1865. Now by the Land Charges Act 1900, no debt due to the crown operates as a charge on land until a writ of execution for the purpose of enforcing it has been registered under the Land Charges Registration and Searches Act 1888. By the Act of 1541 specialty debts were put practically on the same footing as debts by record. Simple contract debts due to the crown also become specialty debts, and the rights of the crown are enforced by a summary process called an extent (see Writ).
CROWNE, JOHN (d. c. 1703), British dramatist, was a native
of Nova Scotia. His father “Colonel” William Crowne, accompanied
the earl of Arundel on a diplomatic mission to Vienna
in 1637, and wrote an account of his journey. He emigrated
to Nova Scotia where he received a grant of land from Cromwell,
but the French took possession of his property, and the home
government did nothing to uphold his rights. When the son
came to England his poverty compelled him to act as gentleman
usher to an Independent lady of quality, and his enemies asserted
that his father had been an Independent minister. He began
his literary career with a romance, Pandion and Amphigenia,
or the History of the coy Lady of Thessalia (1665). In 1671 he
produced a romantic play, Juliana, or the Princess of Poland,
which has, in spite of its title, no pretensions to rank as an
historical drama. The earl of Rochester procured for him,
apparently with the sole object of annoying Dryden by infringing
on his rights as poet-laureate, a commission to supply a masque
for performance at court. Calisto gained him the favour of
Charles II., but Rochester proved a fickle patron, and his favour
was completely alienated by the success of Crowne’s heroic play
in two parts, The Destruction of Jerusalem by Titus Vespasian
(1677). This piece contained a thinly disguised satire on the
Puritan party in the description of the Pharisees, and about
1683 he produced a distinctly political play, The City Politiques,
satirizing the Whig party and containing characters which were
readily recognized as portraits of Titus Oates and others. This
made him many enemies, and he petitioned the king for a small
place that would release him from the necessity of writing for
the stage. The king exacted one more comedy, which should,
he suggested, be based on the No pued esser of Moreto. This
had already been unsuccessfully adapted, as Crowne discovered
later, by Sir Thomas St Serfe, but in Crowne’s hands it developed
into Sir Courtly Nice, It Cannot Be (1685), a comedy which kept
its place as a stock piece for nearly a century. Unfortunately
Charles II. died before the play was completed, and Crowne was
disappointed of his reward. He continued to write plays, and
it is stated that he was still living in 1703, but nothing is known
of his later life.
Crowne was a fertile writer of plays with an historical setting, in which heroic love was, in the fashion of the French romances, made the leading motive. The prosaic level of his style saved him as a rule from the rant to be found in so many contemporary heroic plays, but these pieces are of no particular interest. He was much more successful in comedy of the kind that depicts “humours.”
The History of Charles the Eighth of France, or The Invasion of Naples by the French (1672) was dedicated to Rochester. In Timon, generally supposed to have been written by the earl, a line from this piece—“whilst sporting waves smil’d on the rising sun”—was held up to ridicule. The Ambitious Statesman, or The Loyal Favourite (1679), one of the most extravagant of his heroic efforts, deals with the history of Bernard d’Armagnac, Constable of France, after the battle of Agincourt; Thyestes, A Tragedy (1681), spares none of the horrors of the Senecan tragedy, although an incongruous love story is interpolated; Darius, King of Persia (1688), Regulus (acted 1692, pr. 1694) and Caligula (1698) complete the list of his tragedies. The Country Wit: A Comedy (acted 1675, pr. 1693), derived in part from Molière’s Le Sicilien, ou l’amour peintre, is remembered for the leading character, Sir Mannerly Shallow; The English Frier; or The Town Sparks (acted 1689, pr. 1690), perhaps suggested by Molière’s Tartuffe, ridicules the court Catholics, and in Father Finical caricatures Father Petre; and The Married Beau; or The Curious Impertinent (1694), is based on the Curioso Impertinente in Don Quixote. He also produced a version of Racine’s Andromaque, an adaptation from Shakespeare’s Henry VI., and an unsuccessful comedy, Justice Busy.
See The Dramatic Works of John Crowne (4 vols., 1873), edited by James Maidment and W. H. Logan for the Dramatists of the Restoration.
CROWN LAND, in the United Kingdom, land belonging to the crown, the hereditary revenues of which were surrendered to parliament in the reign of George III.
In Anglo-Saxon times the property of the king consisted of (a) his private estate, (b) the demesne of the crown, comprising palaces, &c., and (c) rights over the folkland of the kingdom. By the time of the Norman Conquest the three became merged into the estate of the crown, that is, land annexed to the crown, held by the king as king. The king, also, ceased to hold as a private owner,[1] but he had full power of disposal by grant of the crown lands, which were increased from time to time by confiscation, escheat, forfeiture, &c. The history of the crown lands to the reign of William III. was one of continuous alienation to favourites. Their wholesale distribution by William III. necessitated the intervention of parliament, and in the reign of Queen Anne an act was passed limiting the right of alienation of crown lands to a period of not more than thirty-one years or three lives. The revenue from the crown lands was also made to constitute part of the civil list. At the beginning of his reign George III. surrendered his interest in the crown lands in return for a fixed “civil list” (q.v.). The control and management of the crown lands is now regulated by the Crown Lands Act 1829 and various amending acts. Under these acts their management is entrusted to the commissioners of Woods, Forests and Land Revenues, who have certain statutory powers as to leasing, selling, exchanging, &c.
In theory, also, state lands in the British colonies are supposed to be vested in the crown, and they are called crown lands; actually, however, the various colonial legislatures have full control over them and power of disposal. The term “crown-lands,” in Austria, is applied to the various provinces into which that country is divided. (See Austria.)
CROWN POINT, a village of Essex county, New York, U.S.A.,
in a township of the same name, about 90 m. N.E. of Albany
and about 10 m. N. of Ticonderoga, on the W. shore of Lake
Champlain. Pop. of the township (1890) 3135; (1900) 2112;
(1905) 1890; (1910) 1690; of the village, about 1000. The
village is served by the Delaware & Hudson Railway and by the
Champlain Canal. Among the manufactures are lumber and
woodenware. Graphite has been found in the western part of
the township, and spar is mined. In 1609 Champlain fought
near here the engagement with the Iroquois Indians which
marked the beginning of the long enmity between the Five (later
Six) Nations and the French. Subsequently Dutch and English
traders trafficked in the vicinity, the latter maintaining here
for many years a regular trading-post. In 1731 the French built
here Fort Frédéric, the first military post at Crown Point,
and the place was subsequently for many years of considerable
strategic importance, owing to its situation on Lake Champlain,
which with Lake George furnished a comparatively easy route
from Canada to New York. Twice during the French and Indian
War, in 1755 and again in 1756, English and colonial expeditions
were sent against it in vain; it remained in French hands until
1759, when, after Lord Jeffrey Amherst’s occupation of Ticonderoga,
the garrison joined that of the latter place and retreated
to Canada. Crown Point was then occupied by Amherst, who
during the winter of 1759–1760 began the construction, about
a quarter of a mile from the old Fort Frédéric, of a large fort,
which was garrisoned but was never completed; the ruins of this
fort (not of Fort Frédéric) still remain. At the outbreak of the
War of Independence, on the 11th of May 1775, the fort, whose
garrison then consisted of only a dozen men, was captured by
Colonel Seth Warner and a force of “Green Mountain Boys,”
sent from Ticonderoga by Ethan Allen; and it remained in
American hands save for a brief period in 1777, when it was
occupied by a detachment of Burgoyne’s invading army.
CROWTHER, SAMUEL ADJAI (1809?–1891), African missionary-bishop, was born at Ochugu in the Yoruba country,
- ↑ The duchy of Lancaster, which was the private property of Henry IV. before he ascended the throne, was assured to him and his heirs by a special act of parliament. In the first year of Henry VII. it was united to the crown, but as a separate property.
