450
NOTES AND QUERIES. [ th s. xii. DEC. 5, im
cessor that is, against one who succeeds to
the ownership of the ground by purchase or
by adjudication from the last proprietor and
it was necessary that there should be actual
possession by the tenant. In terms of the
Long Leases ^Registration Act of 1857, leases
for thirty-one years and upwards may be
registered, and such leases are effectual
against singular successors. The Act includes
leases containing an obligation to renew from
time to time at fixed periods or upon the
termination of a life or lives, or otherwise,
provided such leases shall be renewable from
time to time so as to endure for a period of
thirty-one years or upwards. Possession is
not necessary to the validity of a registered
lease, nor is it essential that the rent should
be fixed. The name of the land must be
specified, and it must not exceed fifty acres
in extent. The Act is not compulsory.
In a question with the grantor of a lease or his heirs, the period of endurance may be indefinite. A common duration in early times was "perpetually and continually as long as the grass groweth up and the water runneth down," and such a lease was good even against the purchaser of an estate, if he was made aware of the lease and accepted it as part of the bargain, or if he afterwards homologated it. Sometimes a lease was granted until a debt was paid by the grantor. The following terms were known in early leases :" From five years to five years, et sic infinitum" "for ever"; to the original tenant's " bairns," so long as they were able to pay the rent.
A curious question was raised in the case of His Majesty's Advocate v. Capt. James
- raser, of Belladrum. On 8 June, 1670, Hugh,
Lord Lovat, in consideration of a sum of money advanced to him, granted a lease to Simon Fraser, his heirs, assignees, and sub- tenants, of the lands of Fingask for nineteen years from Whit-Sunday, 1670, arid after the expiry of the said nineteen years for other nineteen years, and after the expiry of the said second nineteen years for other nineteen years, and so on from nineteen years to nine- teen years during all the years of twenty times nineteen years, and after the expiry of the said first twenty times nineteen years for other twenty times nineteen years, and after the expiry of the second twenty times nine- teen years for other twenty times nineteen years, and ay and while the said three times twenty times nineteen years be completed and outrun." The period here is 1,140 years. The rent payable by the tenant was fifty-six bolls farm-bear, four bolls horse-corn/ two custom-cows, four wedders, four lambs, four
dozen poultry, and fifteen merks of tithe. In
1747 the notorious Simon Fraser, twelfth
Lord Lovat, the then landlord, was attainted,
and the question was raised whether the lease
was valid against the Crown, as his successor
in the estate. The Court of Session decided
that it was not valid, but on appeal, in 1762,
the House of Lords reversed this decision.
The Court of Session held in 1760 that a lease for 1,260 years was valid. In the case of Scott of Comiston v.Straiton in Wardroperton (1771), in which it was held that a lease for an indefinite period was valid, some of the judges remarked that if an u ish" (as in the case of Fraser of Belladrum) was postponed till upwards of 1,100 years, it might, on the same principle, be extended to as many thousands.
Leases are very often granted for ninety- nine years, and for 999 years, but there is, of course, no special significance in these periods. A lease for any other period would be valid. As a Scottish legal authority of high standing says :
"It is difficult to imagine what rule could be framed to discriminate between short, or ordinary, and long, or extraordinary leases." Rankine, 'Law of Leases in Scotland,' 1893, p. 135.
J. A.
Edinburgh.
A lawyer told me lately of a lease so strange that he was almost inclined to regard it as a joke. The lease was dated in 1810, and by it a property was leased to a widow and her grown-up daughter for ninety-nine years, in case either of them should live so long !
M. N. G.
WILL READ PUBLICLY IN A PARISH CHURCH
(9 th S. xii. 348). Six officials in various de- partments of the Principal Probate .Registry mostly elderly men of long service there de- clare that they have never heard of such a case as mentioned at the above reference. Indeed, both they and several legal friends say that since 1858 (when some 372 ecclesiastical pro- bate courts were transferred to civil authori- ties) no will would require to be read in a parish church, either as a means of finding a claimant to an estate or as a step in the proving. If a will, or part of a will, was read in a church recently it would be merely in accordance with an expressed wish of the testator, who may have left some estate to the parish contingently on no claimant ap- pearing when cited. It is, of course, well known that a few of the old peculiar eccle- siastic probate courts, such as prebendal, were in their jurisdiction limited to less than half a dozen, or say a dozen, parishes, and this may have given rise to the question as
