Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 20.djvu/420

Rh 402 R E N-^R E N RENNIE, JOHN (1761-1821), engineer and architect, was the son of a farmer, and was born at Phantassie, East Lothian, 7th June 1761. While attending the parish school of East Linton he had to pass the workshop of Andrew Meikle, the inventor of the thrashing machine, and evinced such a strong interest in the operations there in progress that the workmen were in the habit of lending him their tools and teaching him their various uses. In his twelfth year he left school and placed him- self under Meikle, but at the end of two years he went to a school at Dunbar, in order to obtain a more thorough knowledge of mathematics and mechanical drawing. After- wards he occasionally assisted Meikle, but before his eighteenth year he had erected several corn mills, on his own account, while in the winter months he visited Edin- burgh to attend the classes of physical science at the university. By Prof. Robison of Edinburgh he was intro- , duced to Messrs Boulton & Watt of Soho near Birming- ham, for whom in 1786 he superintended the construction , of the Albion flour mills near Blackfriars Bridge, London. It is believed that the difficulties which occurred at the Albion mills in regard to the ebb and flow of the tide first led Rennie to the study of that branch of civil engineering connected with hydraulics and hydrodynamics, in which he became so celebrated as to have no rival after the death of Smeaton. Immediately after the completion of the Albion mills Rennie's reputation was so firmly established in everything connected with mill work that he found himself in a very extensive line of business. In the con- struction of sugar mills in Jamaica and the other West Indian Islands he soon had almost a monopoly, and among other mills constructed by him in England mention may be made of the powder mill at Tunbridge, the great flour mill at Wandsworth, and the rolling and triturating mills at the Mint on Tower Hill. Wherever the machinery of his mills was impelled by steam, the engines of his friends Messrs Boulton & Watt supplied the motive power. It is, however, on his achievements as an architect and civil engineer that the fame of Rennie chiefly rests. Of the bridges connecting the banks of the Thames at London, three have been built from his designs, Southwark Bridge, in the construction of which he introduced a method of -employing cast iron which formed a new epoch in the history of bridge-building ; Waterloo Bridge, which then had no parallel for its magnitude, elegance, and solidity ; and London Bridge, on the model of Waterloo Bridge. Bridges at Leeds, Musselburgh, Kelso, Newton-Stewart, Boston, New Galloway, and numerous other places bear similar testimony to his skill and taste. His earliest canal project was that of the Crinan Canal, and following it was the Lancaster Canal, which besides other difficulties pre- sented that of an aqueduct over the Lune. His execution of these works so established his reputation that his opinion and assistance were required from all quarters in regard to similar undertakings, among others the construction of the Great Western Canal in Somersetshire, the Polbrook Canal in Cornwall, the Portsmouth Canal, and the Avon and Kennet Canal. But more important than these were his works in connexion with docks and harbours, his designs embracing the London Docks, the East and West India Docks at Blackwall, and docks at Hull, Greenock, Leith, Liverpool, and Dublin. The harbours of Queens- ferry, Berwick, Howth, Holyhead, Kingstown, Newhaven, and several others owe their security and convenience to his labours. But even these works must yield to what he executed in connexion with the Government dockyards at Portsmouth, Chatham, Sheerness, and Plymouth. One other effort of his genius falls to be mentioned, the drain- age of that vast tract of marsh-land bordering upon the rivers Trent, Witham, Welland, and Ouse which for cen- turies had baffled the skill of some of the ablest men in that department of civil engineering. Rennie'a industry was very extraordinary ; though fond of the society of his select friends and of rational conversation, he never suffered amusement of any kind to interfere with his business, which seldom engaged him less than twelve hours and frequently fifteen in the day. His conversation was always amusing and instructive. In person he was of great stature and strength ; and his noble bust by Chantrey, when exhibited in Somerset House, obtained the name of Jupiter Tonans. He died 16th October 1821. His son SIR JOHN RENNIE (born August 30, 1794, died Sept. 1874) succeeded him as engineer to the Admiralty, and acquired a high reputation in the same line of business as his father. On the completion of the London Bridge from his father's designs in 1831, he received the honour of knighthood. He was the author of The Theory, Formation, and Construction of British and Foreign Harbours, 4 vols., 1851-54. RENT is classed in English law as an incorporeal heredi- tament, that is, a profit issuing out, of a corporeal heredi- tament (see REAL ESTATE). A rent issuing but of an incorporeal hereditament can only be possessed by the crown, or by a subject under statutory authority. Rent is said to lie in render, as distinguished from profits a prendre in general, which are said to lie in prender. At the present day rent is generally a sum of money paid for the occupa- tion of land. It is important to notice that this concep- tion of rent is attained at a comparatively late period of history. The earliest rent seems to have been a form of personal service, generally labour on the land, and was- at the same time fixed by custom. The exaction of a com- petition or rack rent beyond that limited by custom was, if one may judge from the old Brehon law of Ireland, due to the presence upon the land of strangers in blood, probably at first outcasts from some other group. 1 The strict feudal theory of rent admitted labour on the lord's land as a lower form, and at the same time developed the military service due to the crown or a lord as a, higher form. Rent service is at once the oldest and the most dignified kind of existing rent. It is the only one to which the power of distress attaches at common law, giving the landlord a preferential right over other creditors exercisable without judicial authority (see DISTRESS). In course of time the increasing importance of socage tenure, arising in part from the convenience of paying a certain amount, whether in money or kind, rather than comparatively uncertain ser- vices, led to the gradual evolution of the modern view of rent as a sum due by contract between two independent persons. At the same time the primitive feeling which regarded the position of landlord and tenant from a social rather than a commercial point of view is still of importance. Rents as they now exist in England are divided into three great classes rent service, rent charge, and rent seek. A rent service is so called because by it a tenure by means of service is created between the landlord and the tenant. The service is now represented by fealty, and is nothing more than nominal. Rent service is said to be incident to the reversion, that is, a grant of the reversion carries the rent with it (see REMAINDER). A power of distress is incident at common law to this form of rent. Copyhold rents and rents reserved on lease fall into this class. A rent charge is a grant of an annual sum payable out of lands in which the grantor has an estate. It may be in fee, in tail, for life, or for years. It must be created by deed or will, and may be either at common law or under the Statute of Uses. The grantor has no reversion, and the grantee has at common law no power of distress. 1 "The three rents, viz., rack rent from a person of a strange tribe, a fair rent from one of the tribe, and the stipulated rent which is paid equally by the tribe and the strange tribe." Senchua Mor, p. 159, cited by Maine, Village Communities, p. 180.