IHR seminar 4th October, 2021

 

Late in the afternoon last Monday (4^th October, 2021), I sat in on the Institute of Historical Research's Tudor and Stuart seminar. The paper was given by William Deringer of the Mssachusetts Institute of Technology on the subject of the development of mathematical tables for calculating the appropriate levels for entry fines and rents on church properties, mainly in the diocese of Durham, in the period after 1600.  I was puzzled by several aspects of his argument, partly, for example, by his citation of R.H.Tawney and Lawrence Stone as authorities on leasing practices in England in the early modern period and by his belief that rack-renting was possible when leases of 21 or more years were granted. There were other features of leasing – the use of provision rents on ecclesiastical and secular properties down to c.1600, leases that allowed tenants to receive profits from manorial courts rather than these being received by landlords, the difficulties faced by landlords and tenants in anticipating economic returns over a significant number of years – which he, perhaps, was not aware of or might not have reflected upon in preparing his paper. There were also the larger questions of the degree of continuity amongst the tenantry on large estates and the propensity of clerical families to aim for very long leases to protect the future economic fortunes of family members. I doubted than and doubt now whether these mathematical tables were used by lay landlords: if they were, I have not come across them. I had wanted to ask questions on these issues but was forestalled by the intervention of Richard W.Hoyle of the University of Reading.