Marrin's Bookshop

Details

JANE AUSTEN'S GREAT UNCLE.

Item Description

Manuscript on folded parchment, with red ink rules and seals. 31 x 23 inches. Verso has supplementary texts to 1749 indenture and two additional texts of 1766 and 1839.

Notes

The main document is an indenture of 1749, raising an additional loan on behalf of the Commissioners to help fund the Sevenoaks Turnpike Trust established by an Act of 1748/49. It refers to a sum of £1,000 already raised from another of the Commissioners, Francis Austen of Cliffords Inn, London. The loan of £200 is provided by Elizabeth Polhill of Chepstead (or Chipstead) in the Parish of Chevening, at the usual rate of 4%, with security provided by granting her the newly built tollhouse at Chelsfield, at a peppercorn rent, with the right to receive all profits from the tolls for the twenty-one year term of the 1749 Act. The ten Commissioners and Trustees named in this Indenture are David Polhill, Henry Polhill, Henry Streatfeild and John Austen Esquires, Rev. Thomas Curteis, Rev. Casswell Winder, Mr Richard Round, Mr Ellis Bostock, Mr John Round and Mr John Nash. These names are included in the nearly 140 trustees nominated in the 1748/49 Act which established the Farnborough to Riverhill, in Sevenoaks, Turnpike Trust. Both John Austen of Bexley and John Austen of Broadford, Horsmonden, (1716-1807, cousin of Jane Austen) were among these trustees and it is not certain which of them was signatory of this Indenture. Francis Austen of Cliffords Inn (1698-1791), who had provided the principal £1,000 loan, was a benefactor of his nephew, George Austen, the father of Jane Austen. He commissioned portraits of his two great-nieces, Cassandra and Jane, when they were taken to visit him in 1788. A wealthy and successful estate lawyer, he owned a legal firm in Sevenoaks, where he purchased the Red House in 1743, was Clerk of the Peace for Kent (1753-73) and a trustee of eleven turnpike trusts. The verso of the parchment records the receipt of the £200 loan by the Trust's officers and also two later additions of the further history of this sum. Firstly in 1766, Elizabeth Polhill (who may have been the third wife of David Polhill of Chipstead (1674-1754), MP for Rochester and another signatory as a turnpike trustee) assigns her right to receive tolls to Lady Jane Lambard, as security for a loan of £200 (hence the added title on the verso, 'Lady Lambard's Turnpike Surety for £200...15th Novr. 1766.'). Secondly in 1839, the Treasurer of the Trust repays the sum of £208 (£200 with £8 interest) to two individuals who may be the legatees of Jane Lambard or her descendants. This indenture is an interesting example of how the trusts had to immediately mortgage their anticipated tolls in order to raise the capital sums required to construct the turnpike and its tollhouses. It also demonstrates how a small group of local families, like the Polhills of Chipstead, were involved in both the establishment and in the loan financing of these roads.