Gilman letter January 1812

Transcript of the letter

The letter is addressed to “Thomas Storr Esq, Auditor of the Dean & Chapter, Canterbury”.

Hingham 11^th January 1812

Sir,

M^r Bence, from whom I have just parted, has desired me to go to Canterbury, in the Hope that the Members of the Chapter who are there, or You on their Behalf, will have the Goodness to receive my further Explanations & can then come to some definitive Arrangement about the Deopham Inclosure.
Mr Bence desires me to add that he feels no doubt whatever of the Justice of the Chapter at their next Renewal of the Lease, but the private Circumstances of the Parties for whom he is a Trustee render it impossible for him to proceed with the Inclosure without some defined Terms; & he trusts that the Spirit of the Agreement in 1800¹ & the Understanding in 1807 do give him such a Claim that it will not be difficult in a personal Conference to fix a certain Sum for the next Fine which will be satisfactory to the Chapter, as this in his opinion is the only Mode which the Circumstances of our Freehold & Leasehold Properties (blended as they are now & separated as they will be after the Inclosure) will admit of.
That I may come over without full Information on every Point, even with Regard to the other Proprietors, a General Meeting is called to be held on Thursday next, the Result of which I propose to communicate to You in Person at Canterbury on Monday Morning: And, if all things at the Deopham Meeting shall proceed according to my Expectations, & I should also be fortunate enough to make a satisfactory Arrangement at Canterbury of the Terms & Clause of the Act relating to the Chapter, you may probably enable me to obtain the Dean & Chapter’s Seal to the Consent Bill before I leave You.
I should do wrong if I described the Persons who are beneficially interested in M^r Bence’s Lease to be preferring a Claim as Objects of the Chapter’s Pith, but I am sure I cannot do wrong in observing that they have every Claim to a convenient Arrangement which can be made for two young Ladies born & brought up with considerable Expectations, & now reduced, by the imprudence² of their Father & the Lunacy of their Brother, to this Leasehold only or nearly so & whose Family were Lessees of this very property more than 300 years ago.
By a convenient Arrangement I only mean the certainty of a Renewal at a fixed Sum according to the Spirit of former Agreements, by which not only the present Income & future Prospects of these young Ladies will be brought into the greatest Certainty that the Nature of their Property will admit of, But their Trustee will be better authorised to lay out Money in improving that Property of which their Tenure is now so limited & uncertain.

Your very obedient Servant,
S.H.L.N. Gilman

The letter concludes with a postscript about the possibility of meeting in London at the Grecian Coffee House, Temple.

Chapter of Canterbury Archives AL 548
Transcription © G. Sankey

Footnotes

1. See the copy of the 1800 agreement reproduced here. ↩︎
2. In his letter in December 1807, Mr Gilman had commented that the father
   had “unfortunately been so embarrassed that his Estates have been vested in the Hands of Trustees”. ↩︎