MS. D. D. Ch. Ch. MM. 28

(i) Napper’s Answer stated that Royse ’s lease did not begin until the expiring of a former lease (dated 15 March 27 Hen. VIII) to the same H. R. for 31 years. This lease he bought from H. R. He claimed to have cut no timber unlawfully, and to have erected buildings at his own cost. The Replication (MM. 28 (ii)) stated that the lease of 15 March 27 Hen. VIII was void, because Robert King was not yet abbot, and that this made void also the second lease. The Rejoinder (MM. 28 (iii)) denied this. The Depositions of the witnesses for Ch. Ch. (MM. 28 (iv)) and for the defendant (MM. 28 (v)) seem to show that Ch. Ch. was really seeking for a decree to enable them to raise the rent. ( John Wright , burser of Ch. Ch., pointed out, and the other witnesses agreed that Church Cowley was worth £12 per annum.) Emphasis is laid on the evils of the long leases and low rents which had been bequeathed to them by the monasteries. e.g. Thomas Smyth said that ‘in the tyme when Doctor Ravis was first Deane of the saide Colledge, the house was in such want that they were not able to pay for there bred and other Commons, neither yet had they beene able to maynteyne the house and Commons thereof, yf divers men had not beene with them for the payment of great summes of money which they then owed for such necessaries as weare for the mayntenaunce of there ordinary Commons’. (MM. 28 (iv) ff. 8 and 9.) Richard Rice said that he ‘hath knowne the said Colledge in such extremities that the Deane and Chapter thereof have heretofore thought uppon a dissolution of the same Colledge for a tyme’. (ib. f. 6.) Other witnesses were for Ch. Ch., Walter Parsons, a member of the College, and Richard Browne, yeoman; for William Napper , William Symonds, gentleman, of Church Cowley , John White of Forest Hill, labourer, William Nashe of Iffley, mason.