MOORE RENTAL—ISLE OF MAN—BERESFORD HOPE’S REMARKS—EXPRESSION IN ARCHITECTURE—REMARKS BY GODWIN—CONTRACT FOR BUILDING ST. MARY’S CHURCH, CHESTER—GENERAL PRINCIPLES—GREEK ARCHITECTURE—CONCLUSION.
THERE are some curious memoranda in a work called the “Moore Rental,” that will throw much light upon the way in which streets were built, and the license allowed to tenants. Sir Edward Moore owned a large property on the north side of Liverpool, and this was sold to the Earl of Derby for the small sum of £12,000. The annual rental is many times that sum in the present day. The date of the “Rental” is 1667, and it is marked by singular candour and simplicity. Extracts only can be given. It is addressed to his son:
“Old Hall Street.—Make your leases according to my new leases in Moore Street, without boons, otherwise they will not build. Be careful of the clause to grind at your mill, it is a great thing to your estate, and see your tenants observe it well.
“Take this notice from me, what you expect your tenants to do let them be well bound in their leases, otherwise riches and pride is so predominant over them in this town, together with a perfect antipathy they have against all gentlemen—much more your family, in regard you know your interest is always to curb them. I know this by experience, that they are the most perfidious knaves to their landlords in all England, therefore I charge you never to trust them.
“Water Street.—Anne Young. She is dead, and her grandchild enjoys the house, whose father, by name Baly March, is a notorious knave, and her husband, one Rob Prenton, as bad, etc.
“Mrs. Baly Owen. She hath besides this house two houses more, one in Chapel Street and the other in Moore Street. You must never expect anything to the value of a farthing from her, but what is for her own ends.
“Castle Street.—Mr. William Bushell. Remember the west end of the back side belonging to this house in the Castle Street reaches to the Fenwick Street near the bridge, upon which Mr. Bushell is to build a good house of stone, answering to the length for height and other things, as doors, boarded floors, windows, and slates, sample to his own house near the post and chains, wherein now Captain Nixon doth dwell.
“Pool Lane.—Buy if possible Baly Blundell’s, and the field betwixt it and the More Street. If you have it you might pull down your house Mr. Allcocke built me on the Castle Hill, and there have a brave coming of the street end out toward the castle, and you might pull down the west end of Thomas Norbury’s in the More Street, and so make a most convenient passage to More Street. This field is most convenient to you of any man in England, in regard of your land lying about as it doth.”
He further advises his son and heir to keep “Castle Street field” locked up, as it is only “a passage on sufferance;” and he says he was “at the great charge of setting posts and ribbing them all over with iron, and fixing these two great iron chains, the which I usually on all occasions keep locked,” etc. The cause of this, he says, was that Captain Fazakerly of the Castle had many hundred loads of coals brought that way, and he was resolved to prevent his making it a highway; and he very candidly adds—“Have in mind likewise that these chains and posts usually upon Sundays and holidays, and rain weather; keeping them locked reserves the right in those streets solely and entire to you and your heirs, so that a hundred years hence, if you please, you may make gates, or what other use you please, as usually you do your own enclosed land, and to hinder all but whom you please from going thereaways. The reason I am so strict is two, the first that carts may not always break the streets to the great charge of my tenants, but those that carts, make them pay yearly towards paving them, as many places in England doth, nay this very town of Leverpole, by a late order, makes all country carts pay twopence a load towards paving the streets, and if they can make such an order of the king’s highway, I hope I may either make such carts who come thereaway pay, or make them go some other way.” Sir Edward then tells his heir that he must be very particular in dealing with his streets in all transactions with the town of Liverpool. The thoroughfares are his, he says, yet he sadly remarks that all the streets but his are “paved out of the town’s box.” Perhaps Sir Edward was not quite so affable as he might have been, and hardly of such a conciliatory nature as even his own interests would have suggested. Little love seems to have been lost between him and the townspeople, and there is at least no uncertainty in the way he apprises his son of this circumstance. “I find, in whatsoever lies within the town’s liberty, they are a thousand times more strict than any gentleman; and forthwith a jury of hot fellows fines you daily and hourly, either for some encroachment, the streets being dirty or not paved, and a hundred odd simple things more than I can relate here. But keeping your own interest as before expressed, you need not fear their fines or amercements. There is no favour or civility to be had from a multitude. Let my sad experience forewarn you never to trust them, for if you do, I dare pawn my life they deceive you. Read Alderman Andow’s character, and some others I have set down, and then seriously consider it.”
The tenures on which property was built and held are curiously set forth in these strange directions. The term “setting” a house, which continually occurs in the Moore rental, is quite in common use in the northern parts of England, where indeed it is more frequent than “letting” a house.