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The Institution of Residential Investment in Seventeenth-Century London

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 December 2011

William C. Baer
William C. Baer
Affiliation:
WILLIAM C. BAER is emeritus professor in the School of Policy, Planning, and Development, University of Southern California.
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Extract

Little has been written about urban property investment in seventeenth-century London. Market norms for investors were developed in a relatively unregulated environment, and in response to surging urban growth. “Pattern books” (manuals of design, measuring, and building) provided information to investors, helping them to evaluate an assorted set of properties. While the methods of investment described in these books were initially rudimentary, there is evidence of increased sophistication in the latter part of the century. The gradual institutionalizing of real estate practices helped to attract the necessary capital to finance London's remarkable physical growth.

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Articles
Information
Business History Review , Volume 76 , Issue 3 , Autumn 2002 , pp. 515 - 551
Copyright
Copyright © The President and Fellows of Harvard College 2002

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References

1 On accounting, see, for instance, Carruthers, Bruce G. and Espeland, Wendy Nelson, “Accounting for Rationality: Double-Entry Bookkeeping and the Rhetoric of Economic Rationality,” American Journal of Sociology 97 (July 1991): 31–69CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and references therein. “Pattern books” is a term loosely applied to a wide variety of publications largely, but not exclusively, “pertaining to architecture and the building trades: books on the five orders, pattern-books, books of designs, builders' manuals and textbooks, price books, books on building materials, architectural criticism and polemical publications.” Harris, Elizabeth, British Architectural Books and Writers, 1556–1785 (Cambridge, 1990): 11–12Google Scholar. Even so, the books to be discussed here do not quite fit in any of the above categories.

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11 Summaries of a variety of leases are found in Jones, The Fire Court, vol. l. The following examples from this source are listed in approximate order of increasing complexity: “Saxton held a lease of certain rooms in the Sunn Tavern … for 14 years from 24 June 1664 at the rack rent of £50 p.a. [per annum]” (p. 5). A lease for 31 years for a fine of £160 and a rent of £20 p.a. with expenditures for improvement by the tenant of £200 (p. 8). A large [£280] fine plus a token peppercorn rent the only payment for the first 12 years, thereafter a rent of £40 p.a. (p. 13). In 1654 a draper leased the Three Crownes for 23 years, with a fine of £150, a rent of £28 p.a. for the first two years, and £38 p.a. thereafter, with 40s. p.a. to the Company of Barber Surgeons. In 1664, the widow of the lessee assigned this lease to a mercer, whose widow in 1666 assigned it to another draper for £400 (p. 28). John Osborne and others leased two messuages [complexes] for 54 years in 1612 at £15 p.a. for 13 years, and thereafter at £23 p.a. for the remainder of the term. In 1638, Sir William Glascock, knight, bought the reversion (p. 33). The custom was to pay long-term lease rent only quarterly—Lady Day (Mar. 25), Midsummer Day (June 24), Michaelmas (Sept. 29), and Christmas (Dec. 25).

12 Jones, Fire Court, 1: v., regarding “the sixth hand.” See Grassby's depiction of the trials and tribulations of Roger North as a landlord in Bristol. Grassby, English Gentleman in Trade, 90–3.

13 See Jones, Fire Court, 2: 10, G. C-17V, for a particularly complicated example, involving a future lease to begin 18 years after its making, and its mortgage prior to the lease's commencement.

14 Derek Keene, “A New Study of London before the Great Fire,” Urban History Yearbook (1984): 15; although he cautioned against pushing the analogy too far. Even the seemingly simple task of estimating the future cost of a house prior to its construction was not much undertaken at the time. It was estimated instead after the fact: by quantity surveyors upon completion. Nisbet, James, Fair and Reasonable: Building Contracts from 1550: A Synopsis (London, 1993), 32–3Google Scholar.

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16 Roll, Eric, A History of Economic Thought, 5th rev. ed. (London, 1992), 77–80Google Scholar. See also note 94, and text at notes 101 and 102.

17 Larkin, ed., Stuart Proclamations, 2: 20–6, and 280–7.

18 See Benbow, Mark R., “The Court of Aldermen and the Assizes: The Policy of Price Control in Elizabethan London,” Guildhall Studies in London History 4 (1980): 93Google Scholar.

19 Heal, Felicity, “The Crown, the Gentry and London: The Enforcement of Proclamations, 1596–1640,” in Law and Government Under the Tudors, eds. Cross, Claire, Loades, David, and Scarisbrick, J. J. (Cambridge, 1988), 211–26CrossRefGoogle Scholar. There were numerous Stuart proclamations directing vagabonds and other poor to leave London as well, but these had less influence on the property market.

20 Rappaport, Steve, Worlds within Worlds: Structures of Life in Sixteenth-century London (Cambridge, 1989), 186–7CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Ashton, City and Court, 43–82; Archer, Ian W., The Pursuit of Stability: Social Relations in Elizabethan London (New York, 1991), 63, 100–48CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

21 Although these organizations owned numerous properties, from the scant evidence available they appear surprisingly unconcerned about maximizing yields. See text at note 131.

22 Various royal proclamations on building by James I described and decried the existence of hovels and sheds, while calling for buildings of brick. Larkin and Hughes, eds., Stuart Proclamations, l: 486.

23 Godfrey, Walter, “Shere Lane, Little Lincoln's Fields: A Building Agreement,” London Topography Society 18 (1942): 34–40Google Scholar; McKellar, Birth of London, 81–3; James Nisbet, Fair and Reasonable, 20–4, and Proper Price.

24 For housing heterogeneity, see Baer, William C. and Williamson, Chris, “The Filtering of Households and Housing Units,” Journal of Planning Literature 3 (Spring 1988): 127–52CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

25 Phillips, Henry, The Purchasers Pattern: Shewing the True Value of any Purchase of Land or Houses, by Lease or Otherwise (London, 1653)Google Scholar, 8—his last name spelled slightly differently in each edition; Primatt, Stephen, The City and Country Purchaser and Builder (London, 1668), 33Google Scholar; Leybourn, William, A Platform for Purchasers, Guide for Builders, Mate for Measurers (London, 1668), 4–5Google Scholar.

26 My analysis of the 876 cases before the Fire Court reported by Jones revealed 494 with simple lease terms. Of these, 298 showed length of lease. About one-third of these were for exactly 21 years; most of the others were for longer occupancy. Jones, Fire Court, vols. 1 and 2 (1970). Leases for building in the 1680s tended to be for 40, 50, 60, or 61 years; the life expectancies of the buildings was tailored to the duration of the ground lease. McKellar, Birth of London, 57–9; Neve, Richard, The City and Country Purchaser and Builder's Dictionary (London, 1726 [reprinted New York, 1969]), 72–3Google Scholar.

27 Boulton, J., Neighborhood and Society: A London Suburb in the Seventeenth Century (Cambridge, 1987)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Stone, Lawrence, “The Residential Development of the West End of London in the Seventeenth Century,” in After the Reformation, ed. Malament, B. C. (Philadelphia, 1980), 167–212Google Scholar; Power, M. J., “The East and West in Early-modern London,” in Wealth and Power in Tudor England, eds. Ives, E. W., Knecht, R. J., and Scarisbrick, J. J. (London, 1978), 167–85Google Scholar; Power, M. J., “East London Housing in the Seventeenth Century,” in Crisis and Order in English Towns, 1500–1700, eds. Clark, Peter and Slack, Paul (London, 1972), 237–62Google Scholar.

28 Star. 18 & 19 Chas. II., c. 8, “An Act for the Rebuilding of London” (1667). The best houses of the “fourth sort” were freestanding houses of the nobility.

29 Godfrey, “Shere Lane,” 335 (some of the Act's provisions incorporated as “boiler plate” in the construction contract).

30 The pattern books only mention houses. While shops, inns, and taverns were on the ground floor of a number of houses, especially within the walls, they probably didn't amount to 10 percent of the total residential structures. This estimate is based on analysis of the Settlement of Tithes, 1638 (in T. C. Dale, ed., The Inhabitants of London in 1638 [1931]). Of the 13,551 rents for houses that I counted, 163 (1.2 percent) were listed with a shop for the same owner. Some shops were shown separately, as were sometimes wharves, docks, and stables, but these would have been 1.5 percent or less of the total units. I assume that the proportion of shops and other commercial uses increased substantially after 1638. In 1725–26, Maitland calculated that 17.6 percent of the land use was nonresidential. Maitland, William, The History and Survey of London (London, 1756), 2Google Scholar: 719, 735. By metropolitan London, I mean the 130 parishes, including Westminster.

31 See Allen, Robert C., “The Price of Freehold Land and the Interest Rate in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries,” Economic History Review, 2nd ser., 41 (Feb. 1988): 33–50CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Clay, Christopher, “The Price of Freehold Land in the Later Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries,” Economic History Review, 2nd ser., 27 (May 1974): 173–89CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Habakkuk, H. J., “The Long-Term Rate of Interest and the Price of Land in the Seventeenth Century,” Economic History Review, 2nd ser., 5 (1952): 26–45CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

32 McKellar, Birth of London, 44–53.

33 Grassby, The Business Community of Seventeenth-Century England, and English Gentleman.

34 Appleby, Joyce Oldham, Economic Thought and Ideology in Seventeenth-Century England (Princeton, 1978), 4–5Google Scholar.

35 Thomas, Keith, “Numeracy in Early Modern England,” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 5th ser., 37 (1987): 103Google Scholar.

36 Harris, British Architectural Books; Yeomans, David T., “Early Carpenters' Manuals, 1592–1820,” Construction History 2 (1986): 13–28Google Scholar.

37 Whyman, Susan E., Sociability and Power in Late-Stuart England: The Cultural World of the Verneys, 1660–1720 (Oxford, 1999): 41Google Scholar.

38 Sir Balthazar Gerbier, would-be successor to Inigo Jones as King's Surveyor prior to a falling-out at court, wrote Counsel and Advise to All Builders for the Choice of their Surveyors, Clarks of the Works, Bricklayers, Masons, Carpenters, and Other Workmen (London, 1663)Google Scholar, in which he noted for gentlemen's benefit various ways that workmen tried to swindle their clients. Later, Richard Neve (City and Country Purchaser, i–xii) claimed that the second edition “were made as fit for Gentlemen's Use, as the former Edition was for Workmen” (italics in the original) and, in his preface, argued that building was more than “base mechanicks and handicrafts to be looked down upon, it was an art to be learned by gentlemen.”

39 Whyman, Sociability and Power, 4. The interpretation of these values nevertheless still contained a strong streak of moralism, with social implications of the most practical bent. See Muldrew, Craig, The Economy of Obligation: The Culture of Credit and Social Relations in Early Modern England (London, 1998), 273–4CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

40 Keith, “Numeracy in Early Modern England,” 109.

41 In the 1620s other economic books pertained to mercantilist principles of alliance between commerce and state; in the 1650s, freer trade; during the 1660s and 1670s, the role of interest rates; and in the 1690s, currency and protection; Whyman, Sociability and Power, 43.

42 As Keith points out in “Numeracy in Early Modern England” (pp. 107, 112, 118), clients also had to understand these basics to evaluate the recommendations of professionals and catch damaging arithmetic errors.

43 Holmes, Geoffrey, Augustan England: Professions, State and Society, 1680–1730 (London, 1982), 12–14Google Scholar; Hainsworth, D. R., “The Estate Steward,” in The Professions in Early Modern England, ed. Prest, Wilford (London, 1987), 154–80Google Scholar, esp. 158,166. Whyman, Sociability and Power, 41; McKellar, Birth of London, 42, 52 (John Bland, working for Barbon, was variously described in lawsuits as an attorney, measurer, scrivener, and gentleman). See also Margaret Gay Davies, “Country Gentry and Payments to London,” Economic History Review, 2nd ser., 24 (Feb. 1971): 16.

44 Much of the information on the authors presented here is from Harris, British Architectural Books. Phillips was not included in her survey. See also Nisbet, Proper Price, 2–5.

45 The estimate of building activity is based on the fluctuations in royal and Privy Council efforts to suppress it, as found in Acts of the Privy Council and State Papers, Domestic.

46 “William Harrison: The Manner of Building and Furniture of our Houses, 1587,” in Seventeenth-century England: A Changing Culture, vol. 1, Primary Sources, ed. Hughes, Ann (Towata, N.J., 1981), 8Google Scholar: “[I]t is come to pass that the fronts of our streets have not been so uniform and orderly built as those of foreign cities.”

47 Porter, Stephen, “The Economic and Social Impact of the Civil War upon London,” in London and the Civil War, ed. Porter, Stephen (London, 1996), 175–204CrossRefGoogle Scholar. He reports that there might have been a vacancy of as many as 12,000 houses in the mid-1640s, 191. Smuts, R. Malcolm, Culture and Power in England, 1585–1685 (New York, 1999), 139CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

48 Commons Journal, 7: 504 (14 Mar. 1657), 515, 531 (8 May 1657) [second reading], 542 (30 May 1657) [Cromwell to have power to appoint its commissioners], 544, 5545 [Possible amendments, including slight delay in its taking effect], 5636 (19–20 June 1657) [Multiple amendments offered; some approved]. For the final wording, see Firth, C. S. and Rait, R. S., eds., Acts and Ordinances of the Interregnum, 1642–1660 (London, 1911), 2:1223–34Google Scholar.

49 Firth and Rait, Acts of Interregnum, 2:1230–4.

50 Calendar of State Papers, Domestic, 1658–59, 80. Nicholas Barbon, the famed builder, claimed the tax yielded but “Twenty thousand Pounds clear of all charges, as appears by the records of the Exchequer,” Nicholas Barbon, An Apology for the Builder (1685), 29.

51 Phillips, Purchasers Pattern, 4th ed. (1663), “To the reader,” A3.

52 Willsford, Thomas, The Scales of Commerce and Trade, Ballancing betwixt the Buyer and Seller, Artificer and Manuffacturer, Debtor and Creditor (London, 1659)Google Scholar.

53 Harris, British Architectural Books, 478.

54 For an example of such a bill by Willsford, see his Scales of Commerce, part 4, Architectonice, 6–7.

55 Willsford, Scales of Commerce. The quote is in his preface (unnumbered).

56 A Proclamation Concerning Building, in and about London and Westminster, 16 Aug. 1661 (STC 3250); Steele, Robert, ed., A Bibliography of Royal Proclamations of the Tudor and Stuart Sovereigns, 1485–1714, vol. 1, England and Wales (New York, 1967), 399–400Google Scholar (first published as Bibliotheca Lindesiana V, 1910).

57 Commons Journal, 7: 499 (5 June 1663), 509 (23 June 1663) [second reading and committed], 600 (13 Feb. 1664) [bill from Lords].

58 A proposal for a license to sell mandatory fire insurance (with the king receiving a third of the proceeds) had been proffered in 1635 and 1638, but failed to go forward when, at the advice of the attorney general, it was to be made voluntary rather than mandatory. State Papers, Domestic 16/310/98 (1635); 16/323/73 (1638). Nicholas Barbon was the first to offer voluntary fire insurance in the early 1680s.

59 Jones, Fire Court, 1: vii. It consisted of a panel of three judges “to hear and determine summarily” the matters brought before them, no appeal to a law court being possible.

60 Phillips, , Purchasers Pattern Much Enlarged (London, 1667)Google Scholar, “To the Reader,” A4–A5.

61 Ibid.; Primatt, Stephen, The City and Country Purchaser and Builder (London, 1668)Google Scholar; Leybourn, Platform for Purchasers.

62 Primatt, City and Country Purchaser, “The Preface to the Reader,” A 4.

63 He was admitted to Barnard's Inn, 1661; Clifford's Inn, 1666; Inner Temple, 1668; Gray's Inn, 1671; and called to the Bar that same year. Harris, British Architectural Writers, 381; Jones, Fire Court, vol. 1, case A-206, 61. Jones cataloged 876 of the Fire Court cases, but another 800 remain uncataloged.

64 Primatt, City and Country Purchaser, Title page (referring to the Rebuilding Act of 1667).

65 Leybourn, William, The City and Country Purchaser and Builder In Two Books, Composed by S. P. Gent, The Second Edition Much Enlarged (London, 1680)Google Scholar.

66 Leybourn, Platform for Purchasers, “To the Reader” (unnumbered); Harris, British Architectural Writers, 381.

67 Harris, British Architectural Writers, 292; Nisbet, Proper Price, 2. See also The Survey of Building Sites in the City of London After the Great Fire of 1666 by Peter Mills and John Oliver (London, 1967)Google Scholar, vol. 1.

68 Leybourn, Platform for Purchasers.

69 Phillips, Purchasers Pattern (1653), “To the Reader” (unnumbered).

70 Phillips, The Purchasers Pattern (1663), B. Primatt later made the same points, also for rural land and mineral deposits. See Primatt in Leybourn, City and Country Purchaser and Builder, 1680,1–12.

71 Williamson, Oliver E., “Efficiency, Power, Authority and Economic Organization,” in Transaction Cost Economics and Beyond, ed. Groenewegen, John (Norwell, Mass., 1996), 16Google Scholar; Casson, Mark, “Institutional Economics and Business History: A Way Forward?” in eds. Casson, Mark and Rose, Mary B., Institutions and the Evolution of Modern Business, (London, 1998), 151–71Google Scholar; Jaffe, Austin J. and Louziotis, Demetrios Jr, “Property Rights and Economic Efficiency: A Survey of Institutional Factors,” Journal of Real Estate Literature 4 (July 1996): 137–59Google Scholar.

72 Jaffe and Louziotis, “Property Rights and Economic Efficiency,” 139; Simpson, History of Land Law, 272. One must be careful when reading Simpson on these matters, for he deals largely with rural leases, and with the lawyers' professional interest in the reality of uncertainties in these matters, as contrasted with the business persons' hope for certainties.

73 [Anon.] The Way to be Rich According to the Practice of the Great Audley (London, 1662), 2–3, 6–7, 10Google Scholar.

74 “It is most apparant that fraud and deceipt encreases continually; For remedy whereof there have been many wholesome Lawes made which are no sooner published then evaded by some new Artifice.” Phillpott, Nicholas, Reasons & proposals for a registry or rembrancer of all deeds and incumbrances of real estates (London, 1671), A2Google Scholar. See also Alsop, J. D., “Ethics in the Market Place: Gerrard Winstanley's London Bankruptcy, 1643,” Journal of British Studies 28 (Apr. 1989): 97–119CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

75 Leybourn, City and Country Purchaser (1680), 10–11.

76 Way to be Rich, 10.

77 That is, estates in [current] possession (e.g., a lease) and estates in expectancy (e.g., a reversion). See Keene, “New Study of London,” 16, for other complications in property transactions.

78 Phillpott, Reasons for a registry, A2. See also Way to be Rich, where Audley's sharp practices are held up to praise, and he is otherwise presented as an admirable person.

79 Jones, Fire Court, 1: 183–4 (Purchase money withheld [with interest] until clear title delivered because the land was subject to “divers statutes, bonds, recognisances and judgements” against the owner); McKellar, Birth of Modern London, 63 (Double mortgage, where security for second mortgage jeopardized by an earlier mortgage unknown to second mortgagee).

80 Sibbett, Trevor, “Early Insurance in and around the Royal Exchange,” in Sir Thomas Gresham and Gresham College, ed. Ames-Lewis, Francis (Aldershot, 1999), 71Google Scholar.

81 I am grateful to an anonymous reviewer for pointing out to me this facet of practice.

82 There are two approaches. A deeds registry merely provides a public record of private transactions, but affords no security of their genuineness, that is, there is only an inference of ownership. A title registry has the state behind the title of the person, that is, title is a fact.

The former was the approach tried in the seventeenth century, usually registering encumbrances as well. See Simpson, S. Rowton, Land Law and Registration (Cambridge, 1976), 17Google Scholar.

83 The first effort in England to establish such a deeds recordation system was a bill in Parliament in 1529. It failed. The Statute of Uses in 1535, aimed at ending secret uses that avoided feudal dues, as a byproduct still allowed secret or at least concealed dealings in land that before had a semblance of openness. While 1535 also saw Parliament enact the Statute of Enrollments to record property transactions, it was not comprehensive legislation, and the practice fell into disfavor. Subsequent efforts to establish a deeds registry appeared in 1653, 1664, 1670, 1685, 1693, 1694, 1697, 1698, 1699, 1734, 1758, and later. Each time such a bill was brought up in Parliament in the last half of the seventeenth century it was “laid aside.” A local deeds registry was established for Middlesex county (which contained London) and the Ridings of Yorkshire in the early eighteenth century. Hayton, David J., Registered Land (London, 1973), 10Google Scholar. On Scotland, see Simpson, Land and Registers, 98.

84 Horwitz, Henry and Polden, Patrick, “Continuity or Change in the Court of Chancery in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries,” Journal of British Studies 35 (Jan. 1996): 38CrossRefGoogle Scholar, reported a high frequency of cases in which the plaintiff alleged secret encumbrances in their 1627 sample, but this frequency seemed to decline after the Statutes of Frauds enacted in 1677.

85 Admittedly, asking friends to post bonds was a common practice for many matters, not just real estate. Phillpott, Reasons & Proposalls, 2–3. Legal uncertainties had so weakened credit, Philpott claimed, that lenders preferred to receive 5 percent from a goldsmith or scrivener secured by his note than 6 percent from “a Country Gentleman on his Mortgage, Judgement, or Statute.” The security of the note was the lesser of the two risks. If it proved defective, the lender merely had to expend sums to recover his money. If the gentleman's security was defective, the lender had little recourse: “being out of hope … [he] is freed from further trouble or Charge, and sits down by his first losse” (p. 3).

86 Phillpott, Reasons & Proposalls, 2–3. McKellar, Birth of London, 63; Horwitz and Polden, “Continuity or Change in Court of Chancery,” 38.

87 Phillips, Purchasers Pattern (1653), 2–3.

88 Appleby, Economic Thought and Ideology, 179–80. This aspect was more clearly formulated at large at the end of the century. See also Finkelstein, Andrea, Harmony and Balance: An Intellectual History of Seventeenth-Century English Economic Thought (Ann Arbor, 2000), 265CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

89 Carruthers and Espeland, “Accounting for Rationality,” 37; Willsford, Scales of Commerce, title page.

90 Jones, Fire Court. See note 33 for more details.

91 Phillips, Purchasers Pattern (1656), 18, 20.

92 Ibid., 18–19. Phillips only loosely linked the fine with the overall rate of return, instead advising landlords to charge only a large enough fine to bind their tenants to their covenants (like a security deposit) lest they forfeit the lease, their rent payments, and the fine, if evicted.

93 See Keene, “New Study of London,” 19, who found that fines were sometimes based on an annuity formula.

94 See text at note 119.

95 Hill, Christopher, Economic Problems of the Church (Oxford, 1956), 276Google Scholar.

96 Leybourn, Platform for Purchasers, “To the Reader.”

97 Primatt, City and Country Purchaser.

98 Carruthers and Espeland, “Accounting for Rationality,” 39.

99 Roll, History of Economic Thought, 23, 32–4; Finkelstein, Harmony and Balance, 89–90, see 180–1 for other cultural uses of the term as they might interact with business.

100 Forbearance a century or so earlier was sometimes understood to mean no interest at all, although usually only in cases of terms less than a year. Later, when interest was commonly charged, it was usually for a set percent regardless of term, so that no usury could be claimed. By the Elizabethan period, however, a rate of 10 percent for a set period of time was common and “accepted de facto by statute.” Mclntosh, Marjorie K., “Money Lending on the Periphery of London, 1300–1600,” Albion 20 (Winter 1988): 560–3Google Scholar, 566.

101 Harrison, “Manner of Building,” 11; Muldrew, Economy of Obligation, 114.

102 Willsford, Scales of Commerce, 49.

103 The earliest I have found were published in 1602. [Anon.] Caveat for the Borrower, or a perfect Table of Usurie, from one pound to a thousand for twenty one years, after the rate often in a hundred (Cambridge, 1602)Google Scholar.

104 Carruthers and Espeland, “Accounting for Rationality,” 52.

105 Willsford, Scales of Commerce, book 1, part 2, 48, 100. John Norden, in The Surveiors dialogue (1610)—a thorough discussion of surveying and managing rural land—had earlier remarked on the same theme: “Interest, the mother of miserie, the longer she goeth with her birth, the greater monster she breedes, that immediately devours him that begat” (p. 211).

106 Phillips, Purchasers Pattern (1653), 4; Primatt, City Purchaser (1668) 14.

107 Keirn, Tim and Melton, Frank T., “Thomas Manley and the Rate-of-Interest Debate,” Journal of British Studies 29 (Apr. 1990): 147–8CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

108 Phillips, Purchasers Pattern (1653), 4; Willsford, Scales of Commerce, 47; Leybourn, Platform, 5. Among other issues, Habakkuk explored whether these legal rates were related to expected rates of return for land, finding the association weak. Habakkuk, “Long-Term Rate of Interest,” 27–8.

109 Coleman, D. C., “London Scriveners and the Estate Market in the Later Seventeenth Century,” Economic History Review, 2nd ser., 4 (1951): 229CrossRefGoogle Scholar, quoted a related explanation: “[M]any conscionable men would willingly expose their moneys for eight or nine in the hundred but cannot make it known” and therefore resorted to scriveners to make investments for them.

110 Phillips, Purchasers Pattern (1653), 5–7.

111 Wealth preservation reflected the old desire to carry on an established family name down the generations. Wealth creation reflected newer economic aspirations to make a family's name well known in the current generation.

112 Habakkuk, “Long-term Rate of Interest,” 36; Grassby, Business Community, 373–8; Earle, Making of the Middle Class, 152.

113 Phillips, Purchasers Pattern (1653), 5–7.

114 Primatt, City Purchaser, 14–15. Rapp has pointed out that early modern Venetians used land as a conditioned inheritance to guard against profligacy of future generations. This applied to England as well. Rapp, Richard T., “Real Estate and Rational Investment in Early Modern Venice,” Journal of European Economic History 8 (Fall 1979): 289Google Scholar.

115 Cook, Chris and Wroughton, John, English Historical Facts, 1603–1688 (Towata, N.J., 1980), 31–4CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also the comments at note 40 regarding the tax on houses passed in 1657, but not successful in raising revenue. Taxes came into their own in fact and in discussion later in the century. See Appleby, Economic Thought and Ideology, 185–6.

116 Phillips, Purchasers Pattern Much Enlarged (1656), 21; Primatt, City Purchaser (1668), 17.

117 Primatt, 15–16.

118 The higher the number of years' purchase, the higher the price, of course, and the lower the rate of return.

119 Roll, History of Economic Thought, 91–2.

120 Primatt, City Purchaser, 34.

121 Phillips, Purchasers Pattern (1653), 10–11.

122 More specifically, these locales were in “Middlesex, Hartfordshire, in most places of Surrey, Kent, Essex and Sussex, Buckinghamshire, and other places adjacent to London,” Primatt in Leybourn, City and Country Purchaser, 14–15.

123 Primatt here was talking about Yorkshire and Lincolnshire, among others. Primatt in Leyburn, City and Country Purchaser, 14–15. Chalklin, Provincial Towns, 5–7, reported a similar orientation in more detail for the eighteenth century.

124 See, for instance, various accounts of early theorizing in Leahy, William H., McKee, David L., and Dean, Robert D., eds., Urban Economics (New York, 1970)Google Scholar.

125 Primatt, City Purchaser, 35.

126 Presumably the total is the same in both cases because of market constraints.

127 Barbon, Apology for the Builder, 23.

128 [Nicholas Barbon], A Discourse Shewing the Advantages that New Buildings and the Enlarging of Towns and Cities Do Bring a Nation (London, 1678), 3Google Scholar. This work has only recently been attributed to Barbon. See Harris, British Architectural Writers, 117.

129 Primatt, City Purchaser, 36–7. A plot with a 25-foot frontage and a 40-foot depth, he noted, might be valued at 40 shillings per front foot, or £50 per annum. Alternatively, the same £50 per annum would mean it was worth 12 pence a square foot. It is unclear how he arrived either at the 40s./front foot or the 12d./sq. ft. In the latter case, he might have worked backward from the £50.

130 Wheatley, Henry B., ed., The Diary of Samuel Pepys (New York, 1942), 7: 487–9Google Scholar [December, 1667].

131 Phillips, Purchasers Pattern Enlarged (1667), A4; Keene, Derek, “Landlords, the Property Market and Urban Development in Medieval England,” in Power, Profit and Urban Land, eds. Eliassen, Finn-Einar and Ersland, Geir Atle (Aldershot, 1996), 96Google Scholar.

132 Primatt, City and Country Purchaser, 37; Phillips, The Purchasers Pattern Much Enlarged (1667), “To the Reader,” A4; Jones, Fire Court, 1: 50–1; 2:11, 76, 345.

133 Pepys, 489.

134 That is, the value for completed transactions for other properties of like composition. 135 por instance, the following advertisement is not a completed transaction over value—only a starting point for negotiation: “A lease of about 24 Years to come, of Two Houses for 401. [£40] a Year, Built about Ten Years sence in one of the antient Markets about London, is to be Sold a good Pennyworth, or Exchainged for a convenient House in the Country within 5 Miles of London. Inquire at Mr. Tho. Howkins's in George-yard, Lombard street.” City Mercury, 13 Mar. 1693.

136 Wren, Christopher, “Upon the Building of the National Churches,” in Seventeenth century England: A Changing Culture, vol. 1, Primary Sources, ed. Hughes, Ann (Towata, N.J., 1980), 372Google Scholar.

137 Whyman, Sociability and Power, 63.

138 Earle, Making of the Middle Class, 157.

139 Grassby, Business Community, 91–107; 172–5; 234–42, 240–2.

140 See text at note 107.

141 Earle, Making of the Middle Class, 152. Allen, “Freehold Land and Interest Rate,” 35, suggested as a general rule for agricultural land a net return of at least 4.5 percent.

142 Melton, “Sir Robert Clayton's Building Projects,” 39–40.

143 But see text at footnote 107.

144 For an analysis of strategic business reasoning in early modern Venice, see Rapp, “Real Estate and Rational Investment,” 288–90. It is a post hoc reconstructed logic, however, not actually found in his sources.

145 Newton, Isaac, Tables of Renewing and Purchasing of the Leases of Cathedral Churches and Colleges (Cambridge, 1686), 22Google Scholar.

146 It was the forerunner to the twentieth century's “summation method” for finding an appropriate capitalization rate. Although now viewed as unsophisticated and subject to error, the summation approach is, in the abstract, at least adequate. Burton, James H., Evolution of the Income Approach (Chicago, 1982), 236Google Scholar.

147 Leybourn, William, Panarithmologia (London, 1693), D4Google Scholar.

148 Rosenheim, James M., “Landownership, the Aristocracy and the Country Gentry,” in The Reigns of Charles II and James VII & II, ed. Glassey, Lionel K. J. (New York, 1997), 156Google Scholar, 167–9.

149 Whyman, Sociability and Power, 81.

150 McKellar, Birth of Modern London, 41.

151 Exactly how norms first evolved prior to their publication is unclear, but we can speculate that it is decidedly not a random process, tested solely by trial and error (although that is part of it). Practitioners mentally revisit past transactions to analyze how to do better; they attempt to learn from their successful counterparts when talking “business” in general; they organize their perceptions and teach their assistants (who themselves may work for several different practitioners); there is a logic to the process that can be learned by study.

152 Even medieval investors were relatively sophisticated, but we must infer their strategies. Keene, “Property Market in Medieval England,” 93–119.

153 Simpson, History of Land Law, 271–2.

154 Muldrew, Economy of Obligation, 5.