. 033/77-78. 1725. 033/78. 1725.

2767. 039/157-158. 1748.

2768. 039/167-168. 1750.

2769. 066/199. 1755.

2770. 046/160-161. 1742. 048/171-172. 1743. 067/50-52. 1756.

2771. 046/160-161. 1742. 059/134-136. 1750.

2772. 062/234. 1753.

2773. 005/261. 1682.

2774. 007/75. 1707.

2775. 007/76. 1708.

2776. 007/217. 1714.

2777. 033/62-63. 1724. 033/68-69. 1724.

2778. 066/374. 1756.

2779. 053/172-173. 1746.

2780. 053/178. 1746.

2781. 007/225-226. 1716.

2782. 033/82-84. 1725.

2783. 039/27-28. 1739.

2784. 052/123-129. 1745.

2785. 061/190. 1752.

2786. 062/241. 1753.

2787. 063/53-54. 1754.

2788. 066/37. 1755.

2789. 068/318. 1758. 068/322. 1758.

2790. 068/380. 1759.

2791. 069/32. 1759.

2792. 078/412. 1767.

2793. 008/106-109. 1707.

2794. 008/126-127. 1711.

2795. 008/102. 1706. 008/128. 1712.

2796. 007/216. 1713.

2797. 007/243. 1718.

2798. 007/80. 1709.

2799. 007/157. 1713. 007/158. 1713.

2800. 026/87-88. 1717.

2801. 066/115-117. 1755.

2802. 055/438. 1748. 059/12. 1750.

2803. 049/16. 1744.

2804. 068/248. 1758.

2805. 060/65. 1768.

2806. 083/346-347. 1768.

2807. 083/346-347. 1768.

2808. 006/22. 1679.

2809. 006/88. 1707.

2810. 006/63. 1702. 003/55. 1703.

2811. 006/148. 1711.

2812. 046/112. 1742.

2813. 046/112. 1742.

2814. 057/113. 1751.

2815. 044/26. 1740.

2816. 083/222-226. 1768.

2817. 083/222-226. 1768.

2818. 070/137-138. 1761.

2819. 088/293-295. 1772. 086/13-14. 1770.

2820. 039/246-247. 1757. 067/359. 1757.

2821. 070/38. 1759.

2822. 063/76. 1754. 063/77. 1754. 063/151. 1754.

2823. 063/156. 1754. 063/166-171. 1754. 063/175-180. 1754.

2824. 063/171-173. 1751-1754.

2825. 039/194-195. 1754.

2826. 053/182-183. 1746.

2827. 055/435-437. 1748.

2828. 057/232. 1753.

2829. 064/12. 1754. 063/53-54. 1754.

2830. 006/23. 1679.

2831. 003/23. 1680.

2832. 074/21-22. 1779.

2833. 007/208. 1713.

2834. 033/122-123. 1724.

2835. 008/58. 1697.

2836. 008/220-221. 1738.

2837. 089/114-116. 1772.

2838. 013/112. 1698.

2839. 007/42-43. 1687. 007/25-26. 1694.

2840. 039/49-50. 1740.

2841. 039/87. 1742.

2842. 063/75. 1754. 063/92. 1754.

2843. 090/121. 1774. 090/139. 1774. 090/318-319. 1778.

2844. 053/380. 1747.

2845. 053/403-404. 1747.

2846. 069/27. 1759.

2847. 090/139. 1774.

2848. H. E. Bell, An Introduction to the History and Records of the Court of Wards and Liveries (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1953). To be verified.

2849. William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England, vol. 1 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1765), book 1, chapter 17. To be verified.

2850. Charles Carlton, The Court of Orphans (Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1974). To be verified.

2851. Lois Green Carr, "The Development of the Maryland Orphans' Court, 1654-1715", in Aubrey C. Land, Lois Green Carr and Edward C. Papenfuse (eds), Law, Society, and Politics in Early Maryland (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1977). To be verified.

2852. Darrett B. Rutman and Anita H. Rutman, A Place in Time: Middlesex County, Virginia, 1650-1750 (New York: Norton, 1984). To be verified.

2853. Robert C.-H. Shell, Children of Bondage: A Social History of the Slave Society at the Cape of Good Hope, 1652-1838 (Hanover, NH: Wesleyan University Press, 1994). To be verified.

2854. J. Fourie, "The Remarkable Wealth of the Dutch Cape Colony: Measurements from Eighteenth-Century Probate Inventories", ERSA WP 268 (2012), p. 21. To be verified.

2855. P. de Zwart, "Real wages at the Cape of Good Hope: a long-term perspective, 1652-1912", TSEG 10(2) (2013), Table A2, p. 54. To be verified.

2856. Philip J. Stern, The Company-State: Corporate Sovereignty and the Early Modern Foundations of the British Empire in India (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011). To be verified.

2857. P. J. Marshall, East Indian Fortunes: The British in Bengal in the Eighteenth Century (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1976). To be verified.

2858. 001/96. 1680.

2859. 001/96. 1680.

2860. 005/39. 1678.

2861. 005/41. 1678. 005/44. 1679.

2862. 002/54. 1677.

2863. 007/10. 1682.

2864. 007/7. 1682.

2865. 007/10. 1682.

2866. 011/372. 1692.

2867. 005/207. 1680.

2868. 006/160. 1711.

2869. 007/197. 1713.

2870. 019/217. 1710.

2871. 026/91-92. 1717.

2872. 007/87. 1701.

2873. 007/60. 1708.

2874. 033/84-86. 1725. 033/86-87. 1725.

2875. 033/29. 1720. 033/30. 1720.

2876. 008/214. 1736. 046/103-104. 1736-1742.

2877. 007/77. 1709.

2878. 039/28-29. 1738.

2879. 039/116. 1744.

2880. 039/38-44. 1739.

2881. 008/106-109. 1707.

2882. 008/87-89. 1704.

2883. 026/86. 1717.

2884. 054/19. 1747.

2885. 039/228. 1758. 080/7. 1800. 087/35. 1793.

2886. 008/195. 1731.

2887. 062/408. 1754.

2888. 064/34-35. 1755. 065/28. 1755. 057/360. 1756.

2889. 007/216. 1713.

2890. 007/216. 1713.

2891. 007/216. 1713.

2892. 007/216. 1713.

2893. 033/47-48. 1723.

2894. 007/243. 1718.

2895. 007/218. 1714.

2896. 007/218. 1714.

2897. 007/218. 1714.

2898. 020/311. 1714.

2899. 030/187. 1719.

2900. 007/85. 1716.

2901. 033/44-45. 1722.

2902. 033/44-45. 1722.

2903. 054/139-140. 1764.

2904. 056/228-230. 1748-1749.

2905. 047/135. 1742.

2906. 062/85-87. 1753.

2907. 039/213-215. 1756.

2908. 039/213-215. 1756.

2909. 063/171-173. 1751-1754.

2910. 039/226-228. 1758.

2911. 039/226-228. 1758.

2912. 039/228. 1758.

2913. 068/231. 1758.

2914. 054/186-187. 1775.

2915. 054/236-237. 1790.

2916. 008/55-56. 1696.

2917. 008/197-198. 1733.

2918. 008/189. 1727.

2919. 008/257-259. 1744. 049/179-181. 1744.

2920. 051/18-22. 1744.

2921. 054/126. 1766. 078/173. 1766.

2922. 054/64-65. 1751.

2923. 054/139-140. 1764.

2924. 008/199-200. 1738.

2925. 054/25. 1745.

2926. 055/179-180. 1748.

2927. 050/117. 1751.

2928. 071/88-89. 1762.

2929. 071/88-89. 1762.

2930. 054/102-103. 1760.

2931. 071/94-96. 1762.

2932. 054/128-129. 1766.

2933. 078/175. 1766.

2934. 084/122. 1769. 054/137-138. 1769.

2935. 084/119-122. 1769.

2936. 088/240-243. 1771-1772. 054/152-153. 1771.

2937. 054/198. 1776. 054/203. 1776.

2938. 090/275. 1777.

2939. 054/231-232. 1780.

2940. 054/217-218. 1780.

2941. 011/15. 1688.

2942. 007/104. 1711. 007/105. 1711. 007/106. 1711.

2943. 031/74, 31/78. 1721.

2944. 033/37. 1722.

2945. 007/155. 1713. 007/161. 1713.

2946. 007/195. 1713. 007/175. 1713.

2947. 007/207. 1713.

2948. 007/196. 1713. 007/210. 1713.

2949. 007/194. 1713.

2950. 007/122. 1711. 084/298-300. 1769.

2951. 042/34-35. 1738.

2952. 042/17-18. 1738. 042/50-51. 1738.

2953. 042/39-40. 1738. 042/42-44. 1738. 042/44-46. 1738. 042/60-61. 1738.

2954. 042/85-86. 1738.

2955. 033/143-144. 1725.

2956. 049/126. 1744. 049/420-421. 1745.

2957. 058/30. 1757. 058/37-38. 1758.

2958. 078/356. 1767. 080/50-51. 1767.

2959. 080/119-120. 1771. 080/120-121. 1771. 080/121-122. 1771.

2960. 046/160-161. 1742.

2961. 075/33-35. 1763.

2962. 077/64-67. 1765.

2963. 007/42-43. 1687. 007/25-26. 1694.

2964. 007/56-57. 1694. 007/44. 1694.

2965. 007/26-27. 1705. 007/71. 1709.

2966. 039/140. 1747. 053/374. 1747.

2967. 007/26. 1698.

2968. 007/97. 1712.

2969. 007/149. 1719.

2970. 033/32. 1721. 033/45. 1723.

2971. 033/53. 1723. 033/56. 1723.

2972. 033/59-60. 1723.

2973. 039/74. 1742.

2974. 039/196-197. 1754. 039/203. 1756.

2975. 039/241-242. 1759.

2976. 033/31. 1720.

2977. 039/60-61. 1738.

2978. 085/471. 1770.

2979. 007/242-243. 1718.

2980. 007/242-243. 1718.

2981. 033/19-20. 1723.

2982. 008/236-238. 1735-1739.

2983. 033/75-76. 1725.

2984. 008/236-238. 1735-1739.

2985. 026/79. 1717.

2986. 049/531. 1745.

2987. 083/70-73. 1768.

2988. 083/76-79. 1768.

2989. 079/141-142. 1768.

2990. 079/141-142. 1768. 084/16. 1769.

2991. 054/171-172. 1773.

2992. 046/48-49. 1742.

2993. 077/356-362. 1766.

2994. 026/38. 1716.

2995. 048/32. 1743.

2996. 053/378-391. 1747. 059/198. 1750.

2997. 057/419-420. 1757.

2998. 046/26-27. 1742.

2999. 008/23. 1682. 008/261. 1744.

3000. 049/17-18. 1744.

3001. 054/68. 1757-1758. 054/243-244. 1792.

3002. 008/201. 1729.

3003. 008/202. 1732.

3004. 008/212-213. 1734.

3005. 047/179. 1743.

3006. 008/135-136. 1713.

3007. 008/153-155. 1719.

3008. 008/175-176. 1723.

3009. 008/187-188. 1726-1727.

3010. 008/228-229. 1735.

3011. 008/153-155. 1719.

3012. 054/72. 1759.

3013. 054/137-138. 1769.

3014. 054/137-138. 1769.

3015. 054/181-182. 1775.

3016. 054/163-164. 1772.

3017. 054/126-128. 1766.

3018. 054/136-137. 1769.

3019. 054/35. 1748. 056/228-230. 1748-1749.

3020. 007/14. 1704.

3021. 006/160. 1711.

3022. 006/180-182. 1712.

3023. 006/180-182. 1712.

3024. 007/232. 1718.

3025. 006/225-226. 1713.

3026. 006/225-226. 1713.

3027. 033/38-39. 1722.

3028. 082/383-384. 1768.

3029. 082/388-389. 1768.

3030. 065/283. 1768.

3031. 084/296-297. 1769.

3032. 068/381-383. 1759.

3033. 068/381-383. 1759.

3034. 048/115. 1743.

3035. 063/171-173. 1751-1754.

3036. Lloyd Bonfield, Marriage Settlements, 1601-1740: The Adoption of the Strict Settlement (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983). To be verified.

3037. Amy Louise Erickson, Women and Property in Early Modern England (London: Routledge, 1993). To be verified.

3038. Susan Staves, Married Women's Separate Property in England, 1660-1833 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1990). To be verified.

3039. Marylynn Salmon, Women and the Law of Property in Early America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1986). To be verified.

3040. Linda L. Sturtz, Within Her Power: Propertied Women in Colonial Virginia (New York: Routledge, 2002). To be verified.

3041. Richard S. Dunn, Sugar and Slaves: The Rise of the Planter Class in the English West Indies, 1624-1713 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1972). To be verified.

3042. Richard Elphick and Hermann Giliomee (eds), The Shaping of South African Society, 1652-1840 (Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 1989). To be verified.

3043. Robert C.-H. Shell, Children of Bondage: A Social History of the Slave Society at the Cape of Good Hope, 1652-1838 (Hanover, NH: Wesleyan University Press, 1994). To be verified.

3044. P. J. Marshall, East Indian Fortunes: The British in Bengal in the Eighteenth Century (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1976). To be verified.

3045. 065/322-323. 1770. 060/87. 1778. 090/313. 1778.

3046. 081/61-62. 1810.

3047. 011/24. 1688.

3048. 011/270. 1690.

3049. 012/91. 1693.

3050. 012/91. 1693.

3051. 012/91. 1693.

3052. 013/81. 1697.

3053. 014/296. 1702.

3054. 020/288. 1714.

3055. 013/126. 1698.

3056. 014/120. 1701.

3057. 017/58. 1707.

3058. 008/76-77. 1703.

3059. 008/89. 1704.

3060. 006/88. 1707.

3061. 031/468. 1723.

3062. 041/110-117. 1736.

3063. 031/212-216. 1720.

3064. 031/217-220. 1721.

3065. 039/43. 1739.

3066. 039/38-44. 1739.

3067. 049/16. 1744.

3068. 049/15. 1744.

3069. 049/427-428. 1745.

3070. 052/437. 1746.

3071. 053/56. 1746. 053/74. 1746. 053/88. 1746.

3072. 051/9-17. 1744. 051/164-166. 1760.

3073. 051/72-80. 1749. 051/25. 1746.

3074. 051/22-24. 1745.

3075. 051/41. 1747.

3076. 051/9-17. 1744.

3077. 059/28. 1750. 063/436. 1755. 066/295. 1756.

3078. 051/126-130. 1756. 051/145-149. 1758.

3079. 055/438. 1748.

3080. 061/22. 1751. 063/436. 1755. 067/130. 1756.

3081. 068/248. 1758.

3082. 068/324. 1758.

3083. 082/52. 1767. 089/126. 1772.

3084. 073/83. 1791.

3085. 046/112. 1742.

3086. 059/27. 1750. 057/95-96. 1750. 070/38. 1759.

3087. 063/156. 1754.

3088. 051/9-17. 1744.

3089. 051/42-53. 1747.

3090. 063/166-171. 1754.

3091. 051/142-144. 1759.

3092. 051/131-134. 1756.

3093. 051/65-70. 1749.

3094. 051/93-97. 1752.

3095. 051/135-139. 1756.

3096. 051/70-72. 1752.

3097. 012/91. 1693. 063/166-171. 1754.

3098. 051/164-166. 1760.

3099. 040/278-280. 1733.

3100. 051/42-53. 1747.

3101. 051/9-17. 1744.

3102. 051/72-80. 1749.

3103. 051/54-61. 1748. 051/112-116. 1755.

3104. 051/92-93. 1752.

3105. 051/9-17. 1744.

3106. 051/54-61. 1748. 051/142-144. 1759.

3107. 051/63-64. 1749. 051/93-97. 1752. 051/135-139. 1756.

3108. 051/72-80. 1749.

3109. 051/159-161. 1760.

3110. 051/26-29. 1746.

3111. 051/104-108. 1754. 063/166-171. 1754.

3112. 051/9-17. 1744. 051/42-53. 1747. 051/72-80. 1749.

3113. 051/33-40. 1747. 051/54-61. 1748. 051/117-122. 1755.

3114. 051/82-83. 1749.

3115. 051/9. 1744.

3116. 051/72-80. 1749. 051/42-53. 1747.

3117. 051/117-122. 1755.

3118. 051/142-144. 1759.

3119. 051/72-80. 1749. 051/65-70. 1749.

3120. 051/42-53. 1747. 051/153-159. 1758. 051/142-144. 1759.

3121. 048/63. 1743.

3122. 051/9-17. 1744. 051/72-80. 1749.

3123. 051/33-40. 1747.

3124. 051/70-72. 1752.

3125. 008/85-86. 1703.

3126. 051/42-53. 1747.

3127. 051/26-29. 1746.

3128. 051/72-80. 1749.

3129. 051/150-153. 1750.

3130. 051/172-177. 1760.

3131. 051/9-17. 1744. 051/54-61. 1748.

3132. 051/33-40. 1747.

3133. 051/126-130. 1756.

3134. 051/145-149. 1758.

3135. 063/166-171. 1754. 051/112-116. 1755. 051/126-130. 1756.

3136. 051/63-64. 1749.

3137. 051/30-32. 1747. 051/33. 1747.

3138. 051/72-80. 1749.

3139. 051/42-53. 1747.

3140. 051/17-18. 1744.

3141. 049/316-334. 1744.

3142. 068/300-314. 1758. 075/93-110. 1763. 088/100-123. 1771.

3143. 053/145-159. 1746.

3144. 051/17-18. 1744.

3145. 051/40. 1747.

3146. 051/41. 1747.

3147. 051/29-30. 1744.

3148. 051/153-159. 1758. 051/164-166. 1760.

3149. 051/24. 1745.

3150. 051/70. 1749.

3151. 051/79-80. 1749.

3152. 051/103. 1754.

3153. 051/131. 1756.

3154. 051/109-111. 1754.

3155. 051/167-171. 1760.

3156. 041/420. 1739.

3157. 008/205-206. 1733.

3158. 057/42. 1749.

3159. 046/65. 1742.

3160. 059/372-373. 1751. 059/395. 1751. 062/46. 1753.

3161. 064/15-16. 1754.

3162. 063/385-386. 1755.

3163. 075/269-272. 1764.

3164. 044/26. 1740.

3165. 049/15. 1744.

3166. 063/175-180. 1754.

3167. 048/240-242. 1744.

3168. 047/166-168. 1742.

3169. 051/29-30. 1744.

3170. 059/29-42. 1750.

3171. 059/43-44. 1750.

3172. 051/141. 1752-1756.

3173. 067/126-127. 1756.

3174. 067/215-216. 1757.

3175. 052/135-136. 1745.

3176. 053/198-201. 1746.

3177. Sir Dalby Thomas, An Historical Account of the Rise and Growth of the West-India Collonies (London, 1690), as reported by Bristol Museums, "The plantation economy". To be verified.

3178. Richard B. Sheridan, "The Slave Trade to Jamaica, 1702-1808", in B. W. Higman (ed.), Trade, Government and Society in Caribbean History (1983), p. 8, after Bryan Edwards. To be verified.

3179. J. Fourie, "The Remarkable Wealth of the Dutch Cape Colony: Measurements from Eighteenth-Century Probate Inventories", ERSA WP 268 (2012), p. 27. To be verified.

3180. J. Fourie, "Die relatiewe welvaart van die vroeë Kaapse setlaars", LitNet Akademies 9(2) (2012), Table 2, pp. 452-453. To be verified.

3181. P. de Zwart, "Real wages at the Cape of Good Hope: a long-term perspective, 1652-1912", TSEG 10(2) (2013), Table A2, p. 54. To be verified.

3182. 051/72-80. 1749.

3183. J. Fourie, "The Remarkable Wealth of the Dutch Cape Colony: Measurements from Eighteenth-Century Probate Inventories", ERSA WP 268 (2012), p. 27. To be verified.

3184. Gregory King, scheme for 1688, in Two Tracts, ed. G. E. Barnett (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1936), as tabulated by the University of York History of Statistics page. To be verified.

3185. P. J. Marshall, East Indian Fortunes: The British in Bengal in the Eighteenth Century (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1976). To be verified.

3186. 079/133. 1768. 090/324. 1778.

3187. 003/15. 1673.

3188. 005/174. 1681.

3189. 010/13. 1683.

3190. 006/44-45. 1683.

3191. 006/44-45. 1683.

3192. 006/89. 1707.

3193. 003/42. 1684. 010/14. 1683.

3194. 002/107. 1684.

3195. 010/109. 1685.

3196. 002/108. 1684.

3197. 005/240. 1682. 011/166. 1690.

3198. 006/45. 1683.

3199. 006/40. 1701.

3200. 010/205. 1687.

3201. 006/128. 1710. 006/180. 1712.

3202. 006/262-263. 1714.

3203. 006/218. 1713.

3204. 026/46. 1716. 026/48. 1716. 026/50-51. 1716. 026/52-53. 1716.

3205. 026/109. 1717.

3206. 026/112. 1717.

3207. 048/195. 1743.

3208. 048/204. 1743.

3209. 052/483. 1746.

3210. 062/440. 1754.

3211. 057/409. 1757.

3212. 057/451-452. 1758.

3213. 057/231. 1753.

3214. 057/376-377. 1756. 057/399. 1757.

3215. 064/46. 1756.

3216. 075/300-305. 1764.

3217. 075/300-305. 1764.

3218. 076/146-149. 1765.

3219. 076/146. 1765. 076/152. 1765.

3220. 076/408. 1765. 076/410. 1765.

3221. 065/225-227. 1764.

3222. 076/306. 1765.

3223. 076/337-338. 1765. 076/412-414. 1765.

3224. 070/327. 1765.

3225. 079/9-10. 1766. 079/11. 1766.

3226. 065/250. 1766.

3227. 006/262-263. 1714. 006/312. 1707.

3228. 006/262-263. 1714.

3229. 057/13. 1748. 057/203. 1752. 070/158-159. 1762.

3230. 049/19-21. 1744.

3231. 049/19-21. 1744.

3232. 049/19-21. 1744.

3233. 053/143. 1746. 053/399. 1747. 063/123-124. 1754.

3234. 078/97-98. 1766.

3235. 087/47-48. 1789.

3236. 047/35. 1742.

3237. 048/168. 1743. 046/94. 1742.

3238. 052/355. 1746.

3239. 076/341. 1765. 078/66. 1766.

3240. 029/69. 1719.

3241. 046/66. 1742.

3242. 046/97. 1742.

3243. 067/288. 1757. 089/366. 1773. 089/413. 1773.

3244. 048/230. 1743.

3245. 048/258. 1744.

3246. 053/286. 1747.

3247. 061/439. 1752.

3248. 050/142. 1753.

3249. 048/93. 1743.

3250. 057/156-157. 1752. 050/129. 1752.

3251. 064/134. 1760. 070/121-122. 1761.

3252. 070/121-122. 1761. 065/153. 1762.

3253. 047/101. 1742.

3254. 049/241. 1744.

3255. 053/393-394. 1747. 055/70-77. 1747.

3256. 056/214. 1749. 077/280. 1766.

3257. 079/122-123. 1768.

3258. 083/93. 1768.

3259. 026/58. 1716.

3260. 006/218. 1713.

3261. 079/195. 1769.

3262. 052/158-160. 1745.

3263. 059/413. 1751.

3264. 062/22-23. 1753. 063/123-124. 1754.

3265. 078/425-426. 1767. 089/272-274. 1772.

3266. 077/181-184. 1765.

3267. 086/157-158. 1771.

3268. 061/453. 1752.

3269. 047/131-133. 1742. 048/98. 1743.

3270. 047/131-133. 1742.

3271. 048/233-234. 1744.

3272. 048/255. 1744.

3273. 086/390-391. 1771.

3274. 069/306. 1760.

3275. 069/232-237. 1759.

3276. 077/249-256. 1765. 077/355-362. 1766.

3277. 078/97-98. 1766. 083/350-357. 1768.

3278. 084/51-52. 1769. 082/435-436. 1768.

3279. 072/415-420. 1778. 085/208. 1770. 089/307. 1772.

3280. 057/221. 1753. 064/97. 1759.

3281. 062/168. 1753. 063/382. 1755.

3282. 076/338-339. 1765.

3283. 076/338-339. 1765.

3284. 084/112. 1769. 090/293. 1778.

3285. 006/316. 1706.

3286. 019/232. 1712.

3287. 020/155. 1714.

3288. 026/6. 1707.

3289. 077/53-55. 1765.

3290. 077/266. 1765.

3291. 077/367. 1766.

3292. 070/119-120. 1761.

3293. 090/264-265. 1777. 090/294-295. 1778.

3294. 011/17. 1688.

3295. 049/72-73. 1742-1744.

3296. 049/117. 1744.

3297. 090/296. 1778.

3298. 049/261-262. 1744.

3299. 059/309. 1751.

3300. 075/191. 1764.

3301. 046/38. 1742. 048/91. 1743.

3302. 079/209. 1769. 079/256. 1770.

3303. 053/127. 1746. 077/192. 1766.

3304. 062/258. 1753.

3305. 006/40. 1701.

3306. 006/288-289. 1706.

3307. 026/92-93. 1717.

3308. 029/91. 1717.

3309. 026/100-101. 1717.

3310. 031/71-78. 1721.

3311. 030/98. 1719. 032/44. 1719.

3312. 029/145. 1721. 029/147. 1721.

3313. 087/120-124. 1773.

3314. 087/120-124. 1773.

3315. 087/305. 1806.

3316. 060/33. 1757.

3317. 060/36. 1758.

3318. 069/309. 1760.

3319. 060/89. 1778. 060/96. 1779. 060/101. 1781. 060/122. 1787.

3320. 006/48. 1683.

3321. 006/50. 1685. 004/62. 1687.

3322. 014/76. 1700.

3323. 021/160. 1716.

3324. 053/58. 1746.

3325. 006/46-47. 1683.

3326. 055/361-362. 1748.

3327. 046/81. 1742.

3328. 066/274. 1756.

3329. 006/48. 1683.

3330. 064/135. 1760. 065/132. 1760.

3331. 070/122-123. 1761.

3332. 031/82-83. 1721.

3333. 083/215. 1768.

3334. 085/363-364. 1770. 088/248-249. 1772.

3335. 049/440. 1745.

3336. 062/244. 1753.

3337. 066/110. 1755.

3338. 060/26. 1755.

3339. 062/92. 1753.

3340. 062/173-174. 1753. 062/434. 1754.

3341. 060/45. 1759. 069/256. 1760.

3342. 069/423. 1760.

3343. 022/180. 1715.

3344. 023/234. 1716.

3345. 022/150. 1715.

3346. 029/26. 1718. 024/332. 1717.

3347. 046/66. 1742.

3348. 047/17. 1742.

3349. 048/16-17. 1743.

3350. 046/52. 1742.

3351. 053/289-290. 1747.

3352. 078/212. 1766. 078/336. 1766.

3353. 084/103. 1769.

3354. Robert C.-H. Shell, Children of Bondage: A Social History of the Slave Society at the Cape of Good Hope, 1652-1838 (Hanover, NH: Wesleyan University Press, 1994). To be verified.

3355. Nigel Worden, Slavery in Dutch South Africa (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985). To be verified.

3356. J. Fourie, "The Remarkable Wealth of the Dutch Cape Colony: Measurements from Eighteenth-Century Probate Inventories", ERSA WP 268 (2012), p. 27. To be verified.

3357. Richard S. Dunn, Sugar and Slaves: The Rise of the Planter Class in the English West Indies, 1624-1713 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1972). To be verified.

3358. J. Fourie, "The Remarkable Wealth of the Dutch Cape Colony: Measurements from Eighteenth-Century Probate Inventories", ERSA WP 268 (2012), p. 27. To be verified.

3359. T. Burnard, L. Panza and J. G. Williamson, "The Social Implications of Sugar: Living Costs, Real Incomes and Inequality in Jamaica c1774", NBER WP 23897 (2017), p. 32. To be verified.

3360. Michael J. Jarvis, In the Eye of All Trade: Bermuda, Bermudians, and the Maritime Atlantic World, 1680-1783 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2010). To be verified.

3361. 006/263. 1714. 052/483. 1746.

3362. 076/306. 1765.

3363. Philip J. Stern, The Company-State: Corporate Sovereignty and the Early Modern Foundations of the British Empire in India (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011). To be verified.

3364. 002/108. 1684.

3365. 011/96. 1689.

3366. 011/96. 1689.

3367. 011/116. 1689.

3368. 011/53. 1688.

3369. 013/146. 1698.

3370. 033/54. 1733.

3371. 020/320. 1714.

3372. 026/108. 1717.

3373. 026/109. 1717.

3374. 026/109. 1717.

3375. 024/256. 1717.

3376. 024/261. 1717.

3377. 046/53-54. 1742.

3378. 046/53-54. 1742.

3379. 046/53-54. 1742.

3380. 046/60. 1742.

3381. 046/53-54. 1742. 046/52. 1742.

3382. 047/166-168. 1742.

3383. 048/240-242. 1744.

3384. 055/262-268. 1748.

3385. 063/166-171. 1754. 063/175-180. 1754.

3386. 063/175-180. 1754.

3387. 087/213-214. 1760-1761.

3388. 087/225. 1766-1767.

3389. 087/116. 1791.

3390. 087/241-242. 1793.

3391. 008/88. 1704.

3392. 008/197-198. 1733.

3393. 039/239. 1758.

3394. 039/239. 1758.

3395. 007/55-56. 1690.

3396. 007/74-75. 1703.

3397. 007/219-220. 1715.

3398. 033/71-72. 1725.

3399. 039/206-207. 1756.

3400. 007/236. 1717.

3401. 007/241. 1718.

3402. 039/43. 1739.

3403. 007/209. 1712.

3404. 007/209. 1712.

3405. 039/73. 1741.

3406. 033/44-45. 1722.

3407. 039/236-237. 1758.

3408. 039/236-237. 1758.

3409. 007/64. 1705.

3410. 008/187-188. 1726-1727.

3411. 059/133. 1750.

3412. 050/6. 1744.

3413. 052/136-137. 1745. 052/315. 1745.

3414. 033/35-36. 1722.

3415. 033/35-36. 1722.

3416. 033/102-103. 1727.

3417. 033/102-103. 1727.

3418. 039/209-210. 1756.

3419. 039/209-210. 1756.

3420. 009/177. 1685.

3421. 008/29. 1683.

3422. 008/29. 1683.

3423. 008/33. 1683.

3424. 008/38. 1684.

3425. 008/39. 1684.

3426. 007/55-56. 1690.

3427. 008/21. 1682.

3428. 008/21. 1682.

3429. 008/52. 1695.

3430. 008/116. 1708.

3431. 008/156-157. 1718.

3432. 008/245-246. 1743. 047/118-119. 1742.

3433. 047/133-135. 1742.

3434. 053/395-399. 1747.

3435. 085/270-272. 1770.

3436. 085/270-272. 1770.

3437. 085/284-286. 1770.

3438. 054/146-147. 1770.

3439. 054/23-24. 1747.

3440. 008/122. 1700.

3441. 008/105. 1707.

3442. 089/113-116. 1772.

3443. 089/113-116. 1772.

3444. 089/113-116. 1772. 054/157-159. 1772.

3445. 089/321. 1772-1773.

3446. 089/321. 1772-1773.

3447. 049/421-423. 1745.

3448. 008/259-260. 1744.

3449. 054/137-138. 1769.

3450. 084/121. 1769.

3451. 051/82-83. 1749.

3452. 055/262-268. 1748.

3453. 078/172. 1766.

3454. 078/177. 1766.

3455. 044/42. 1740.

3456. 048/240-242. 1744. 063/175-180. 1754.

3457. 009/32. 1684.

3458. 019/54. 1710.

3459. 051/30. 1744.

3460. 054/64-65. 1751.

3461. 078/172. 1766.

3462. 089/113-116. 1772.

3463. 054/243-244. 1792.

3464. 089/439. 1773.

3465. 049/261-262. 1744.

3466. 049/261-262. 1744.

3467. 072/158-161. 1765.

3468. 072/158-161. 1765.

3469. 073/99-100. 1792.

3470. 005/253. 1682.

3471. 008/49. 1693.

3472. 007/76. 1708.

3473. 026/63. 1716.

3474. 022/150. 1715.

3475. 022/180. 1715.

3476. 022/180. 1715.

3477. 023/234. 1716.

3478. 026/16. 1716.

3479. 024/332. 1717.

3480. 046/66. 1742.

3481. 047/17. 1742.

3482. 047/113-114. 1742.

3483. 048/16-17. 1743.

3484. 049/23. 1744.

3485. 046/52. 1742.

3486. 052/290. 1745.

3487. 078/17-18. 1766.

3488. 078/149-150. 1766.

3489. 084/103. 1769.

3490. 084/385-386. 1769.

3491. 060/25. 1755.

3492. 069/155. 1759.

3493. 072/321-326, 331. 1773.

3494. 066/274. 1756.

3495. 073/60-62. 1783.

3496. 051/9-17. 1744.

3497. 051/72-80. 1749.

3498. 051/42-53. 1747.

3499. 051/135-139. 1756. 051/126-130. 1756. 051/117-122. 1755.

3500. 051/18-22. 1744.

3501. 063/166-171. 1754.

3502. 051/142-144. 1759.

3503. 051/9-17. 1744. 051/99-102. 1752.

3504. 051/126-130. 1756. 051/145-149. 1758.

3505. 051/145-149. 1758.

3506. 051/72-80. 1749. 051/150-153. 1750.

3507. 048/204. 1743.

3508. 046/38. 1742. 048/91. 1743. 048/167. 1743.

3509. 059/309. 1751. 075/191. 1764.

3510. 006/55. 1687.

3511. 006/54. 1686-1687.

3512. 070/92-93. 1760.

3513. 087/229. 1763.

3514. 087/239. 1765. 072/99-104. 1764.

3515. 087/21. 1771-1772. 087/131. 1775.

3516. 087/167. 1777. 087/145. 1781.

3517. 072/16. 1761.

3518. 071/178. 1762.

3519. 087/243. 1794. 087/275-276. 1803-1804.

3520. 087/493-494. 1824. 087/619-620. 1829-1830. 087/89-90. 1799.

3521. 072/15-16. 1762.

3522. 072/15-16. 1762.

3523. 072/128-129, 133-135, 142. 1765.

3524. 072/34-35. 1762.

3525. 072/220-222. 1768.

3526. 072/27-28. 1763.

3527. J. M. Beattie, Crime and the Courts in England, 1660-1800 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986). To be verified.

3528. Calendar of State Papers Colonial, America and West Indies, vol. 24, Aug. 1708, item 94 (Gov. Crowe). To be verified.

3529. Calendar of State Papers Colonial, America and West Indies, vol. 24, Nov. 1709, item 855 (separate traders to Popple). To be verified.

3530. Richard S. Dunn, Sugar and Slaves: The Rise of the Planter Class in the English West Indies, 1624-1713 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1972). To be verified.

3531. P. C. Mancall, J. L. Rosenbloom and T. Weiss, "South Carolina Slave Prices, 1722-1809", NBER Historical Paper 123 (2000), Table 5, p. 36. To be verified.

3532. Richard B. Sheridan, "The Slave Trade to Jamaica, 1702-1808", in B. W. Higman (ed.), Trade, Government and Society in Caribbean History (1983), p. 10. To be verified.

3533. "Looking for hidden stories of slaves", Royal Gazette (Bermuda), 15 Nov. 2007 (John Dickinson inventory). To be verified.

3534. Michael J. Jarvis, In the Eye of All Trade: Bermuda, Bermudians, and the Maritime Atlantic World, 1680-1783 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2010). To be verified.

3535. J. Fourie, "The Remarkable Wealth of the Dutch Cape Colony: Measurements from Eighteenth-Century Probate Inventories", ERSA WP 268 (2012), p. 21. To be verified.

3536. J. Fourie, "Die relatiewe welvaart van die vroeë Kaapse setlaars", LitNet Akademies 9(2) (2012), Table 2, pp. 452-453. To be verified.

3537. J. Fourie, "The Remarkable Wealth of the Dutch Cape Colony: Measurements from Eighteenth-Century Probate Inventories", ERSA WP 268 (2012), p. 27. To be verified.

3538. M. D. North-Coombes, Labour Problems in the Sugar Industry of Ile de France or Mauritius 1790-1842, MA thesis, Univ. of Cape Town (1978), p. 37. To be verified.

3539. Gregory Clark, "Farm Wages and Living Standards in the Industrial Revolution: England, 1670-1850", Economic History Review 54(3) (2001), Table 5, p. 18. To be verified.

3540. T. Burnard, L. Panza and J. G. Williamson, "The Social Implications of Sugar: Living Costs, Real Incomes and Inequality in Jamaica c1774", NBER WP 23897 (2017), p. 32. To be verified.

3541. 006/11. 1673.

3542. 006/11. 1673.

3543. 006/17-18. 1677.

3544. 007/22. 1684.

3545. 005/196. 1681.

3546. 005/196. 1681.

3547. 007/11. 1682.

3548. 007/7. 1682.

3549. 019/144. 1711.

3550. 019/147. 1711.

3551. 019/147. 1711.

3552. 007/202. 1713.

3553. 002/167. 1687.

3554. 030/32. 1718.

3555. 008/146. 1718.

3556. 007/27. 1706.

3557. 007/27. 1706.

3558. 006/327. 1706.

3559. 027/41. 1717.

3560. 034/148-150. 1723.

3561. 034/153. 1723.

3562. 034/153. 1723.

3563. 033/54. 1733.

3564. 035/32. 1725.

3565. 073/142-143. 1813.

3566. 073/142-143. 1813.

3567. 073/142-143. 1813.

3568. 008/41. 1688.

3569. 008/153-155. 1719.

3570. 008/165-167. 1722.

3571. 008/233-234. 1740.

3572. 008/233-234. 1740.

3573. 008/245-246. 1743.

3574. 008/245-246. 1743.

3575. 047/118-119. 1742.

3576. 054/72. 1759. 069/34. 1759.

3577. 069/42-43. 1759.

3578. 069/42-43. 1759.

3579. 054/129-131. 1766. 078/177. 1766.

3580. 054/145-146. 1768. 085/270-272. 1770.

3581. 054/153-154. 1772. 088/395-396. 1772.

3582. 054/164-165. 1773. 089/439. 1773.

3583. 054/119-121. 1758.

3584. 054/119-121. 1758. 076/446. 1765.

3585. 054/78. 1760.

3586. 069/425-426. 1760.

3587. 054/105. 1762.

3588. 054/105. 1762. 071/183. 1762.

3589. 054/137-138. 1769.

3590. 054/137-138. 1769.

3591. 054/137-138. 1769.

3592. 084/121. 1769.

3593. 054/137-138. 1769. 084/121. 1769.

3594. 054/137-138. 1769.

3595. 054/177-178. 1774.

3596. 054/177-178. 1774.

3597. 054/262-265. 1785.

3598. 054/181-182. 1775.

3599. 054/181-182. 1775.

3600. 054/194-196. 1777.

3601. 054/200-202. 1779.

3602. 054/219-220. 1781.

3603. 054/219-220. 1781.

3604. 054/219-220. 1781.

3605. 054/220-221. 1785.

3606. 054/212-213. 1784.

3607. 054/212-213. 1784.

3608. 054/213-215. 1784.

3609. 008/216. 1744.

3610. 008/216. 1744. 049/182-183. 1744.

3611. 051/30. 1744.

3612. 077/259. 1766.

3613. 077/259. 1766.

3614. 077/259. 1766.

3615. 087/457-461. 1822.

3616. 087/603. 1828.

3617. 087/603. 1828.

3618. 054/119-121. 1758.

3619. 078/177. 1766.

3620. 087/66. 1793.

3621. 087/83. 1798.

3622. 087/84. 1798.

3623. 087/255-256. 1801.

3624. 087/255-256. 1801.

3625. 087/462-466. 1822.

3626. 087/462-466. 1822.

3627. 087/462-466. 1822. 087/469-470. 1822.

3628. 087/462-466. 1822.

3629. 087/665-668. 1832.

3630. 087/675-678. 1832-1833.

3631. 026/16. 1716.

3632. 025/17. 1716.

3633. 088/54. 1771.

3634. 052/123-129. 1745.

3635. 052/123-129. 1745.

3636. 052/123-129. 1745.

3637. 067/140-141. 1757.

3638. 067/140-141. 1757.

3639. 050/54. 1748.

3640. 057/37. 1749.

3641. 066/35. 1755.

3642. 071/349. 1763.

3643. 076/426-427. 1765.

3644. 060/27. 1756.

3645. 067/138. 1757.

3646. 079/222-223. 1769.

3647. 060/82. 1775.

3648. 060/89. 1778.

3649. 059/300. 1751.

3650. 059/383. 1751. 067/361. 1757.

3651. 090/275. 1777.

3652. 072/19-22. 1762.

3653. 072/76. 1764.

3654. 072/109, 119-121. 1765.

3655. 069/140. 1759.

3656. 085/147-148. 1770.

3657. 082/152-153. 1767.

3658. 078/176. 1766.

3659. 074/28. 1792.

3660. 074/28. 1792.

3661. 080/9. 1801.

3662. 080/7. 1800.

3663. 080/17. 1820.

3664. 087/165. 1809-1810.

3665. 073/70-71. 1787.

3666. 073/70-71. 1787.

3667. 073/118. 1802.

3668. 073/118. 1802.

3669. 006/43. 1683. 006/44-45. 1683.

3670. 006/326. 1706.

3671. 026/93. 1717.

3672. 029/103. 1717.

3673. 006/89-90. 1707.

3674. 006/89-90. 1707.

3675. 075/274. 1764.

3676. 087/267-268. 1802.

3677. 072/464. 1769.

3678. 062/51. 1753.

3679. 060/63. 1768.

3680. 060/85. 1777.

3681. 060/123. 1788.

3682. 083/322-323. 1768.

3683. 072/446-447. 1779.

3684. 086/11-12. 1770.

3685. 031/92. 1721.

3686. 044/36. 1740.

3687. 090/263-264. 1777.

3688. 046/70-71. 1742.

3689. 046/70-71. 1742.

3690. 049/70. 1744.

3691. 049/130. 1744.

3692. 061/152-155. 1751.

3693. 047/168-175. 1742.

3694. 048/209-212. 1744.

3695. 057/258. 1754.

3696. 067/399-405. 1757.

3697. 046/81. 1742.

3698. 055/361-362. 1748.

3699. 069/254-255. 1759.

3700. 006/325. 1707.

3701. 008/41. 1688.

3702. 008/135-136. 1713.

3703. 014/54. 1700.

3704. 019/98. 1710.

3705. 072/503-509. 1781.

3706. 049/266-268. 1744.

3707. 069/140. 1759.

3708. 072/461-463. 1781.

3709. 072/461-463. 1781.

3710. 074/18-19. 1781.

3711. Robert C.-H. Shell, Children of Bondage: A Social History of the Slave Society at the Cape of Good Hope, 1652-1838 (Hanover, NH: Wesleyan University Press, 1994). To be verified.

3712. Nigel Worden, Slavery in Dutch South Africa (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985). To be verified.

3713. J. Fourie, "The Remarkable Wealth of the Dutch Cape Colony: Measurements from Eighteenth-Century Probate Inventories", ERSA WP 268 (2012), p. 21. To be verified.

3714. Jerome S. Handler, The Unappropriated People: Freedmen in the Slave Society of Barbados (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1974). To be verified.

3715. Calendar of State Papers, Colonial: America and West Indies, vol. 24, August 1708, item 94. To be verified.

3716. Richard S. Dunn, Sugar and Slaves: The Rise of the Planter Class in the English West Indies, 1624-1713 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1972), p. 334. To be verified.

3717. Michael J. Jarvis, In the Eye of All Trade: Bermuda, Bermudians, and the Maritime Atlantic World, 1680-1783 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2010). To be verified.

3718. "Looking for hidden stories of slaves", Royal Gazette (Bermuda), 15 November 2007. To be verified.

3719. Paul Slack, Poverty and Policy in Tudor and Stuart England (London: Longman, 1988). To be verified.

3720. K. D. M. Snell, Annals of the Labouring Poor: Social Change and Agrarian England, 1660-1900 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985). To be verified.

3721. P. B. Munsche, Gentlemen and Poachers: The English Game Laws, 1671-1831 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981). To be verified.

3722. Gregory King, scheme for 1688, in Two Tracts, ed. G. E. Barnett (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1936). To be verified.

3723. 002/167. 1687.

3724. 057/45. 1749. 059/303. 1751.

3725. 001/21. 1673.

3726. 001/96. 1680.

3727. 001/96. 1680.

3728. 005/39. 1678.

3729. 005/196. 1681.

3730. 002/54. 1677.

3731. 006/23. 1679.

3732. 006/23. 1679.

3733. 074/21-22. 1779.

3734. 001/99. 1679.

3735. 006/51. 1687.

3736. 006/51. 1687. 004/63. 1687.

3737. 006/52. 1687. 004/64. 1687.

3738. 032/111. 1720.

3739. 007/54. 1686.

3740. 007/34-35. 1699.

3741. 007/64. 1705.

3742. 007/74. 1705.

3743. 007/241. 1718.

3744. 008/27-28. 1681.

3745. 008/27-28. 1681.

3746. 008/20-21. 1682.

3747. 008/23. 1682.

3748. 008/24-25. 1682.

3749. 008/24-25. 1682.

3750. 008/126-127. 1711.

3751. 008/41. 1688.

3752. 008/135-136. 1713.

3753. 012/91. 1693.

3754. 012/91. 1693.

3755. 007/237. 1717.

3756. 007/237. 1717.

3757. 007/237. 1717.

3758. 008/202. 1732. 051/18-22. 1744.

3759. 051/72-80. 1749.

3760. 063/175-180. 1754.

3761. 051/117-122. 1755.

3762. 051/9-17. 1744.

3763. 051/63-64. 1749.

3764. 006/47. 1683. 003/44. 1683.

3765. 006/47. 1683.

3766. 004/59. 1709.

3767. 006/48. 1683.

3768. 006/89. 1707.

3769. 006/45. 1683.

3770. 003/44. 1683.

3771. 006/47. 1683.

3772. 004/56. 1684-1707.

3773. 003/42. 1684.

3774. 006/46. 1683.

3775. 011/32. 1688.

3776. 008/55. 1696.

3777. 008/118-119. 1710.

3778. 008/137-138. 1714.

3779. 008/137-138. 1714.

3780. 007/220. 1715.

3781. 007/220. 1715.

3782. 008/180-181. 1724.

3783. 008/224-228. 1737.

3784. 048/115. 1743.

3785. 048/115. 1743.

3786. 048/115. 1743.

3787. 048/115. 1743.

3788. 048/115. 1743.

3789. 066/31-33. 1755.

3790. 072/98-100. 1764.

3791. 072/246-249. 1769.

3792. 072/307, 310-313. 1772.

3793. 072/307, 310-313. 1772.

3794. 072/368-373. 1775.

3795. 073/104-105. 1794.

3796. 006/42. 1683.

3797. 053/91-92. 1746.

3798. 068/238. 1758. 061/350. 1752.

3799. 020/404. 1714.

3800. 024/318. 1717.

3801. 031/71-78. 1721.

3802. 031/77-78. 1721.

3803. 031/74, 31/78. 1721.

3804. 031/75, 31/77-78. 1721.

3805. 009/21. 1684. 053/58. 1746.

3806. 059/220. 1751. 060/11. 1750.

3807. 060/11. 1750. 059/269. 1751.

3808. 060/15. 1752. 061/219. 1752.

3809. 060/45. 1759.

3810. 071/193. 1762. 075/130. 1763.

3811. 088/250. 1772.

3812. 053/168-170. 1746.

3813. 062/234. 1753.

3814. 062/234. 1753.

3815. 062/234. 1753.

3816. 066/25-26. 1755.

3817. 068/28. 1758.

3818. 068/28. 1758.

3819. 068/28. 1758.

3820. 026/34. 1716. 026/73. 1717.

3821. 026/34. 1716.

3822. 049/541-543. 1745.

3823. 052/10. 1745.

3824. 052/10. 1745.

3825. 052/11. 1745.

3826. 052/11. 1745.

3827. 050/14. 1745.

3828. 052/9. 1745.

3829. 052/43. 1745.

3830. 052/50-54. 1745.

3831. 052/50-54. 1745.

3832. 052/50-54. 1745.

3833. 052/100-103. 1745.

3834. 052/345. 1746. 052/359. 1746.

3835. 053/166-167. 1746.

3836. 053/168-170. 1746.

3837. 053/168-170. 1746.

3838. 053/168-170. 1746.

3839. 057/16-17. 1748.

3840. 057/16-17. 1748.

3841. 050/59-60. 1749. 057/71. 1750.

3842. 050/59-60. 1749.

3843. 050/59-60. 1749.

3844. 056/359-360. 1749.

3845. 056/362-364. 1749.

3846. 056/362-364. 1749.

3847. 056/366-367. 1749. 057/53-54. 1749.

3848. 050/88. 1750.

3849. 059/23-25. 1750.

3850. 057/84-85. 1750.

3851. 057/84-85. 1750.

3852. 057/84-85. 1750.

3853. 057/111. 1751. 059/295. 1751.

3854. 050/107-109. 1751. 057/162-163. 1752.

3855. 057/181-183. 1752.

3856. 057/181-183. 1752.

3857. 057/181-183. 1752.

3858. 057/192-194. 1752.

3859. 057/182. 1752.

3860. 057/182. 1752.

3861. 050/126. 1752.

3862. 050/127-128. 1752.

3863. 050/127-128. 1752.

3864. 050/127-128. 1752.

3865. 050/129. 1752.

3866. 057/219-220. 1753. 060/19. 1753.

3867. 062/235. 1753.

3868. 062/235. 1753.

3869. 062/235. 1753.

3870. 062/92. 1753.

3871. 050/148. 1753. 064/12. 1754.

3872. 064/12-13. 1754.

3873. 064/31. 1755. 064/27-28. 1755.

3874. 006/263-264. 1714.

3875. 026/91. 1717.

3876. 026/91. 1717.

3877. 030/263. 1719.

3878. 027/70. 1717.

3879. 057/50. 1749.

3880. 057/199-200. 1752.

3881. 060/16. 1752. 061/343. 1752.

3882. 070/145. 1761. 070/186. 1762.

3883. 079/51. 1767.

3884. 079/271-272. 1770.

3885. 085/389-390. 1770.

3886. 086/21-22. 1770.

3887. 079/275. 1771.

3888. 079/291-292. 1771.

3889. 090/125-126. 1774.

3890. 090/352. 1779. 090/353. 1779.

3891. 079/83-84. 1767.

3892. 082/317. 1768. 082/377. 1768. 082/467. 1768.

3893. 079/128-129. 1768.

3894. 079/334. 1772.

3895. 065/309. 1770. 065/329. 1771.

3896. 090/126. 1774. 060/80. 1775.

3897. 070/259. 1763.

3898. 006/289. 1706.

3899. 026/37. 1716.

3900. 062/442-443. 1754.

3901. 062/442-443. 1754.

3902. 048/90. 1743. 049/134. 1744.

3903. 068/19-21. 1757. 072/446-447. 1779.

3904. 072/394-396. 1777.

3905. 063/175-180. 1754.

3906. 061/20-21. 1751.

3907. 051/139. 1756.

3908. 050/15. 1745.

3909. 053/168-170. 1746.

3910. 050/19. 1745.

3911. 057/130. 1751. 050/116-117. 1751.

3912. 060/15. 1752.

3913. 060/43-44. 1759.

3914. 083/322-323. 1768.

3915. 072/388-389. 1777.

3916. 046/64-65. 1742. 076/410-412. 1765.

3917. 069/140. 1759.

3918. 060/12. 1750.

3919. 066/107. 1755.

3920. 068/133. 1758.

3921. 060/20. 1753.

3922. 072/30-32. 1762.

3923. 072/30-32. 1762.

3924. 059/29-42. 1750.

3925. 069/141. 1759.

3926. 061/297. 1752.

3927. 066/111. 1755.

3928. 086/11-12. 1770.

3929. 086/11-12. 1770.

3930. 072/406-407. 1778. 072/408-410. 1778.

3931. 072/411-412. 1778.

3932. 087/138-142. 1778-1779.

3933. 006/32. 1681.

3934. 006/32. 1681.

3935. 066/31-33. 1755.

3936. 066/31-33. 1755.

3937. 066/31-33. 1755.

3938. 046/81. 1742.

3939. 046/81. 1742.

3940. 046/163. 1742.

3941. 053/127. 1746.

3942. 066/193. 1755.

3943. 069/426. 1760.

3944. 063/260. 1754.

3945. 068/8-9. 1757.

3946. 068/378. 1759.

3947. 057/341. 1755.

3948. 072/30-32. 1762.

3949. 072/430-434. 1778.

3950. 073/23-25. 1768.

3951. 072/224. 1768.

3952. 072/246-249. 1769.

3953. 072/307, 310-313. 1772.

3954. 072/398-402, 407. 1777.

3955. Leonard Guelke, "Freehold Farmers and Frontier Settlers, 1657-1780", in Richard Elphick and Hermann Giliomee (eds), The Shaping of South African Society, 1652-1840 (Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 1989). To be verified.

3956. 006/51. 1687.

3957. J. Fourie, "The Remarkable Wealth of the Dutch Cape Colony: Measurements from Eighteenth-Century Probate Inventories", ERSA WP 268 (2012), p. 21. To be verified.

3958. P. de Zwart, "Real wages at the Cape of Good Hope: a long-term perspective, 1652-1912", TSEG 10(2) (2013), Table A2, p. 54. To be verified.

3959. 007/237. 1717. 051/72-80. 1749. 089/447-448. 1773.

3960. J. V. Beckett, A History of Laxton: England's Last Open-Field Village (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1989). To be verified.

3961. Joan Thirsk (ed.), The Agrarian History of England and Wales, vol. 5, 1640-1750 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984-1985). To be verified.

3962. Michael J. Jarvis, In the Eye of All Trade: Bermuda, Bermudians, and the Maritime Atlantic World, 1680-1783 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2010). To be verified.

3963. Richard H. Grove, Green Imperialism: Colonial Expansion, Tropical Island Edens and the Origins of Environmentalism, 1600-1860 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995). To be verified.

3964. 006/11. 1673.

3965. 006/11. 1673.

3966. 006/18. 1677.

3967. 006/18. 1677.

3968. 003/17. 1678.

3969. 006/47. 1683.

3970. 001/98. 1678.

3971. 005/183. 1679.

3972. 007/231. 1697.

3973. 008/22. 1682.

3974. 008/35. 1684.

3975. 008/44. 1693.

3976. 008/47-48. 1692.

3977. 011/24. 1688.

3978. 007/48. 1688.

3979. 007/28. 1690.

3980. 007/79. 1684.

3981. 007/34-35. 1699.

3982. 007/47. 1705. 007/70. 1712.

3983. 006/314. 1707.

3984. 007/18. 1700.

3985. 007/108. 1715.

3986. 007/56-57. 1694. 007/78. 1709.

3987. 007/72. 1709. 007/81. 1711.

3988. 014/16. 1699.

3989. 006/203. 1712.

3990. 006/203. 1712.

3991. 008/121-123. 1700.

3992. 008/121-123. 1700.

3993. 008/121-123. 1700.

3994. 008/121-123. 1700.

3995. 014/44. 1699.

3996. 007/73-74. 1705.

3997. 007/73-74. 1705.

3998. 007/224. 1715.

3999. 007/84. 1716. 007/85. 1716.

4000. 033/39. 1722.

4001. 033/80. 1725.

4002. 033/51-52. 1733.

4003. 033/51-52. 1733.

4004. 051/172-177. 1760.

4005. 033/37. 1722.

4006. 033/37. 1722.

4007. 061/170-171. 1751.

4008. 055/107-113. 1748.

4009. 089/113-116. 1772.

4010. 089/438-440. 1773.

4011. 007/14. 1704.

4012. 007/89. 1711.

4013. 007/89. 1711.

4014. 007/89. 1711.

4015. 007/234-235. 1717.

4016. 033/230. 1728.

4017. 033/235. 1727.

4018. 033/239. 1730.

4019. 033/249. 1731.

4020. 033/249. 1731.

4021. 042/15-16. 1737.

4022. 042/18-19. 1737. 042/16-17. 1738.

4023. 042/19-20. 1737.

4024. 042/21-22. 1737.

4025. 042/151. 1743.

4026. 039/15-16. 1738.

4027. 039/17. 1738.

4028. 039/23-24. 1738.

4029. 042/137. 1742.

4030. 046/79-80. 1742.

4031. 042/137. 1742. 058/7. 1747.

4032. 052/260. 1746.

4033. 053/192. 1746.

4034. 042/221-222. 1746. 042/224. 1746. 042/225. 1746. 042/226. 1746.

4035. 042/259. 1747.

4036. 058/33-34. 1758.

4037. 058/33-34. 1758.

4038. 058/34-35. 1758. 058/35-36. 1758.

4039. 058/148-149. 1764. 058/149-150. 1764. 058/157-158. 1764.

4040. 058/151-152. 1764. 058/153-154. 1764. 058/156-157. 1764.

4041. 084/148. 1769.

4042. 080/40-41. 1766.

4043. 080/42-43. 1767. 080/41-42. 1767.

4044. 077/184. 1765.

4045. 080/28. 1765.

4046. 080/246. 1785. 080/247. 1785. 080/252. 1786.

4047. 042/199. 1745.

4048. 066/418. 1756.

4049. 071/86. 1762.

4050. 085/284. 1770.

4051. 052/232-234. 1745.

4052. 030/87. 1719.

4053. 059/461-462. 1751.

4054. 075/418-419. 1764.

4055. 067/46-49. 1756.

4056. 067/53-56. 1756.

4057. 067/62-64. 1756.

4058. 033/48-49. 1723. 039/220-221. 1757.

4059. 051/9-17. 1744.

4060. 051/42-53. 1747.

4061. 051/42-53. 1747.

4062. 051/54-61. 1748.

4063. 051/72-80. 1749.

4064. 051/72-80. 1749.

4065. 051/93-97. 1752. 051/63-64. 1749.

4066. 051/26-29. 1746.

4067. 051/99-102. 1752.

4068. 051/112-116. 1755.

4069. 067/359. 1757.

4070. 039/220-221. 1757.

4071. 054/88-92. 1759.

4072. 089/455. 1769-1773.

4073. 039/125. 1746.

4074. 039/30-31. 1739.

4075. 039/37-38. 1739.

4076. 039/47-48. 1740.

4077. 050/11-12. 1744.

4078. 067/215-216. 1757.

4079. 039/180-181. 1753. 039/198-200. 1756.

4080. 026/80-81. 1717.

4081. 046/66-68. 1742.

4082. 046/66-68. 1742.

4083. 046/66-68. 1742.

4084. 046/66-68. 1742.

4085. 048/92. 1743.

4086. 048/33. 1743.

4087. 048/95. 1743. 048/98. 1743.

4088. 067/201. 1757.

4089. 089/368. 1773.

4090. 053/201-202. 1746.

4091. 079/289-290. 1771.

4092. 079/289-290. 1771.

4093. 083/422-423. 1769.

4094. 068/175. 1758.

4095. 054/114-115. 1764.

4096. 054/174-175. 1774.

4097. 054/189-191. 1777.

4098. 065/156-157. 1762. 065/362-363. 1774.

4099. 072/437. 1779.

4100. 049/176. 1744.

4101. 047/64. 1742.

4102. 047/64. 1742.

4103. 049/140-141. 1744.

4104. 052/318-321. 1746.

4105. 006/164. 1711.

4106. 050/11-12. 1744.

4107. 052/462-463. 1746.

4108. 065/198-199. 1763.

4109. 065/199. 1763.

4110. 090/37. 1773.

4111. 090/183. 1775.

4112. 090/183. 1775.

4113. 065/376. 1776.

4114. 065/390. 1777.

4115. 065/390. 1777.

4116. 065/390. 1777.

4117. 090/262. 1777.

4118. 090/225. 1776.

4119. 090/225. 1776.

4120. 089/367. 1773.

4121. 089/367. 1773.

4122. 090/298. 1778.

4123. 026/97. 1717.

4124. 062/221-223. 1753. 070/289-290. 1764.

4125. 084/347. 1769.

4126. 079/205-206. 1769.

4127. 049/72-73. 1742-1744.

4128. 049/32. 1744.

4129. 006/11. 1673.

4130. 006/18-19. 1677. 003/17. 1678.

4131. 006/22. 1679.

4132. 006/87-88. 1707.

4133. 009/109. 1684.

4134. 002/128. 1684.

4135. 006/153-154. 1711.

4136. 007/120. 1711.

4137. 007/227-228. 1717.

4138. 007/227-228. 1717.

4139. 022/186. 1716.

4140. 022/186. 1716.

4141. 007/230-231. 1718.

4142. 022/186. 1716. 047/39-40. 1742.

4143. 042/24-25. 1738.

4144. 067/46-49. 1756.

4145. 067/53-56. 1756. 067/62-64. 1756.

4146. 067/62-64. 1756.

4147. 006/180-182. 1712.

4148. 067/379-382. 1757.

4149. 067/379-382. 1757.

4150. 051/70-72. 1752.

4151. 051/93-97. 1752.

4152. 039/71. 1742.

4153. 039/121-122. 1745.

4154. 039/66. 1741.

4155. 039/46-47. 1740.

4156. 007/83. 1715.

4157. 083/337-338. 1768.

4158. 010/76. 1683.

4159. 003/44. 1683.

4160. 055/82. 1747. 066/273. 1756.

4161. 072/197-198. 1767.

4162. 021/114. 1716.

4163. 048/155. 1743.

4164. 049/159-162. 1744.

4165. 084/286-289. 1769.

4166. 085/282. 1770.

4167. 085/282. 1770.

4168. 085/282. 1770.

4169. 085/398. 1770.

4170. 079/258. 1770.

4171. 087/10. 1770-1771.

4172. 087/43. 1779-1790.

4173. 066/38-41. 1755.

4174. 085/208. 1770.

4175. 085/364-368. 1770.

4176. 087/345-348. 1811.

4177. 087/534-539. 1825. 087/540-544. 1825.

4178. 087/540-544. 1825.

4179. 042/137. 1742. 080/40-41. 1766. 051/9-17. 1744.

4180. 046/66-68. 1742.

4181. 051/72-80. 1749. 083/359-362. 1768.

4182. John Summerson, Georgian London (London: Pleiades Books, 1945). To be verified.

4183. 007/238-239. 1717.

4184. Gregory Clark, "Debt, Deficits, and Crowding Out: England, 1727-1840", European Review of Economic History 5(3) (2001), 403-436; paper version, Table 3, p. 37. To be verified.

4185. J. Stephenson, "Looking for work? Or looking for workers? Days and hours of work in London construction in the eighteenth century", Univ. of Oxford Discussion Papers in Economic and Social History no. 162 (2018), Table 3, p. 11. To be verified.

4186. 065/224. 1764.

4187. T. Burnard, L. Panza and J. G. Williamson, "The Social Implications of Sugar: Living Costs, Real Incomes and Inequality in Jamaica c1774", NBER WP 23897 (2017), p. 31. To be verified.

4188. Pedro L. V. Welch, Slave Society in the City: Bridgetown, Barbados, 1680-1834 (Kingston: Ian Randle, 2003). To be verified.

4189. Emma Hart, Building Charleston: Town and Society in the Eighteenth-Century British Atlantic World (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2010). To be verified.

4190. Nigel Worden, Elizabeth van Heyningen and Vivian Bickford-Smith, Cape Town: The Making of a City (Cape Town: David Philip, 1998). To be verified.

4191. P. J. Marshall, East Indian Fortunes: The British in Bengal in the Eighteenth Century (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1976). To be verified.

4192. 005/30. 1678.

4193. 006/22. 1679.

4194. 006/43. 1683. 003/40. 1683.

4195. 006/43. 1683.

4196. 006/88-89. 1707.

4197. 006/156. 1711.

4198. 006/47. 1683. 006/89. 1707.

4199. 006/51. 1687.

4200. 006/92. 1707.

4201. 007/49. 1689.

4202. 007/239-241. 1717.

4203. 015/9. 1703.

4204. 006/165. 1711.

4205. 021/160. 1716.

4206. 024/422. 1717.

4207. 053/58. 1746.

4208. 039/75-76. 1742. 052/138-141. 1745.

4209. 046/81. 1742. 053/91-92. 1746.

4210. 053/91-92. 1746.

4211. 066/122-124. 1755.

4212. 006/44-45. 1683.

4213. 003/42. 1684.

4214. 006/44-45. 1683.

4215. 006/89. 1707.

4216. 006/89. 1707.

4217. 006/44-45. 1683.

4218. 010/173. 1686.

4219. 006/48. 1683. 003/45. 1684. 004/59. 1709.

4220. 006/48. 1683.

4221. 009/21. 1684.

4222. 006/50. 1685.

4223. 004/62. 1687.

4224. 006/50. 1685.

4225. 009/276. 1685.

4226. 006/90. 1707.

4227. 013/193. 1698.

4228. 014/76. 1700.

4229. 021/160. 1716.

4230. 055/290-293. 1748.

4231. 051/141. 1752-1756.

4232. 066/357. 1756.

4233. 087/226-230. 1763.

4234. 087/232-238. 1764-1765.

4235. 087/138-142. 1778-1779.

4236. 087/148-152. 1775. 087/160-166. 1777.

4237. 087/16-20. 1771.

4238. 087/132-136. 1777-1778.

4239. 087/15. 1770.

4240. 087/208-209. 1769-1770.

4241. 087/16-20. 1771.

4242. 087/120-124. 1773.

4243. 087/126-130. 1774-1775.

4244. 087/148-152. 1775.

4245. 087/154-156. 1776.

4246. 087/132-136. 1777-1778.

4247. 087/15. 1770.

4248. 087/14. 1771.

4249. 087/156-158. 1776-1777. 087/132-136. 1777-1778.

4250. 087/14. 1771.

4251. 087/14. 1771.

4252. 087/14. 1771.

4253. 087/21. 1771-1772.

4254. 087/125. 1773-1774.

4255. 087/14. 1771.

4256. 010/20. 1683.

4257. 013/156. 1698.

4258. 052/377. 1746.

4259. 055/197. 1748. 056/66-67. 1749.

4260. 072/191. 1767.

4261. 072/343-344. 1774.

4262. 072/343-344. 1774.

4263. 072/269. 1770. 072/350. 1774.

4264. 072/197-198. 1767.

4265. 066/38-41. 1755.

4266. 048/155. 1743.

4267. 066/110. 1755.

4268. 061/157-159. 1751. 062/51. 1753.

4269. 085/363-364. 1770.

4270. 079/218-219. 1769. 084/283. 1769.

4271. 087/10. 1770-1771.

4272. 087/143-144. 1779-1780.

4273. 006/55. 1687.

4274. 006/55. 1687.

4275. 070/92-93. 1760.

4276. 087/229. 1763.

4277. 087/239. 1765.

4278. 087/21. 1771-1772.

4279. 087/131. 1775.

4280. 087/167. 1777.

4281. 087/145. 1781.

4282. 087/243. 1794.

4283. 087/51. 1795. 087/493-494. 1824.

4284. 003/42. 1684.

4285. 006/45. 1683.

4286. 006/56. 1698.

4287. 026/79. 1717.

4288. 026/85. 1717.

4289. 049/536. 1745.

4290. 050/18. 1745.

4291. 084/129-133. 1769. 084/252. 1769.

4292. 084/252. 1769.

4293. 084/277-279. 1769.

4294. 053/58. 1746.

4295. 049/531. 1745.

4296. 059/105. 1750. 062/138. 1753.

4297. 083/70-73. 1768.

4298. 084/136-138. 1769.

4299. 075/394-395. 1764.

4300. 006/44. 1683. 003/41. 1687.

4301. 003/44. 1683.

4302. 006/68. 1704.

4303. 006/157. 1711.

4304. 050/20. 1745.

4305. 049/485-486. 1745.

4306. 052/19. 1745. 061/15-16. 1751.

4307. 072/406-407. 1778.

4308. 072/408-410. 1778.

4309. 072/408-410. 1778.

4310. 072/411-412. 1778.

4311. 087/138-142. 1778-1779.

4312. 087/143-144. 1779-1780.

4313. 087/145-146. 1780-1781.

4314. 087/110-112. 1781-1783.

4315. 072/415. 1778. 072/446. 1779.

4316. 087/185-186. 1786-1787.

4317. 087/47-48. 1789.

4318. 087/26. 1791.

4319. 081/42. 1793.

4320. 087/56. 1796.

4321. 087/291-293. 1805.

4322. 087/435-438. 1821.

4323. 087/548-550. 1825.

4324. 065/61. 1757.

4325. W. R. Ward, The English Land Tax in the Eighteenth Century (London: Oxford University Press, 1953). To be verified.

4326. 087/435-438. 1821.

4327. Edmund S. Morgan, American Slavery, American Freedom: The Ordeal of Colonial Virginia (New York: W. W. Norton, 1975). To be verified.

4328. 006/48. 1683.

4329. Richard S. Dunn, Sugar and Slaves: The Rise of the Planter Class in the English West Indies, 1624-1713 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1972). To be verified.

4330. 006/44-45. 1683.

4331. Michael J. Jarvis, In the Eye of All Trade: Bermuda, Bermudians, and the Maritime Atlantic World, 1680-1783 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2010). To be verified.

4332. Board of Trade, "State of Virginia in 1721", quoted in J. Blankenbaker, Germanna History Notes, note 1050. To be verified.

4333. 087/160-166. 1777. 089/128-130. 1772.

4334. Nigel Worden, Slavery in Dutch South Africa (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985). To be verified.

4335. 046/81. 1742. 059/125. 1750.

4336. W. M. Macmillan, Bantu, Boer and Briton (1929), p. 21, quoted in Dictionary of South African English on Historical Principles, s.v. "leenings-plaats". To be verified.

4337. Aniruddha Ray, "English, The", Banglapedia. To be verified.

4338. 007/7. 1682. 007/8. 1682.

4339. 007/6. 1682.

4340. 007/6. 1682.

4341. 006/40. 1701.

4342. 006/317. 1706. 006/313. 1707.

4343. 048/145. 1743. 055/6. 1747. 062/246. 1753.

4344. 031/71-78. 1721.

4345. 031/71-78. 1721.

4346. 031/71-78. 1721.

4347. 046/160-161. 1742. 053/98-100. 1746. 061/30-32. 1751.

4348. 071/94-96. 1762. 089/128-130. 1772.

4349. 055/364-366. 1748. 089/128-130. 1772.

4350. 089/128-130. 1772.

4351. 077/64-67. 1765. 083/218-221. 1768.

4352. 026/91-92. 1717.

4353. 026/91-92. 1717.

4354. 029/91. 1717.

4355. 031/77-78. 1721.

4356. 032/83. 1721.

4357. 028/239. 1719.

4358. 026/72. 1717.

4359. 026/72. 1717.

4360. 007/161. 1713. 007/171. 1713.

4361. 007/187. 1713.

4362. 007/195. 1713. 007/175. 1713.

4363. 007/32. 1707.

4364. 031/74, 31/78. 1721.

4365. 031/75, 31/77-78. 1721.

4366. 007/223. 1714.

4367. 033/84-86. 1725.

4368. 033/11. 1730.

4369. 039/53. 1738. 039/55. 1738. 039/54. 1739. 039/58-59. 1739. 039/80. 1739.

4370. 039/54. 1739. 039/56. 1739.

4371. 039/57. 1740.

4372. 024/182. 1716.

4373. 030/17. 1719.

4374. 026/93. 1717.

4375. 026/93. 1717.

4376. 029/53. 1717.

4377. 031/128. 1721.

4378. 031/397-399. 1722.

4379. 046/160-161. 1742.

4380. 049/269-272. 1744.

4381. 049/269-272. 1744.

4382. 049/269-272. 1744.

4383. 046/72-74. 1742.

4384. 039/131-132. 1746.

4385. 039/138. 1747.

4386. 039/138. 1747. 039/136-137. 1747.

4387. 055/17-19. 1747.

4388. 057/192-194. 1752.

4389. 062/234. 1753. 066/25-26. 1755.

4390. 067/53-56. 1756.

4391. 039/205-206. 1756.

4392. 068/257. 1758.

4393. 077/64-67. 1765.

4394. 011/270. 1690.

4395. 048/171-172. 1743. 062/255-257. 1753.

4396. 039/251-252. 1756.

4397. 039/233-234. 1758. 039/252-253. 1762.

4398. 075/33-35. 1763.

4399. 084/297-300. 1769. 086/401-404. 1771.

4400. 075/274. 1764.

4401. 087/154-156. 1776.

4402. 049/269-272. 1744.

4403. 039/156-157. 1748.

4404. 039/169-170. 1751.

4405. 071/59. 1762.

4406. 075/423-425. 1764. 084/297-300. 1769.

4407. 055/364-366. 1748.

4408. 084/297-300. 1769.

4409. 051/9-17. 1744.

4410. 051/72-80. 1749.

4411. 050/21. 1745.

4412. 057/180-181. 1752.

4413. 057/180-181. 1752.

4414. 061/56-67. 1751. 077/77-97. 1765.

4415. 033/21-22. 1723. 033/22-23. 1723. 033/55. 1723.

4416. 033/103-106. 1727.

4417. 039/38-44. 1739.

4418. 046/53. 1742.

4419. 046/53. 1742.

4420. 039/84-85. 1742.

4421. 047/126-127. 1742.

4422. 047/126-127. 1742.

4423. 039/92. 1744.

4424. 042/154-155. 1743.

4425. 048/233. 1744.

4426. 075/114. 1763. 078/152. 1766.

4427. 075/121. 1763.

4428. 088/151. 1771.

4429. 088/427. 1772.

4430. 053/64-66. 1746.

4431. 053/64-66. 1746.

4432. 084/102. 1769. 085/136. 1770.

4433. 005/41. 1678.

4434. 006/160. 1711.

4435. 007/216. 1713.

4436. 007/216. 1713.

4437. 007/157. 1713.

4438. 033/84-86. 1725.

4439. 008/224-228. 1737.

4440. 008/150-151. 1719. 039/53. 1738. 039/58-59. 1739.

4441. 056/160-162. 1749.

4442. 054/119-121. 1758.

4443. 039/213-215. 1756.

4444. 057/280. 1754.

4445. 089/455. 1769-1773.

4446. 089/455. 1769-1773.

4447. 046/8. 1742.

4448. 039/148-149. 1747.

4449. 033/186-187. 1726.

4450. 046/160-161. 1742. 052/138-141. 1745. 062/255-257. 1753.

4451. 067/50-52. 1756. 071/94-96. 1762. 077/64-67. 1765. 089/128-130. 1772.

4452. 046/160-161. 1742.

4453. 075/33-35. 1763.

4454. 082/383-384. 1768.

4455. 068/319. 1758.

4456. 048/171-172. 1743. 052/138-141. 1745. 056/232-234. 1749.

4457. 063/184-186. 1754. 067/50-52. 1756. 083/218-221. 1768. 086/401-404. 1771.

4458. 075/33-35. 1763.

4459. 062/234. 1753.

4460. 075/194. 1764.

4461. 006/265-266. 1714.

4462. 046/32. 1742.

4463. 046/32-33. 1742.

4464. 046/70-71. 1742.

4465. 046/70-71. 1742.

4466. 026/15. 1716.

4467. 026/60. 1716.

4468. 077/29. 1765.

4469. 083/371-372. 1769.

4470. 056/103. 1749.

4471. 007/7. 1682.

4472. 019/147. 1711. 019/144. 1711.

4473. 026/16. 1716.

4474. 050/54. 1748.

4475. 086/11-12. 1770.

4476. 087/165. 1809-1810.

4477. 039/49-50. 1740.

4478. 039/87. 1742.

4479. 039/185-186. 1754.

4480. 074/21-22. 1779.

4481. 074/21-22. 1779.

4482. 057/135. 1751.

4483. 090/121. 1774.

4484. 079/39. 1766.

4485. 082/167. 1767.

4486. 044/36. 1740.

4487. 046/8. 1742.

4488. 061/450-451. 1752.

4489. 067/300-301. 1757.

4490. 068/19-21. 1757.

4491. 083/322-323. 1768.

4492. 090/263-264. 1777.

4493. 003/43. 1683. 003/44. 1683.

4494. 006/89-90. 1707.

4495. 062/51. 1753.

4496. 060/63. 1768.

4497. 060/85. 1777.

4498. 069/158. 1759.

4499. 071/275-276. 1763. 082/416. 1768.

4500. 072/317. 1772.

4501. 087/267-268. 1802.

4502. Gregory King, scheme for 1688, in Two Tracts, ed. G. E. Barnett (Johns Hopkins, 1936), as tabulated by the University of York History of Statistics page. To be verified.

4503. Gregory King, scheme for 1688, in Two Tracts, ed. G. E. Barnett (Johns Hopkins, 1936), as tabulated by the University of York History of Statistics page. To be verified.

4504. Joan Thirsk (ed.), The Agrarian History of England and Wales, vol. 5 (1640-1750) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984-1985). To be verified.

4505. Sir Dalby Thomas, An Historical Account of the Rise and Growth of the West-India Collonies (1690), as reported by Bristol Museums, "The plantation economy". To be verified.

4506. Richard B. Sheridan, "The Slave Trade to Jamaica, 1702-1808", in B. W. Higman (ed.), Trade, Government and Society in Caribbean History (1983), p. 8 (after Bryan Edwards). To be verified.

4507. Richard S. Dunn, Sugar and Slaves: The Rise of the Planter Class in the English West Indies, 1624-1713 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1972). To be verified.

4508. Michael J. Jarvis, In the Eye of All Trade: Bermuda, Bermudians, and the Maritime Atlantic World, 1680-1783 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2010). To be verified.

4509. J. Fourie, "The Remarkable Wealth of the Dutch Cape Colony: Measurements from Eighteenth-Century Probate Inventories", ERSA WP 268 (2012), p. 3. To be verified.

4510. J. Fourie, "Die relatiewe welvaart van die vroeë Kaapse setlaars", LitNet Akademies 9(2) (2012), Table 2, pp. 452-453. To be verified.

4511. Leonard Guelke, "Freehold Farmers and Frontier Settlers, 1657-1780", in Richard Elphick and Hermann Giliomee (eds), The Shaping of South African Society, 1652-1840 (Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 1989). To be verified.

4512. P. J. Marshall, East Indian Fortunes: The British in Bengal in the Eighteenth Century (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1976). To be verified.

4513. 006/12. 1673.

4514. 006/12. 1673.

4515. 006/12. 1673.

4516. 001/26. 1673.

4517. 006/19. 1677.

4518. 006/19. 1677.

4519. 003/17. 1678.

4520. 006/21. 1679.

4521. 006/21. 1679.

4522. 006/21. 1679. 004/26. 1709.

4523. 006/21. 1679.

4524. 006/22. 1679.

4525. 003/22. 1679.

4526. 006/43. 1683.

4527. 006/43. 1683.

4528. 006/44. 1683. 003/41. 1687.

4529. 006/47. 1683.

4530. 002/98. 1683.

4531. 006/67. 1704.

4532. 006/67. 1704. 003/82. 1709.

4533. 006/67. 1704.

4534. 006/68. 1704.

4535. 006/92-93. 1707.

4536. 003/58. 1702.

4537. 006/104. 1708.

4538. 006/126. 1710.

4539. 006/127. 1710.

4540. 006/155-156. 1711.

4541. 006/155-156. 1711. 006/157. 1711.

4542. 006/159. 1711.

4543. 019/147. 1711.

4544. 007/6. 1682.

4545. 007/43. 1707.

4546. 007/43. 1707.

4547. 007/222. 1694.

4548. 007/90. 1711. 007/100. 1711.

4549. 007/211. 1713.

4550. 007/163. 1713. 007/211. 1713.

4551. 007/86-87. 1711.

4552. 007/252-253. 1719. 007/133. 1713.

4553. 007/253-263. 1719.

4554. 033/32. 1721. 039/223. 1751-1758. 042/6-271. 1731-1748.

4555. 058/50-51. 1759. 080/249. 1785.

4556. 008/31. 1683. 054/206. 1779.

4557. 051/24. 1745. 060/11. 1750.

4558. 080/5. 1799. 080/15. 1813. 080/4. 1830.

4559. 080/9. 1801.

4560. 007/68. 1687.

4561. 007/68. 1687.

4562. 033/33. 1721.

4563. 039/225-226. 1758.

4564. 039/254-257. 1760-1761.

4565. 007/111. 1713.

4566. 039/223. 1751-1758.

4567. 007/73. 1706.

4568. 044/40. 1740.

4569. 068/225. 1758.

4570. 067/198. 1757. 069/328. 1760.

4571. 069/145. 1759.

4572. 071/59. 1762.

4573. 068/231. 1758.

4574. 085/399. 1770.

4575. 006/22. 1679. 006/44. 1683.

4576. 050/20. 1745.

4577. 049/485-486. 1745.

4578. 049/485-486. 1745.

4579. 049/485-486. 1745.

4580. 006/237-239. 1714.

4581. 006/237-239. 1714.

4582. 026/67. 1717.

4583. 049/15. 1744.

4584. 049/437-438. 1745.

4585. 049/437-438. 1745.

4586. 049/437-438. 1745. 049/445-446. 1745.

4587. 049/439. 1745.

4588. 049/475. 1745.

4589. 066/357. 1756.

4590. 084/107-108. 1769.

4591. 064/114. 1759.

4592. 070/60. 1760.

4593. 070/79-80. 1760.

4594. 064/119-120. 1760.

4595. 008/37. 1684.

4596. 008/92. 1705.

4597. 008/133. 1713. 008/143. 1716.

4598. 008/195. 1731.

4599. 049/16. 1744.

4600. 049/16. 1744.

4601. 049/17-18. 1744.

4602. 049/17-18. 1744.

4603. 049/427-428. 1745.

4604. 049/427-428. 1745.

4605. 055/438. 1748.

4606. 053/56. 1746.

4607. 052/437. 1746. 059/12. 1750. 075/130. 1763. 089/126. 1772.

4608. 052/437. 1746. 063/86. 1754.

4609. 083/346-347. 1768.

4610. 083/346-347. 1768.

4611. 060/65. 1768.

4612. 073/83. 1791.

4613. 042/141-142. 1742.

4614. 058/50-51. 1759.

4615. 033/92. 1725. 058/56. 1759.

4616. 042/117-118. 1738.

4617. 049/442. 1745.

4618. 042/147-148. 1742.

4619. 042/147-148. 1742.

4620. 042/147-148. 1742.

4621. 039/84-85. 1742.

4622. 047/126-127. 1742.

4623. 047/126-127. 1742.

4624. 039/84-85. 1742. 042/147-148. 1742. 047/126-127. 1742.

4625. 039/38-44. 1739.

4626. 039/84-85. 1742.

4627. 026/81-82. 1717.

4628. 024/422. 1717.

4629. 051/24. 1745.

4630. 080/4. 1830.

4631. 068/250-253. 1758.

4632. 069/156-158. 1759.

4633. 071/94-96. 1762. 071/175. 1762.

4634. 082/182-184. 1767.

4635. 086/401-404. 1771. 088/124. 1771.

4636. 089/128-130. 1772.

4637. 075/33-35. 1763.

4638. 065/175. 1762.

4639. 065/175. 1762.

4640. 070/232. 1763.

4641. 006/32-33. 1681.

4642. 006/32-33. 1681. 006/85. 1707.

4643. 006/52. 1687.

4644. 019/7. 1709.

4645. 019/7. 1709.

4646. 023/69. 1715.

4647. 006/197. 1712.

4648. 027/147. 1717.

4649. 035/16. 1725.

4650. 036/98-101. 1726.

4651. 036/98-101. 1726.

4652. 036/98-101. 1726.

4653. 063/171-173. 1751-1754.

4654. 063/171-173. 1751-1754.

4655. 063/171-173. 1751-1754.

4656. 063/171-173. 1751-1754.

4657. 068/381-383. 1759.

4658. 068/381-383. 1759.

4659. 049/123-124. 1744.

4660. 049/123-124. 1744.

4661. 049/29-30. 1744.

4662. 050/115. 1751.

4663. 050/115. 1751.

4664. 050/115. 1751.

4665. 052/135-136. 1745.

4666. 052/135-136. 1745.

4667. 053/198-201. 1746.

4668. 053/198-201. 1746.

4669. 053/198-201. 1746.

4670. 043/147-150. 1742.

4671. 045/43-56. 1741.

4672. 046/8. 1742.

4673. 046/8. 1742.

4674. 046/8. 1742.

4675. 046/18. 1742.

4676. 046/18. 1742.

4677. 046/25. 1742.

4678. 046/118-119. 1742.

4679. 046/65. 1742.

4680. 049/91. 1744.

4681. 049/116. 1744.

4682. 049/114. 1744.

4683. 049/34. 1744.

4684. 049/157-158. 1744.

4685. 064/114. 1759.

4686. 070/32. 1759.

4687. 064/114. 1759.

4688. 079/41. 1766.

4689. 079/61. 1767.

4690. 078/146. 1766.

4691. 079/176. 1769.

4692. 065/285-287. 1768.

4693. 086/108-111. 1771.

4694. 086/108-111. 1771.

4695. 067/457-459. 1757.

4696. 083/21-22. 1768.

4697. 077/285-286. 1766.

4698. 077/285-286. 1766.

4699. 077/285-286. 1766.

4700. 055/163. 1748.

4701. 072/259-263. 1769.

4702. 072/259-263. 1769. 079/225. 1770.

4703. 085/72. 1769.

4704. 086/132. 1771.

4705. 086/405-406. 1771.

4706. 081/134-135. 1837.

4707. 081/136. 1837.

4708. 081/147. 1837.

4709. 081/147. 1837.

4710. 081/138. 1837.

4711. 081/143. 1837. 081/149-162. 1837.

4712. F. Sheppard and V. Belcher, "The Deeds Registries of Yorkshire and Middlesex", Journal of the Society of Archivists, 6 (1980). To be verified.

4713. 006/19. 1677. 006/43. 1683.

4714. Christopher Clay, Economic Expansion and Social Change: England 1500-1700, vol. 1 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984). To be verified.

4715. Board of Trade, "State of Virginia in 1721", quoted in J. Blankenbaker, Germanna History Notes, note 1050 (comparisons, Virginia). To be verified.

4716. Papers of George Washington, Colonial Series vol. 6, "Memorandum List of Quitrents, May 1760", editorial note (comparisons, Virginia). To be verified.

4717. 046/160-161. 1742. 089/128-130. 1772.

4718. Richard S. Dunn, Sugar and Slaves: The Rise of the Planter Class in the English West Indies, 1624-1713 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1972). To be verified.

4719. Leonard Guelke, "Freehold farmers and frontier settlers, 1657-1780", in Richard Elphick and Hermann Giliomee (eds), The Shaping of South African Society, 1652-1840 (Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 1989). To be verified.

4720. 006/67. 1704.

4721. P. J. Marshall, East Indian Fortunes: The British in Bengal in the Eighteenth Century (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1976). To be verified.

4722. Philip J. Stern, The Company-State: Corporate Sovereignty and the Early Modern Foundations of the British Empire in India (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011). To be verified.

4723. 026/74-75. 1717. 046/36. 1742.

4724. 007/34-35. 1699. 026/18-19. 1716.

4725. 046/36. 1742. 057/138-140. 1751.

4726. 022/109. 1716.

4727. 075/6. 1763.

4728. 007/232-233. 1717-1718.

4729. 007/222. 1694. 007/14. 1704. 033/98. 1726.

4730. 039/92. 1744. 039/248. 1761. 039/253-254. 1762.

4731. 057/184. 1752.

4732. 063/166-171. 1754.

4733. 054/88-92. 1759. 054/203-206. 1778.

4734. 054/258-262. 1792.

4735. Gregory Clark, "Land Rental Values and the Agrarian Economy: England and Wales, 1500-1912", European Review of Economic History 6(3) (2002), 281-308, Table 8, pp. 28-29. To be verified.

4736. Gregory Clark, "Debt, Deficits, and Crowding Out: England, 1727-1840", European Review of Economic History 5(3) (2001), 403-436, Table 3, p. 37. To be verified.

4737. John Locke, Some Considerations of the Consequences of the Lowering of Interest (1691), part 3. To be verified.

4738. Bob Goshorn, "Farms in the Great Valley and Southeastern Pennsylvania in the 18th Century", Tredyffrin Easttown Historical Society History Quarterly 30(2) (1992), 53-62. To be verified.

4739. Archives of Maryland, vol. 415, Land Office and Prerogative Court Records of Colonial Maryland, p. 13, citing C. P. Gould, The Land System in Maryland 1720-1765 (1913). To be verified.

4740. P. C. Mancall, J. L. Rosenbloom and T. Weiss, "South Carolina Slave Prices, 1722-1809", NBER Historical Paper 123 (2000), Table 6, p. 37. To be verified.

4741. The Papers of George Washington, Colonial Series, vol. 6, Washington's letter of 1760 on the Clifton purchase and editorial note. To be verified.

4742. Calendar of State Papers Colonial, America and West Indies, vol. 27, May 1714, item 662. To be verified.

4743. Calendar of State Papers Colonial, America and West Indies, vol. 30, October 1717, item 156. To be verified.

4744. Calendar of State Papers Colonial, America and West Indies, vol. 24, November 1709, items 832.i and 835.i. To be verified.

4745. J. Easaw and A. Ghoshray, "On the Trend and Variability of 18th Century British Transatlantic Slave Prices", Cliodynamics 17(1) (2026), p. 120, citing R. S. Dunn, A Tale of Two Plantations (2014). To be verified.

4746. J. Fourie, "The Remarkable Wealth of the Dutch Cape Colony: Measurements from Eighteenth-Century Probate Inventories", ERSA WP 268 (2012), p. 3. To be verified.

4747. H. Clift, Archival Study: Evolution of the historic werf, Mount Happy/Jonkersdrift (Farm 1308), heritage report (2010), App. 1. To be verified.

4748. Leonard Guelke, "Freehold Farmers and Frontier Settlers, 1657-1780", in Richard Elphick and Hermann Giliomee (eds), The Shaping of South African Society, 1652-1840 (Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 1989). To be verified.

4749. Aniruddha Ray, "English, The", Banglapedia. To be verified.

4750. 007/113. 1711.

4751. 046/160-161. 1742. 050/5-6. 1744.

4752. 083/210-217. 1768.

4753. 039/75-76. 1742. 046/72-74. 1742.

4754. 052/138-141. 1745.

4755. 046/153. 1742.

4756. 046/160-161. 1742. 089/128-130. 1772.

4757. 052/138-141. 1745. 089/128-130. 1772.

4758. Gregory Clark, "Land Rental Values and the Agrarian Economy: England and Wales, 1500-1912", European Review of Economic History 6(3) (2002), 281-308, Table 8, pp. 28-29. To be verified.

4759. Calendar of State Papers Colonial, America and West Indies, vol. 30, October 1717, item 156.i. To be verified.

4760. Calendar of State Papers Colonial, America and West Indies, vol. 24, November 1709, items 827 and 829. To be verified.

4761. Bob Goshorn, "Farms in the Great Valley and Southeastern Pennsylvania in the 18th Century", Tredyffrin Easttown Historical Society History Quarterly 30(2) (1992), 53-62. To be verified.

4762. Archives of Maryland, vol. 415, Land Office and Prerogative Court Records of Colonial Maryland, p. 14. To be verified.

4763. Board of Trade, "State of Virginia in 1721", quoted in J. Blankenbaker, Germanna History Notes, note 1050. To be verified.

4764. Board of Trade, "State of Virginia in 1721", quoted in J. Blankenbaker, Germanna History Notes, note 1050. To be verified.

4765. W. M. Macmillan, Bantu, Boer and Briton (1929), p. 21, quoted in Dictionary of South African English on Historical Principles, s.v. "leenings-plaats". To be verified.

4766. M. Whiting Spilhaus, "The Story of Ryk Tulbagh", Historia (University of Pretoria), p. 172. To be verified.

4767. Leonard Guelke, "Freehold Farmers and Frontier Settlers, 1657-1780", in Richard Elphick and Hermann Giliomee (eds), The Shaping of South African Society, 1652-1840 (Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 1989). To be verified.

4768. M. D. North-Coombes, "Labour Problems in the Sugar Industry of Ile de France or Mauritius 1790-1842" (MA thesis, University of Cape Town, 1978), pp. 11-12. To be verified.

4769. Aniruddha Ray, "English, The", Banglapedia. To be verified.

4770. Royal Charter of 27 March 1668 transferring Bombay to the East India Company; see Philip J. Stern, The Company-State: Corporate Sovereignty and the Early Modern Foundations of the British Empire in India (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011). To be verified.

4771. 002/108. 1684.

4772. 006/218. 1713. 026/109. 1717.

4773. 048/204. 1743.

4774. 046/38. 1742. 048/91. 1743.

4775. 051/9-17. 1744. 051/72-80. 1749.

4776. 046/53-54. 1742. 063/175-180. 1754.

4777. Roger Ball, "Edward Colston Research Paper #1", Bristol Radical History Group (2017). To be verified.

4778. Calendar of State Papers Colonial, America and West Indies, vol. 24, August 1708, item 94. To be verified.

4779. Calendar of State Papers Colonial, America and West Indies, vol. 24, November 1709, item 855. To be verified.

4780. "Looking for hidden stories of slaves", Royal Gazette (Bermuda), 15 November 2007. To be verified.

4781. P. C. Mancall, J. L. Rosenbloom and T. Weiss, "South Carolina Slave Prices, 1722-1809", NBER Historical Paper 123 (2000), Table 5, p. 36. To be verified.

4782. Richard B. Sheridan, "The Slave Trade to Jamaica, 1702-1808", in B. W. Higman (ed.), Trade, Government and Society in Caribbean History (1983), p. 10. To be verified.

4783. J. Fourie, "The Remarkable Wealth of the Dutch Cape Colony: Measurements from Eighteenth-Century Probate Inventories", ERSA WP 268 (2012), p. 21. To be verified.

4784. M. D. North-Coombes, "Labour Problems in the Sugar Industry of Ile de France or Mauritius 1790-1842" (MA thesis, University of Cape Town, 1978), p. 37. To be verified.

4785. Aniruddha Ray, "English, The", Banglapedia. To be verified.

4786. 022/180. 1715.

4787. 046/66. 1742.

4788. T. Burnard, L. Panza and J. G. Williamson, "The Social Implications of Sugar: Living Costs, Real Incomes and Inequality in Jamaica c1774", NBER WP 23897 (2017), p. 32. To be verified.

4789. 006/268-269. 1714.

4790. 026/6. 1707.

4791. 026/16. 1716.

4792. 049/423-425. 1745.

4793. 049/423-425. 1745.

4794. 077/98-106. 1765.

4795. 076/435-436. 1765.

4796. 082/126-128. 1767.

4797. 088/54. 1771.

4798. 087/113-114. 1783-1784.

4799. Gregory Clark, "Farm Wages and Living Standards in the Industrial Revolution: England, 1670-1850", Economic History Review 54(3) (2001), 477-505, Table 5, p. 18. To be verified.

4800. J. Stephenson, "Looking for work? Or looking for workers? Days and hours of work in London construction in the eighteenth century", University of Oxford Discussion Papers in Economic and Social History no. 162 (2018), p. 4 n. 2 and p. 11. To be verified.

4801. J. Stephenson, "Looking for work? Or looking for workers? Days and hours of work in London construction in the eighteenth century", University of Oxford Discussion Papers in Economic and Social History no. 162 (2018), Table 3, p. 11. To be verified.

4802. Gabriel Thomas, An Historical and Geographical Account of ... Pensilvania (London, 1698). To be verified.

4803. Winifred B. Rothenberg, "Structural Change in the Farm Labor Force: Contract Labor in Massachusetts Agriculture, 1750-1865", in C. Goldin and H. Rockoff (eds), Strategic Factors in Nineteenth Century American Economic History (Chicago, 1992), Table 3.6. To be verified.

4804. T. Burnard, L. Panza and J. G. Williamson, "The Social Implications of Sugar: Living Costs, Real Incomes and Inequality in Jamaica c1774", NBER WP 23897 (2017), p. 31. To be verified.

4805. P. de Zwart, "Real wages at the Cape of Good Hope: a long-term perspective, 1652-1912", TSEG 10(2) (2013), 28-58, p. 39. To be verified.

4806. P. de Zwart, "Real wages at the Cape of Good Hope: a long-term perspective, 1652-1912", TSEG 10(2) (2013), 28-58, Table 1, p. 40. To be verified.

4807. S. Broadberry and B. Gupta, "Monetary and Real Aspects of the Great Divergence between Europe and Asia, 1500-1800", GEHN conference paper, Table 1, p. 21. To be verified.

4808. 051/72-80. 1749.

4809. 051/9-17. 1744. 051/42-53. 1747.

4810. 051/72-80. 1749.

4811. 079/133. 1768.

4812. Sir Dalby Thomas, An Historical Account of the Rise and Growth of the West-India Collonies (1690), as reported by Bristol Museums, "The plantation economy". To be verified.

4813. Richard B. Sheridan, "The Slave Trade to Jamaica, 1702-1808", in B. W. Higman (ed.), Trade, Government and Society in Caribbean History (1983), p. 8. To be verified.

4814. J. Fourie, "The Remarkable Wealth of the Dutch Cape Colony: Measurements from Eighteenth-Century Probate Inventories", ERSA WP 268 (2012), p. 27. To be verified.

4815. J. Fourie, "Die relatiewe welvaart van die vroeë Kaapse setlaars", LitNet Akademies 9(2) (2012), Table 2, pp. 452-453. To be verified.

4816. J. Fourie, "The Remarkable Wealth of the Dutch Cape Colony: Measurements from Eighteenth-Century Probate Inventories", ERSA WP 268 (2012), p. 27. To be verified.

4817. Gregory King, scheme for 1688, in Two Tracts, ed. G. E. Barnett (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1936), as tabulated by the University of York History of Statistics page. To be verified.

4818. P. J. Marshall, East Indian Fortunes: The British in Bengal in the Eighteenth Century (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1976). To be verified.

4819. 074/20-21. 1779.

4820. 074/21-22. 1779.

4821. Christopher Clay, Economic Expansion and Social Change: England 1500-1700, vol. 1 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984). To be verified.

4822. Michael J. Jarvis, In the Eye of All Trade: Bermuda, Bermudians, and the Maritime Atlantic World, 1680-1783 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2010). To be verified.

4823. Richard S. Dunn, Sugar and Slaves: The Rise of the Planter Class in the English West Indies, 1624-1713 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1972). To be verified.

4824. 007/113. 1711. 022/186. 1716.

4825. 071/348. 1763.

4826. 084/107-108. 1769.

4827. Christopher Clay, "Lifeleasehold in the Western Counties of England 1650-1750", Agricultural History Review 29 (1981). To be verified.

4828. Joan Thirsk (ed.), The Agrarian History of England and Wales, vol. 5, 1640-1750 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984-1985). To be verified.

4829. Leonard Guelke, "Freehold Farmers and Frontier Settlers, 1657-1780", in Richard Elphick and Hermann Giliomee (eds), The Shaping of South African Society, 1652-1840 (Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 1989). To be verified.

4830. M. D. North-Coombes, "Labour Problems in the Sugar Industry of Ile de France or Mauritius 1790-1842" (MA thesis, University of Cape Town, 1978), p. 11. To be verified.

4831. 074/32-35. 1753.

4832. 062/434. 1754.

4833. Amy Louise Erickson, Women and Property in Early Modern England (London: Routledge, 1993). To be verified.

4834. 067/395-398. 1757.

4835. 006/22. 1679.

4836. 008/150-151. 1719.

4837. 042/39-40. 1738.

4838. Amy Louise Erickson, Women and Property in Early Modern England (London: Routledge, 1993). To be verified.

4839. Lloyd Bonfield, Marriage Settlements, 1601-1740: The Adoption of the Strict Settlement (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983). To be verified.

4840. Susan Staves, Married Women's Separate Property in England, 1660-1833 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1990). To be verified.

4841. Marylynn Salmon, Women and the Law of Property in Early America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1986). To be verified.

4842. Nigel Worden, Slavery in Dutch South Africa (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985). To be verified.

4843. 008/208-209. 1734.

4844. 047/178-179. 1743.

4845. Lloyd Bonfield, Marriage Settlements, 1601-1740: The Adoption of the Strict Settlement (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983). To be verified.

4846. Richard S. Dunn, Sugar and Slaves: The Rise of the Planter Class in the English West Indies, 1624-1713 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1972). To be verified.

4847. Nigel Worden, Slavery in Dutch South Africa (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985). To be verified.

4848. Philip J. Stern, The Company-State: Corporate Sovereignty and the Early Modern Foundations of the British Empire in India (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011). To be verified.

4849. 074/6. 1762.

4850. 057/184. 1752.

4851. 057/184. 1752.

4852. 006/11. 1673.

4853. 005/44. 1679.

4854. 002/54. 1677.

4855. 003/22. 1679.

4856. 007/6. 1682. 007/11. 1682.

4857. 007/6. 1682.

4858. 007/12. 1702.

4859. 006/12. 1673.

4860. 006/19. 1677.

4861. 006/44. 1683.

4862. 006/67. 1704. 006/92-93. 1707.

4863. 007/20-21. 1683.

4864. 007/28. 1690.

4865. 007/54. 1686.

4866. 007/23. 1704. 007/23-24. 1706.

4867. 007/66-67. 1707.

4868. 008/27-28. 1681.

4869. 006/22. 1679.

4870. 001/21. 1673.

4871. 006/47. 1683.

4872. 002/108. 1684.

4873. 003/42. 1684.

4874. 008/29. 1683.

4875. 007/55-56. 1690.

4876. 006/155-156. 1711.

4877. 007/86-87. 1711.

4878. 007/90. 1711.

4879. 007/100. 1711.

4880. 007/102. 1711. 007/110-111. 1711.

4881. 007/91. 1711.

4882. 007/91. 1711.

4883. 022/186. 1716.

4884. 007/244. 1719.

4885. 052/18. 1745.

4886. 042/27-118. 1731-1748.

4887. 042/27-118. 1731-1748. 042/39-40. 1738.

4888. 042/94-95. 1738.

4889. 007/222. 1694. 007/14. 1704. 033/98. 1726.

4890. 007/149. 1719.

4891. 033/98. 1726.

4892. 039/38-44. 1739. 039/43. 1739.

4893. 039/49-50. 1740.

4894. 026/91-92. 1717.

4895. 006/179-180. 1712.

4896. 008/140-141. 1715.

4897. 008/150-151. 1719.

4898. 026/16. 1716.

4899. 026/112. 1717.

4900. 006/218. 1713. 026/109. 1717.

4901. 034/153. 1723. 035/32. 1725.

4902. 043/147-150. 1742.

4903. 047/126-127. 1742.

4904. 046/53. 1742.

4905. 046/53-54. 1742.

4906. 046/65. 1742.

4907. 039/84-85. 1742.

4908. 042/147-148. 1742. 047/126-127. 1742.

4909. 039/75-76. 1742.

4910. 046/160-161. 1742.

4911. 050/5-6. 1744.

4912. 046/160-161. 1742. 055/364-366. 1748. 061/368-371. 1752.

4913. 050/66. 1749.

4914. 049/437-438. 1745.

4915. 050/15. 1745.

4916. 052/10. 1745.

4917. 053/168-170. 1746.

4918. 050/127-128. 1752.

4919. 039/92. 1744.

4920. 039/138. 1747.

4921. 057/184. 1752.

4922. 049/427-428. 1745.

4923. 051/9-17. 1744. 051/164-166. 1760.

4924. 051/72-80. 1749.

4925. 054/35. 1748. 056/228-230. 1748-1749.

4926. 053/391. 1747.

4927. 053/391. 1747.

4928. 055/286-289. 1748.

4929. 050/63. 1749.

4930. 057/84. 1750. 059/105. 1750.

4931. 049/19-21. 1744.

4932. 051/9-17. 1744. 051/117-122. 1755.

4933. 062/255-257. 1753.

4934. 062/255-257. 1753. 067/50-52. 1756. 084/297-300. 1769. 077/64-67. 1765.

4935. 057/243-245. 1753.

4936. 062/166-167. 1753.

4937. 062/434. 1754.

4938. 057/275. 1754.

4939. 062/88-89. 1753.

4940. 069/155. 1759.

4941. 058/43-44. 1759. 058/75-76. 1759. 058/43-122. 1759.

4942. 074/6. 1762.

4943. 073/8. 1762.

4944. 070/214-215. 1763.

4945. 068/7. 1757.

4946. 083/210. 1768. 083/363. 1768.

4947. 083/210-217. 1768.

4948. 083/337-338. 1768.

4949. 079/175. 1769.

4950. 067/395-398. 1757. 084/297-300. 1769.

4951. 084/107-108. 1769.

4952. 084/107-108. 1769.

4953. 080/28. 1765. 080/28-29. 1766.

4954. 054/88-92. 1759.

4955. 039/248. 1761. 039/253-254. 1762.

4956. 081/5-6. 1766.

4957. 081/7. 1766.

4958. 065/254. 1766.

4959. 077/181-184. 1765.

4960. 078/97-98. 1766.

4961. 087/239. 1765.

4962. 068/19-21. 1757.

4963. 083/322-323. 1768.

4964. 079/271-272. 1770.

4965. 079/291-292. 1771.

4966. 090/352. 1779.

4967. 072/388-389. 1777.

4968. 072/429. 1779.

4969. 072/446-447. 1779.

4970. 072/408-410. 1778.

4971. 090/182-183. 1775.

4972. 090/268. 1777.

4973. 085/389. 1770. 086/373. 1771.

4974. 089/354. 1773. 089/361. 1773.

4975. 085/400-403. 1770. 089/128-130. 1772.

4976. 089/128-130. 1772.

4977. 080/211. 1782.

4978. 054/176-177. 1774.

4979. 054/203-206. 1778.

4980. 054/258-262. 1792.

4981. 072/307, 310-313. 1772.

4982. 072/437. 1779.

4983. 072/461-463. 1781.

4984. 081/30. 1782.

4985. 002/54. 1677.

4986. 003/22. 1679.

4987. 007/100. 1711. 007/91. 1711.

4988. 042/234-235. 1747. 053/210. 1747. 063/153. 1754.

4989. 046/153. 1742.

4990. 049/437-438. 1745.

4991. 039/75-76. 1742. 039/84-85. 1742.

4992. 007/102. 1711. 080/28-29. 1766.

4993. 052/18. 1745. 050/5-6. 1744.

4994. 046/160-161. 1742. 055/364-366. 1748. 061/368-371. 1752.

4995. 062/255-257. 1753. 067/50-52. 1756. 089/128-130. 1772.

4996. Gregory Clark, "Land Rental Values and the Agrarian Economy: England and Wales, 1500-1912", European Review of Economic History 6(3) (2002), 281-308, Table 8, pp. 28-29. To be verified.

4997. 039/75-76. 1742.

4998. Calendar of State Papers Colonial, America and West Indies, vol. 30, October 1717, item 156.i. To be verified.

4999. Calendar of State Papers Colonial, America and West Indies, vol. 24, November 1709, items 827 and 829. To be verified.

5000. 007/20-21. 1683. 007/28. 1690.

5001. 007/222. 1694. 007/14. 1704. 033/98. 1726.

5002. 039/92. 1744. 039/248. 1761. 039/253-254. 1762.

5003. 054/88-92. 1759. 054/203-206. 1778.

5004. 054/255-258. 1792. 054/258-262. 1792.

5005. Gregory Clark, "Debt, Deficits, and Crowding Out: England, 1727-1840", European Review of Economic History 5(3) (2001), 403-436, Table 3, p. 37. To be verified.

5006. P. C. Mancall, J. L. Rosenbloom and T. Weiss, "South Carolina Slave Prices, 1722-1809", NBER Historical Paper 123 (2000), Table 6, p. 37. To be verified.

5007. 006/22. 1679.

5008. 008/150-151. 1719.

5009. 054/35. 1748.

5010. Amy Louise Erickson, Women and Property in Early Modern England (London: Routledge, 1993). To be verified.

5011. 062/434. 1754.

5012. 057/275. 1754.

5013. 051/9-17. 1744. 051/117-122. 1755.

5014. 006/218. 1713. 026/109. 1717. 048/204. 1743.

5015. Calendar of State Papers Colonial, America and West Indies, vol. 24, August 1708, item 94. To be verified.

5016. 051/72-80. 1749.

5017. 062/434. 1754. 073/8. 1762. 081/5-6. 1766.

5018. 068/19-21. 1757. 072/446-447. 1779.

5019. 072/461-463. 1781.

5020. 086/401-404. 1771. 088/124. 1771.

5021. 089/128-130. 1772.

5022. 069/156-158. 1759.

5023. 056/232-234. 1749. 082/182-184. 1767.

5024. 068/250-253. 1758.

5025. 061/368-371. 1752.

5026. 049/269-272. 1744.

5027. 042/147-148. 1742. 039/84-85. 1742. 047/126-127. 1742.

5028. 006/67. 1704. 006/92-93. 1707.

5029. 003/58. 1702.

5030. 036/98-101. 1726.

5031. 053/391. 1747. 042/238. 1747. 058/6. 1749.

5032. 051/72-80. 1749. 051/9-17. 1744.

5033. 008/216. 1744.

5034. 049/182-183. 1744.

5035. 051/82-83. 1749.

5036. 051/24. 1745.

5037. William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England, vol. 1 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1765), book 1, chapter 17. To be verified.

5038. 059/134-136. 1750. 061/29-32. 1751. 061/368-371. 1752.

5039. 039/138. 1747.

5040. 062/408. 1754. 062/424-425. 1754.

5041. 068/250-253. 1758.