Note 87 — OLD COUNTRY LIFE IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY

The last mention I have found of rent capons is in a lease of 6th April, 1713, whereby Mr. Sitwell’s grandson and namesake lets to Thomas Staniforth a small farm at the Ford. Staniforth, in addition to the rent, was to pay “one good Rent Capon every Christmas.” Before the middle of the eighteenth century the practice of entertaining tenants at Renishaw had gone out, and on the 17th January, 1746–7, Francis Sitwell pays to Isaiah Dixon, who kept an ale-house at Eckington, his “Bill for entertaining my tenants last Christmas.”—See Fam. Min. Gent., ii., 841.