READY FOR EMIGRATION.
McMahon sub-let it to poorer men, and they so improved it that, fourteen years later, the same land was let for one thousand five hundred pounds, and in 1636 thirty-eight tenants were compelled to pay a rental of two thousand and twenty-three pounds.
Under the strong hands of the original owners, the robbed peasantry, who found themselves tenants on their own lands, this piece of property was mounting up in value very rapidly.
The Earl of Essex died in 1636 A.D. “His” estate went to his sisters. There is in English families always somebody to inherit, and in case there should not be, the Crown steps in and takes it, that the proceeds of the robbery may not go out of the race. The two sisters married and had children, of course, and in 1690, when the two came together to divide their plunder, it was found that the rentals had risen to twenty-six hundred and twenty-six pounds. Then the rents began to be put up so as to produce something like.
The two daughters had children to be educated and provided for, marriages were getting to be common in the family, and the debts of the youngsters had to be paid. And so in 1769 this estate, which started so modestly at two hundred and fifty pounds, yielded eight thousand pounds.