Political power was still confined to the magnates of the kingdom, the townsfolk who were able to pay a £10 annual rental, and the well-to-do copyholders and leaseholders of rural districts.
So great was the profit of cultivating these pastures that landlords who were opposed to having pastures broken up by leaseholders had difficulty in preventing it.
The land which reverted to the lord on this account was split up and leased at nominal rents, when leaseholders could be found, just as so much land was leased at reduced rents by landowners generally in the fourteenth century.
They undoubtedly suffered when the lord himself or one of the large leaseholders insisted on enclosing some of the land.
Should the perpetual leaseholders retain the right of converting at any time their leasehold into a freehold by paying down the cash value of their farm, or should the State always retain the fee simple?
As a rule the party which the Liberals call Conservative has advocated that would-be settlers should be allowed to choose their tenure for themselves, and to be leaseholders or freeholders as they please.
The towns already exercised an extraordinary influence in the election of county representatives, and the evil would be aggravated tenfold by the clause of the bill which gave votes to leaseholders and copyholders.
Ministers, however, yielded something in the committee by consenting to extend the franchise to leaseholders for twenty years, having a beneficial interest to the amount of ten pounds.
This motion was likewise rejected; as was another, made by Mr. Mullins, to extend the franchise in counties to leaseholders for nineteen years, at a rent of thirty pounds.
Leaseholders of large houses in towns, for long terms of years, at ground rents, and a whole class of builders, assuredly would join in such a demand; the contagion of revolution and socialism is always perilous.
The measure may have had effects in this direction; but these assuredly were not great; the number of leaseholders was not large; the reductions made in 'fair rents' were temporary and small.
The franchise, therefore, is now substantially uniform throughout the United Kingdom, except that certain owners and leaseholders have a right to vote in counties, and that in some old towns the freemen still possess the suffrage.
Under this franchise come, also, the leaseholders of land of five pounds yearly value if the original term was not less than sixty years, and fifty pounds value if the term was not less than twenty years.
Among those 120 leaseholders were the descendants of English settlers, gentlemen farmers, one of them a magistrate, and a number of substantial yeomen, the sort of men the country so much wanted to form an independent middle class.
It recommended that the term of judicial rents should be lowered from fifteen years to five, that those rents already fixed should be revised, and that leaseholders should be brought under the Act of 1881.
As ballast to lighten the Act of 1881 the leaseholders were thrown overboard.
All customary tenants to become leaseholders at a fixed rental of fourpence an acre for ever.
If this manor be omitted, there remain only 19 leaseholders on the other Lancashire manors.
I am not sure, for example, that all the freeholders on the manor of Crondal, or all the leaseholders at Gamlingay Merton and Gamlingay Avenells, are recorded.
The Copyholders[502] But were the tenants at will and the leaseholders the only classes to be evicted?
Much more numerous, however, than the tenants at will, were the small leaseholders who held part of the waste or of the demesne lands.
It is with the latter class that we are mainly concerned, and leaving the leaseholders on one side for examination later,[87] we may summarise shortly certain features in their position.
In the earlier rental freeholders as well as customary tenants, and in the later possibly leaseholders as well, are included.
Leaseholders possessed, of course, legal security during the period of their leases, and these were in some cases for as long as ninety-two years.
All leaseholders whose leases would expire within ninety-nine years after the passing of the Act have the option of going into court and getting their contracts broken and a judicial rent fixed.
I may also add that Lord Cairns dealt a very severe blow at the rights of owners of freehold property when he gave to the courts of law power to protect leaseholders from forfeiture for breaches of covenant.
In the counties copyholders and leaseholders were added to the constituencies, and by a clause introduced by the Marquis of Chandos, and carried in opposition to the Government, tenants at will paying a rent of £50 were also enfranchised.
The above list will hopefully give you a few useful examples demonstrating the appropriate usage of "leaseholders" in a variety of sentences. We hope that you will now be able to make sentences using this word.
