Crown Lands.

These constitute the remains of the ancient patrimony of the sovereign, originally intended to maintain the dignity and defray the expense of the executive government. Formerly, the kings of England, as of other European states, were supported from the soil, and not by the system of revenue which has been organized in latter times. Manufactures and commerce were almost unknown; of money there was little, and scarcely any imposts. Gradually kings found out the means of supplying their wants by loading their subjects with taxes, which rendered the revenue derived from their private domains of less importance; and hence, contemporaneously with the progress of fiscal oppression, we may date the neglect and alienation of the hereditary revenues. The chief remains of these possessions are the crown lands, consisting of parks, forests, chases, manors, fisheries, and royalties; extensive estates, numerous church livings, fee-farm-rents, light-house dues, mines of coal, tin, and copper. The property is situate in almost every part of the kingdom, but principally in the metropolis and vicinity; much of it is in Wales; and there are extensive estates in Ireland. The history and management of these royal endowments, their subserviency to political purposes, and their present state and value, we shall shortly describe. It is a subject of much novelty, and one with which even public men have not taken great pains to be informed. Our information is mainly derived from the Reports of the Commissioners of Woods and Forests, from a publication entitled, “Observations on the landed Revenue of the Crown,” written by a nephew of the celebrated Viscount Bolingbroke, and from the able speech in the session of 1830, of Mr. D. W. Harvey, the member for Colchester.

William, of Normandy, possessed a landed revenue of £400,000 a-year. From that period the territorial income of the sovereign declined, till the reign of Henry VIII., when, by the sequestration of the wealth of the religious houses, it was again augmented. The public revenue of Queen Elizabeth amounted only to £500,000, of which £132,000 was the produce of the crown estates. During the Commonwealth a commission was appointed by Cromwell to ascertain the extent of the crown lands throughout the kingdom; and, though the disturbed state of the country, and the jealousy with which the new government was regarded, did not afford him an opportunity of making that property produce as much as it would have done in more tranquil times, yet he disposed of crown property to the amount of two millions sterling. In Cornwall there were 52 honours, manors, and estates belonging to the Crown, of which Cromwell disposed of five or six; but only three or four of the whole number are now remaining in the hands of government. These alienations by the Protector were, after the restoration, made subservient to a system of royal favour and proscription. Those who were artful enough to seize the proper moment for apostatizing from republicanism to royalty were never disturbed in their purchases; while others, who were either too tenacious of their principles, or had committed themselves too deeply by the part they took in the civil war, were compelled to surrender the crown property. Neither Chares II. nor James II. could resist the solicitations of rapacious courtiers, and the hereditary estates were leased, for long terms, to the great families at almost nominal rents.

But the greatest inroads on the crown estates were committed about the era of the Revolution of 1688. Such was the rapacity of the patriots of those days, and their ingenuity in devising new taxes to defray the royal expenditure, that William III. was induced to grant nearly the whole of the crown estates to his supporters in parliament. One family, that of Portland, obtained a grant of five-sixths of the whole county of Denbigh. In the next reign a compact was, for the first time, entered into between the sovereign and the people, by which a civil list amounting to nearly £700,000 was given to Queen Anne, as a commutation for the land and other revenues enjoyed by her predecessors; and the preamble of the Act is worthy of notice, for its object was stated to be “to defray part of the expense of government, and lessen the burthen on the subject by means of the preservation and improvement of the crown lands.” How public burthens have been lessened by this and subsequent engagements with the sovereign for a civil list will be strikingly illustrated in the sequel. For the present let us continue our narrative.

In the agreement with Queen Anne, it was settled that no crown estate should be leased at a rent less than one-third of its clear annual value; the remaining two-thirds being left to the disposal of ministers, who thereby were enabled to benefit their friends. Indeed, they often neglected the injunction of the statute, by granting long leases at a rent of a mark, 6s. 8d., 13s. 4d. or other nominal consideration. These abuses afforded a pretext to Shippen, Lockhart, and other members, disappointed in not being permitted a share in the spoil, for introducing a bill, the object of which was the resumption of the crown property obtained by the heroes of the glorious Revolution. The bill passed the Commons, but found its grave among the delinquents it was meant to reach, and where many similar acts of utility have been entombed.

From this period nothing more was heard of the crown lands till the accession of George III.; when it was settled that no lease of them should be granted for less than one-eighth of their annual value; the other seven-eighths to be taken in fines. Such, however, was the profligacy of ministers, that they first let the land almost for nothing, and, after taking an estimate of it at that rate, sold it for nothing. Thus an estate that was worth £5,000, was leased at a rent of £10, and afterwards sold for £200. An estate, comprising the whole of Piccadilly from Park-lane to Swallow-street, together with all the back lanes, was absolutely sold to the Pulteney family, six years after a lease had been granted at the rent of £12 : 16 : 10. for £500. This lease is now nearly expired. The fine park of Bowood, in Wiltshire, after being leased at £30 a-year, was sold for £468 : 10. The manor of Spalding, of the annual value of £4,000, which, after being held by the trustees of the Earl of Dalkeith for no consideration at all, was leased to the Duke of Buccleuch at £5 per annum, and afterwards entirely severed from the crown without any inquiry whatever. In Yorkshire, the estate of Seaton, and another place, together with the alum-works, were sold to Lord Mulgrave for £27,000, the annual value of which was £2,296, including the alum-works, estimated at £20,000. It does not appear what became of the proceeds of the sale, except that they were paid into the Treasury; they may remain there still, but it is certain they have never been applied to any known public purpose. An estate, forfeited by the Earl of Derwentwater, worth £9,000 per annum, was sold to two of the Commissioners of Woods and Forests for £1,000. This was too gross to escape, and two members of the “Collective Wisdom,” having dabbled in the transaction, were expelled, and two others reprimanded. It is difficult to say whether the Whigs or Tories sported most in these land jobs, but the Whigs had certainly the best of it in the reigns of William III. and the two first princes of the Hanover family.

In 1770 the manor of Newark was granted to the Duke of Newcastle, first Lord of the Treasury, and a nobleman, according to the testimony of the first Earl of Chatham, much addicted to mendacity. The rent reserved on this grant to the Pelhams was £482, and according to law the fine should have been £3374, instead of which only £200 was paid. The lease was renewed by Lord Granville, in 1806, for a term of thirty years, at a rent of £2000; the property now consists of 960 acres, covered with dwellings, tolls of bridges, fisheries, and markets, and yields to the proprietor £4000 a-year; and were it let, without reference to electioneering purposes, would yield £7000 a-year. But the great object of the crown-lessee is to maintain his political influence in the borough; for which purpose this property is under-let in small portions to yearly tenants, who are thus constrained to vote for any person the Duke of Newcastle thinks fit to nominate. A striking illustration of the Duke’s influence was afforded in the year 1829. Sir W. H. Clinton, differing in opinion with the noble boroughmonger, on the Catholic question, he was compelled to resign his seat for Newark; when his lordship, forthwith, posted down Mr. Sadler as the retiring member’s accredited successor. Some of the inhabitants, not liking the idea of a total stranger being crammed down their throats so unceremoniously, rebelled against their lord, voting for Mr. Sergeant Wilde, the opponent of the duke’s nominee. This was not to be borne: immediately after the election notices of ejectment were served on the rebels; the duke justifying his vindictive proceeding on the tyrant’s plea—that he had a right to do “what he pleased with his own;” affording a practical commentary of the vast utility of the constitutional maxim, which declares it to be a “high infringement upon the liberties of the people for any peer to concern himself in the election of members of the House of Commons.”

Leaving the noble trader in boroughs, we shall proceed with others. In Lincoln, there was a crown estate valued at £937, let to Sir W. G. Guise, at £37 a year, as a means of political corruption. The estate of Rosedale, in the mountain recesses of Yorkshire, was held by forty tenants, whose leases expired in 1816, and have since held, from year to year, to the great deterioration of the land. Instead of dividing this property to suit the tenants, many of whom would have been purchasers, it was put up in one lot, on the last day of December, when the ground was covered with snow. The reserved bid was £70,000; only £37,000 was offered. These reserved bids are injurious, for they prevent competitors from coming forward. Property at Esham was let to Sir John Shaw for £3920: the crown lessee put it up to sale in lots, and obtained biddings to the amount of £25,000 and upwards: this, it must be observed, was during the excitement produced by paper-money and war prices. In 1815 a lease was granted to Sir John Throgmorton, at a rent of £115, of property of which the estimated value, upon oath, was £1104. Another property of great importance, called Sunk Island, had been lately rescued from the sea. In the report of the commissioners it is described as a parcel of sandy land, at the mouth of the river Humber. From 1771, it was leased for thirty-one years. In 1802, another lease was granted for thirty-one years, at a rent of £700 for the first year, £2000 for the second, and for the remainder of the term £3100. In the second year of his lease the tenant went to an expense of £10,000, in making banks and in other improvements, and the estate is now let by him for £10,000 a-year. The Reverend John Lonsdale is the crownlessee, and, apparently, a good judge in land speculations. This estate consists of 6000 acres of the finest soil in the kingdom, tithe free, and worth fifty shillings an acre. In 1812, freehold estates to the amount of £1084 of yearly value were sold at twenty years’ purchase; the manor of Eltham, with royalties, lands, &c. for £569; King’s Cliffe £148; the manor of the Chapter of Beverley, with all rights, courts, demesnes, and tenements belonging, for £224; and part of the race-course of Newmarket for £154. All these were sold at twenty years’ purchase, the land-tax having been previously bought by the Crown at thirty-nine years’ purchase from itself, and sold again at twenty years’ purchase. It is needless to remark that manors are highly desirable investments; with courts and royalties annexed, they give a local distinction and importance to the purchasers.

We shall next enter the domain of Woods and Forests, abounding with similar examples of waste and mismanagement as those already cited. Here, again, we meet with the Duke of Newcastle. A broad riding-way was cut for his Grace through Sherwood-forest: the timber cut down was given to his lordship, and the pailing raised at each side of the way was charged to the public at £1787. Another nobleman had a right of pasturage for one horse, in Wolmar-forest, and, for the pasturage of this single horse, not less than 450 acres of forest-land were appropriated. Rockingham-forest and an estate adjoining were let to Lord Westmoreland at less than one farthing an acre! The interests of the crown in this property were valued, so long ago as 1704, at £50,000; they were bought, by Lord Westmoreland, for £10,038, in 1796, though the money was not all paid till 1809. With so much indulgence and profuse generosity is it surprising the crown lands have contributed so little to relieve public burthens? Sherwood-forest contains 95,000 acres, and, from 1761 to 1786, the disbursements for management exceeded the receipts by £9037. Some trees, which were blown down in the forest, were valued at £2457; but the produce was only £850, the rest being expended in fees and allowances to officers. In the forest of Littlewood there were 5424 acres, and not less than seventy officers. During the last-mentioned period the receipts for the crown property, in Wales, amounted to £123,717; the expense of management to £124,466; so that the exchequer was minus, by the principality, £749!

Very inadequate considerations appear to have been received for the leases of houses in the metropolis. In 1815, there were no less than thirty-one houses, in Piccadilly and the neighbourhood, let for £125 a-year, a property which, in 1786, was valued at £600, and must now be worth many thousands. Nineteen houses were let in Holborn, near the Turnstile, for £564 and £100 premium, which were worth at least from £100 to £130 each. In the Spring-garden-terrace were three messuages, well worth £200 each, all let for £200 and a fine of £500. Other houses, in Piccadilly and Pall Mall, have been disposed of on terms equally low; the rents must be merely nominal, nothing like what the houses are really worth. A house, No. 17, Charles-street, has been let, upon a thirty years’ lease, at £110 a-year. Within a month after the completion of the lease, the tenant let it for £230 a-year; thus clearing more than cent. per cent. by his speculation. The ground-rents of the Crown, in London, produced, last year, £105,000. Reckoning, with the late Mr. Huskisson, the buildings at only five times the value of the ground-rents, the rental of the Crown, when the leases fall in, will be £525,000. What a means of influence in the capital! what accommodation it enables ministers to afford their friends and supporters!

Indeed, it is important to remark who are the tenants of the crown property. Mr. Harvey justly observed that it presented a source of corruption sufficient to contaminate any parliament, and pervert its members to any purpose. Most of the parties involved in the preceding transactions were peers of the realm or members of parliament. Out of four hundred and eight tenants to the rental of £200,000 a year, in 1786, upwards of two hundred were men of title. Among them were the Duke of St. Alban’s, Earl Bathurst, Viscount Bacon, the Duke of Gloucester, the Duke of Newcastle, the Earl of Lichfield, and many other noble lords; for, to speak truth, they were as “thick as the peerage could make them.” It cannot be supposed these great personages would condescend to the humble office of land-jobbers, unless something very substantial was to be gained by it. It is not unusual for peers of parliament and honourable members to take leases of the crown-estates at a low consideration, and then re-let them to sub-tenants at exorbitant rents; but it is not likely they would submit to the trouble and degradation of acting as middle-men, unless the profit was really magnificent.

We must now turn over another leaf. It has been seen on what very low terms Messieurs the Commissioners let and sold the crown lands; we shall, per contra, show how very lavish they have been when they had any thing to buy,—a residence, for instance, for a brother placeman, or a piece of church-patronage, or a parcel of land to round off the parks, or to improve the view from the palaces, or the unfinished house of an insolvent prince, or a needy peer. Whether they had authority so to apply the proceeds of the land-revenues may be doubted, but that they have done so is certain, and here follows a brief chronicle of a few of their performances.

Within a short distance of Virginia Water was a public-house, the Wheat Sheaf; to remove this vulgarity from the favourite resort of the late king it was bought for £5000, and let to Ramsbottom, the brewer, and a M. P. for £50. At Egham, premises were bought for £1100, for which no person, when they were offered for sale, would give £500. The sum of £21,000 was paid for Mote-park. The house of Lord de Clifford, in Spring-gardens, was bought for £4000 for an auditor’s office, while the government was letting houses of their own in the same place, and equally fit for the purpose, at £100 a year. In Pimlico, £26,000 was paid for premises to enlarge the mews. In Windsor, a house was purchased from the Honourable John Coventry for £7000, and sold afterwards to the Honourable Mr. Westenra for £6000. A sum of £56,566 was lent to the Duke of York to build a house. Government bought it for £81,000, and sold it again to the Marquis of Stafford for £72,000. In 1805, the Black Bear, in Piccadilly, was let under the Crown at a rent of £108; but it became desirable to resume the premises, and the interest of the lessee was valued at £3000. In 1809, the Duke of Richmond disposed of a house to the commissioners for £5000; but they took the precaution of saying to his Grace, you must give us back £700 of this for damage done in 1791, and so the sum paid was reduced, in this way, to £4300. The perpetual advowson of the rectory of St. Mary-le-bone was bought of the Duke of Portland for the sum of £40,000. According to the explanation of Lord Bentinck, his father accepted this diminutive consideration rather than the living should fall into “bad hands,”—the Dissenters, who had offered a larger sum. The bargain has not been very advantageous to the public. The expenses incurred in one year subsequent to the purchase were £10,000. The receipt from pews was only £800, and the rector was paid £2000 a year. But an important object was gained by this contract. Ministers secured the ecclesiastical patronage of one of the largest and richest parishes in the metropolis.

Having given specific examples of the management of crown property, and the purposes to which it has been applied, we shall next advert to the general income and expenditure arising from this source.

The property in Ireland has scarcely yet been noticed. It is of the same description as that in England, consisting of estates, composition-rents, quit-rents, and rents of plus acres. The gross proceeds from these sources, in 1796, were £61,340. Since then part has been sold, leaving the Irish rental in 1829, £56,354.

The average receipts from the crown lands in both kingdoms, from 1793 to 1829, has been £560,000 per annum. Of this income a very small portion indeed has been available to the public service. In the last three years £1,500,000 was received, and not a single farthing was paid into the Exchequer. During the whole term of twenty-six years only £234,000 has reached the Treasury, the remaining balance of upwards of fourteen millions having been expended in the notable bargains of the commissioners already mentioned, in metropolitan improvements, on the royal parks and palaces, in pensions and compensations, and in the salaries of officers and charges of management.

The average expenditure in the three years 1827, 1828, 1829, in the collection of rents, law expenses, and other charges, was £169,020, being, within a trifle, 20 per cent. on the entire produce of the crown lands. The office of Woods and Forests, including salaries of commissioners, clerks, &c. costs upwards of £18,000; in addition to which £6000 and more is annually paid for law charges, and to auditors and assistants. But the greatest and most objectionable objects of disbursement have been the parks and palaces. The total of the ordinary expenditure on St. James’s and Hyde Parks, Richmond, Hampton-court, Bushy, Greenwich, and Windsor Parks, was, in 1826, £48,810. In 1827, the expenditure, ordinary and extraordinary, amounted to £92,200. In 1828 it was £116,143. The sums lavished on the palaces have been really prodigious. For the repairs and alterations of Windsor Castle £771,000 has been granted, and still unfinished. £270,670 has been expended in furniture for the castle, and £10,000 more is required. Of the sum expended £1768 was for kitchen furniture. The total expenditure on the castle in furniture and building is estimated to amount to £1,084,170. The estimated expense of repairing and improving that ill-situated pile, Buckingham-Palace, was £432,926; but this did not include the expense of the sculpture of a marble archway, alone, to cost £35,000, and the commission of architects and clerks, amounting to £63,243 more. Lord Duncannon, this session, required £78,750 additional, to complete this monstrous undertaking, which does not include the charge for furnishing the palace.

The formation of Regent-street was estimated to cost £368,000. From first to last it has cost £1,833,000. The rents of the houses do not exceed £36,000, being under 2 per cent. per annum on the outlay. Had not this undertaking been left to the management of Mr. Nash, it might, by this time, have produced three or four times the present rental. The Charing-cross improvements were estimated to cost £850,000, they have already cost £1,147,000. The Strand improvements are estimated to cost £748,000, but Mr. Arbuthnot now admits there will be an exceeding on this estimate of £95,000.

With the purpose of the street-improvements no fault can be justly found. Some of them already are, and others no doubt will be, both useful and ornamental to the Metropolis; and if the land-revenue had not be drawn upon, recourse must have been had to the consolidated fund. The chief objections that can be urged against them are the disproportion between the original estimate and the expenditure; the questionable taste displayed in some of the plans, and to the individuals employed to superintend their execution. For example, Mr. Nash, according to the report of a parliamentary committee, “became a lessee of the Crown while acting as its agent and surveyor, and in his capacity of the crown-surveyor actually reported on the buildings erected by himself, upon the ground of which he was the lessee.” Other and more serious charges have been alleged against this gentleman, but as they have not been so clearly established we pass them over.

Throughout we have used the term crown lands; they are in fact not the lands of the Crown, but of the public. Ever since the reign of Queen Anne a life-annuity has been granted to the sovereign in lieu of the produce of the hereditary revenues. Hence results the mal-appropriation in lavishing these funds in aid of the royal expenditure. Surely the civil list of the late King was ample enough, not only to defray his personal outgoings, but to maintain his own establishments. The acts of parliament, establishing the administration of the Woods and Forests, require that the revenues arising therefrom shall be expended in objects of public utility. Was the purchase of Claremont, as a residence for Prince Coburg, or the giving of a slice off Hyde-park to the Duke of Wellington, to round the area of Apsley-house, objects of this nature? Or can the parks and palaces be considered such? These last are often very haughtily and insultingly described as solely for the use, recreation, and enjoyment of the King. Let the King then defray, we say, the expense of them. During the late extravagant reign the people were very contemptuously treated as regards these matters. They were often capriciously excluded from the parks; prohibited from being seen in certain walks—restricted from entering here or walking there—and all these fantastic regulations to interdict the enjoyment of their own property, and the expense of maintaining which was defrayed out of their own pockets. Waterloo-place, Regent’s Park, and Windsor-park, afford examples of royal or official whims which will be easily recollected. Under William IV. there appears a disposition to conciliate popular feeling, but the treatment of the public by his predecessor was intolerable.

We shall now lay before the reader a return of the present income and expenditure on account of the crown lands. It is for the year ending 5th January, 1829, and it is abstracted from the last triennial Report of the Commissioners of Woods and Forests. After that we shall subjoin an estimate of the present value of the crown estates, submitted, by Mr. Harvey, to the House of Commons, March 30th, 1830.