Catalogue description Lease from feoffees to Joh. Reading. baker, in consideration of repairs towards which...

Lease from feoffees to Joh. Reading. baker, in consideration of repairs towards which the feoffees have granted him £24, of a tenement containing 3 bays and 2 closes called Skynnard's, lying near Bell Green, late in occupation of Joh. Nicholls, with power reserved to feoffees to dig for coals, etc., for 21 years at £10 a year with £3 an acre of last 4 years of tillage.

Sign. and seal of Joh. Reading. Witn., Ric. Drayton, Geo. Fox.

These George II. deeds contain many points of minor interest.

The landlord (DR429/300) is seen making provision for the dressing of the ground during the last years of the lease, and guarding against the method of "farming to leave," i.e., allowing the condition of the land to deteriorate before the expiation of a lease. Where the "town" of Salop (DR429/301a) may be passes my knowledge, though everyone is familiar with the county of that name. Perhaps some rander of the "Herald" may have suggestions to offer. Another name, which I have never been able to fathom, recalls at any rate a famous place in Shropshire. Where is Saran (? Sarum). The registers of Trinity record the burial on June 13, 1634, of "Richard [lot], of Saran, being drowned." A "cordwainer" (Pr., Cordonnier, DR429/300, 305) or shoemaker derived his calling's name from the use of the leather of Cordova in Spain, while "perukemaker" (DR429/308B.) recalls the freak of seventeenth-eighteenth century fashion which forbade a man to appear in fashionable circles