Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 2.djvu/269

 i2s.ii. SEPT. so, i9i6.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

Lady Dorothy prints two letters of General de Galliffet on Boulanger, written, in 1889. The two recent (1914) biographies of Paul Deroulede are singularly reticent regarding his connexion with General Boulanger and the Boulangist movement.

F. H. CHEETHAM.

LAND TENURE : AN ARTFUL STRATAGEM.

THE custom of granting leases for lives was wi-.lely prevalent during nearly three cen- turies in many parts of England, and particu- larly in the Western Counties, where down to comparatively recent days it was almost universally practised on the large estates held by the Duchy of Cornwall, the Oxford Colleges, the various bishops, and deans and chapters, as well as on those of private owners.

The only certain point about such tenancies was the obvious uncertainty of their duration, and various more or less in- genious stratagems were devised by life- holders in order artificially to prolong their tenure. Concealment of the death of the last outstanding " life" was an obvious and popular dodge ; and the baptism of successive children by the same Christian name was by no means rare, in order that if, for instance, John I., one of the lives in the lease, expired prematurely, a John II. might be forthcoming in substitution.

A still more crafty method of prolonging these leases has, however, come under my notice as having been worked, apparently unchallenged, for very many years in a Somerset manor, which formed part of the endowment of the prebend of W. in the cathedral church of S. Here, from the reign of Elizabeth onward, and perhaps from a much earlier date, the prebendary in possession was wont to lease the estate for three lives to a " lord-farmer " at a trifling reserved rent, pocketing whatever " fine " prebendal avarice could command on the occasion. The manor, comprising the whole parish save a small glebe estate, was divided from time immemorial into demesne and copyhold lands, the latter being partitioned into thirteen " livings," such at least being the number in the year 1690. By the customs of the manor each copyhold tenant was entitled to a grant for three lives, but an ingenious lord-farmer hit upon the following device for prolonging his own tenure of the estate, and incidentally turning the copyholders into rack-rent tenant*.

When a " copy " was extinguished by the death or surrender of the last " life," the lord- farmer, instead of making a fresh grant to a bona fide new tenant, proceeded to make some nominee of his own the apparent tenant, but in fact the latter was to hold the " living " in trust for the lord-farmer him- self. At judicious intervals of time the nominee would then surrender at the lord's court-baron his interest, which was forthwith regranted to a younger man, again a mere trustee. Before very many years had elapsed the whole of the copyholds became thus vested in the lord-farmer, and so long as one of the original lives for which he held the manor was in existence, he was enabled to put in as young lives as he pleased for the copyhold lands, and, being de facto the sole copyholder, could retain that portion of the estate for his heirs during possibly sixty, seventy, or eighty years after the demesne lands had passed back into the hands of the prebendary.

The plan, however dubious in its inception, was so successfully carried out that it is perhaps not unworthy of record in the pages of ' N. & Q.' H.

STATUES AND MEMORIALS IN THE BRITISH ISLES.

(See 10 S. xi., xii. ; 11 S. i.-xii. passifn; 12 S. i. 65, 243, 406 ; ii. 45, 168.)

HEBOES AND HEROINES. FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE.

London. A statue of " the Lady with the Lamp " was erected at a cost of 6,000/. in 1915. It forms one of a group of re-arranged statuary in Waterloo Place. The central position is occupied by John Bell's famous Guards' Memorial, which is flanked on the one side by the Sidney Herbert statue removed from the War Office Quadrangle, and on the other by that of Florence Nightingale. The statue is of bronze, the work of Mr. Arthur G. Walker, and represents the pioneer army nurse wearing her familiar head-dress and carrying a lamp in her right hand, while with her left hand she slight I\ irises the folds of her ample gown. The bi'se is of givy granite, and on the sides of the red granite pedestal are four bronze panels :

" On the front panel in relief, MUs Nightingale is shown amongst a group of olliri-rs and uthcr> ; on the east she is seen in a w.,nl in consultation with doctors ; on the \vr>t >hr .-ipprurs hi the centre of night probation. i~ from the training school of St. Thoma-."> Hn-pitil; and on the fourth side of the pctli-.^t.il i> pn^.-ntr.l tin- world's greatest nurse in th- iniiUt of wounded soldiers at night."