LEASES.
[1] Case 1.—Richard Woollaston and another,—Appellants; Attorney-General and others,—Respondents [17th June 1715].
The forfeiture accruing to the King jure coronae, and not as Duke of Lancaster; and the estate therefore being no part of the possessions of the duchy when the lease was made.
Decree of the Court of Exchequer affirmed.
The scite of the monastery of Furnes, and the manors, lands, tenements, and hereditaments, thereunto belonging, lying within the county-palatine of Lancaster, (being the estate in question,) were by act of Parliament, 32 Hen. VIII. taken out of the survey of the Court of Augmentations, and put under the order, survey, receipt, letting and setting of the Chancellor, officers and ministers of the county-palatine and duchy of Lancaster, to which they never before belonged.
King James I. being seised of these premises, as parcel of the duchy, on the 27th of May, in the 5th year of his reign, granted the same, under the duchy seal, to Robert Earl of Salisbury and his heirs, to be held in common socage of the manor of Endfield, which is a manor belonging to the duchy, under a yearly rent of £76 13s. 2d. And the same King, on the 21st of December, in the 12th year of his reign, granted the said yearly rent of £76 13s. 2d. to William Earl of Salisbury, and his heirs; to be held in common socage of the manor of East Greenwich, which is a manor belonging to the Crown.
The ancestors of Sir Thomas Preston became afterwards seised of this estate, under grants from the Earls of Salisbury; and Sir Thomas, being a papist, conveyed the same on the 6th of May 1674, to Francis Lord Carrington, and Richard Walmsley Esq. and their heirs; but Thomas Preston Esq. the respondent Elizabeth's late husband, and who was the next heir of Sir Thomas in the male line, being a protestant, and having discovered that this grant was made in trust, for unlawful and superstitious uses; filed an information in the Court of Exchequer, in the name of the Attorney-General, in order to avoid the grant, and procure the premises to be conveyed to the Crown.
After this cause had been several times heard, 1rnd after a trial at bar, finding the grant of Sir Thomas Preston to have been made [2] for superstitious uses; it was, on the 20th of May 1682, decreed, that the trustees should convey the premises to his then Majesty King Charles II. And in pursuance of this decree, a conveyance was, on the 24th of February following, made accordingly.
Mr. Preston, having been at great expence in discovering the grant, and in pro-
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