Hungerford Deed

An indenture is a contract, and the term comes from from the indented, tooth-like upper edge of the document’s first page. Indentures’ content followed a formula. First, background information, known as recitals, explained the history and context of the legal matter, followed by the legal language or terms of the contract, referred to as habendum. Recitals are signaled by the word "whereas," and the habendum follow the phrase "(now) this indenture witnesseth."

There is no confirmed image of Elizabeth Macie, but this painting has been suggested as a possible portrait of her and a young James Smithson. Portrait of a Mother and Child, by George Romney, c. 1770. Private collection.

Elizabeth Macie née Elizabeth Hungerford Keate (1728–1800) was the mother of James Smithson. She is the central figure and the driving force behind the events recounted in the Hungerford Deed. Macie was a complex individual, keenly aware of her position in society and continually peering backward toward her paternal family’s heritage while hoping to leverage it for her own better future. Macie was unafraid to buck social and gender norms while fighting for what she wanted, and her dogged commitment to charting her own path likely influenced her son’s later choice to endow the Smithsonian. Macie’s land wealth, represented in the Deed, was one source of Smithson’s fortune, but ultimately, the gift establishing the Smithsonian was worth more than ten times the value of his mother’s entire estate at her death, built through Smithson’s own initiative and choices.

Henrietta Maria Walker née Keate (1731–1803), was the younger sister of Elizabeth Macie and aunt of James Smithson. Per the terms of her mother’s will, Walker was financially looked after by her brother while she was single. In 1769 she wed George Walker, a widowed Barbadian planter, and their marriage contract kicked off the partition of family lands between Walker and her sister, Macie. We don’t know much about Walker, but within the context of the Deed, her crowning moment occurred when, after almost a decade of striving to divvy up her brother’s inheritance, she refused to sign the legal documents needed to make it official. We have no idea what her reasons were for doing so. This refusal forced a drawn-out Chancery Court case, and along with the enforced division of lands, the result was the Hungerford Deed.

The heading of George Walker’s will. Original image from Will of George Walker of Calais, Kingdom of France, PROB 11/1121/82, The National Archives, London.

Widower George Walker married Henrietta Maria, James Smithson’s aunt, in 1769. George belonged to a family of Barbadian plantation owners and enslavers who built their wealth from the lucrative sugar trade. Records show that the Walker family enslaved about 600 people on their plantations between the 1740s and the 1830s. Walker himself appears to have often been an absentee landowner, because he also served as an agent in London for the legislature of Barbados, representing the interests of his fellow landowners and enslavers in the British Parliament. He also acted as attorney (local representative) for a time for Turner’s Hall, the Barbados plantation of his London neighbor, Sir William Fitzherbert. After his death, the four Walker plantations (Walker’s or The Hope, The Rock, Four Hills, and Guinea) descended to George and Henrietta Maria’s children. When their daughter married into the aristocratic Crewe family, the properties went to the Walkers’ son-in-law, John, who owned the lands into the 1830s. We don’t know how much Walker had to do with her husband’s business in Barbados, but we do know that they lived apart for many years, with George residing in Calais, France, while Henrietta Maria remained in England. Walker died in 1783, four years before the Hungerford Deed was produced. There is little evidence in the Deed’s text of how involved he might have been in the drama surrounding the division of the Hungerford family lands.

George Keate, cousin to Elizabeth Macie and Henrietta Maria Walker, and trustee of Walker’s marriage settlement. George Keate, by John Keyse Sherwin, after John Plott, published 1781. © National Portrait Gallery, London.

George Keate (1729–1797) was a first cousin of Elizabeth Macie and Henrietta Maria Walker. He served as a trustee of Walker’s marriage settlement, and was therefore involved in all subsequent legal matters, including those described in the Hungerford Deed. Keate was the son of George Keate the elder, the younger brother of John Keate (Macie and Walker’s father). Thanks to family connections, after his education, he took up a job in estate management, before entering the Inner Temple society, one of the four London-based associations for English legal professionals. Soon after, he qualified as a practicing lawyer. In the Hungerford Deed, he is identified by his Inner Temple membership.

Exterior gate of the Middle Temple, one of the four Inns of Court. Middle Temple gate &c; illustration to Ireland’s Picturesque Views of the Inns of Court, by Samuel Ireland, 1800. © The Trustees of the British Museum.

The Honourable Society of the Inner Temple is one of the four Inns of Court (the others are Lincoln’s Inn, Middle Temple, and Gray’s Inn). These legal societies date back to at least the early 14th century, when the royal courts became staffed by professional lawyers instead of church leaders. Hopeful law students gathered in London for training, and the Inns of Court were created to house and teach them. Many leaders in the early history of the United States were trained at the Inns of Court, including signers of the Declaration of Independence and delegates to the Constitutional Convention. All British lawyers are required to belong to an Inn of Court.

Joseph Gape, guardian of the young James Smithson and trustee to Walker’s marriage settlement. Portrait of Joseph Gape, by Thomas Gainsborough. Private collection. Source: St Albans Museum + Gallery.

In addition to his role as a trustee for the Walkers, Joseph Gape was also an important influence in the life of James Smithson. Gape served as young Smithson’s guardian, and sponsored Smithson’s naturalization in the British Parliament (because Smithson had been born in Paris, he was not automatically an English citizen). Smithson grew up with women relatives as the main influences in his life, so Gape was likely the closest thing Smithson had to a father figure. While Gape is identified in the Deed as a member of the Inner Temple, he was in fact a member of the Middle Temple. Gape also served twice as mayor of his hometown of St Albans in Hertfordshire, north of London.

Lumley Hungerford Keate, mentioned in his great-uncle Walter Hungerford’s will. Original image from Will of Walter Hungerford of Calne, Wiltshire, PROB 11/809/256, The National Archives, London.

Lumley Hungerford Keate (1735–1766) was the younger brother of Elizabeth Macie and Henrietta Maria Walker, and the uncle of James Smithson. Keate inherited Great Durnford Manor from his father, John, and claimed Studley House and other Hungerford properties based on the will of Walter Hungerford, John Keate’s uncle. Cousins disputed this, and lawsuits followed. These conflicts were not resolved when Keate died unexpectedly in March 1766, and his sisters took up the fight. Keate also left undone his responsibility as executor of his mother’s will, which was the origin of an annual allowance he paid to Walker while she was single. Walker served as executor of their mother’s will instead.

In his will, Walter Hungerford proudly identified himself as the owner of Studley House, which he would pass on to his nephews. Original image from Will of Walter Hungerford of Calne, Wiltshire, PROB 11/809/256, The National Archives, London.

Studley House is one of the most important and desirable properties mentioned in the Hungerford Deed, and ultimately was awarded to Henrietta Maria Walker. Strangely, neither Studley House nor its counterpart, Great Durnford Manor, are listed in the schedules of properties parceled out to each sister, but it is clear from the records that Walker received Studley and Elizabeth Macie obtained Durnford. The property is located in the village of Studley, near a market town called Calne, about 100 miles west of London, in the county of Wiltshire.

Edward Woodcock and his son, Elborough (c. 1745–1794), were lawyers for the Keates, the family of Elizabeth Macie and Henrietta Maria Walker. The Woodcocks may have served as secret go-betweens for financial support from the Duke of Northumberland, James Smithson’s father, on behalf of Smithson and his mother, Macie. Edward stood in for Macie in 1774 when lots were drawn for the division of Hungerford family properties between Macie and Walker.

Cavendish Square, the well-heeled residential development where the Walkers lived in west London, near to the other parties of their marriage settlement. Cavendish Square, by Thomas Malton the younger, in A picturesque tour through the cities of London & Westminster , vol. II. Plate published 28 July 1800. © Royal Academy of Arts, London.

The Walkers and their trustees weren’t the only ones involved in their marriage settlement. Three other men (John Braithwaite, William Fitzherbert, and Joshua Steele) were parties—and they were all Barbadian planters, like George Walker, who enslaved people and forced them to work their plantations. This Barbados connection is probably why they were chosen as parties to the Walkers’ marriage settlement. They all kept London residences in the same fashionable neighborhoods where the Walkers lived. These relationships remind us of how interconnected London society was—juicy private matters were widely discussed at dinners and dances. The Walkers themselves lived on Bentinck Street, where James Smithson would also live later in his life.

Remainder, a legal term referring to a future claim or ownership of a property, is one of the intricacies of English property law, and it turns out to be directly relevant to Macie’s and Walker’s history. The sisters’ father, John Keate, received a property called Great Durnford Manor from his uncle, Walter Hungerford. Walter’s will was a maze of clauses and conditions dictating who would inherit what from him, and one stipulation was that John’s cousin, Southcott Hungerford Luttrell, would inherit Durnford if John’s son, Lumley Keate, died without children. This remainder would cause problems for Macie and Walker when they tried to claim their brother’s inheritance—cousins argued that Walter Hungerford intended for Durnford and other properties to go to Southcott Luttrell and his heirs, not to Macie and Walker.

To protect Henrietta Maria’s inheritance, the Walkers entrusted her share of her brother’s properties to George Keate and Joseph Gape in their marriage settlement, creating a trust. According to the law, Keate and Gape were now the owners of that property, but everything they did with those lands would be on Walker’s behalf. Keate and Gape would manage the real estate entrusted to them and pay any resulting profits—from selling farm produce or renting out property—to Walker herself. Trustees were usually paired, with one connected to the husband’s family and one to the wife’s. However, both Keate and Gape were connected to Henrietta Maria’s family, rather than George’s.

Wealthy women like Walker, Macie, and the mistress of the house depicted in this image often enjoyed a degree of control over properties settled directly on them. The Lady of the Manor, published by Sayer & Bennett, 1781. © The Trustees of the British Museum.

The Walkers’ marriage settlement stipulated that the properties she inherited would be held for the benefit of Henrietta Maria Walker alone. While this seems contrary to modern expectations, records show that arrangements like this weren’t uncommon in the 18th century. The settlement protected Walker’s inheritance from her husband’s "intermedling," which feels remarkably pointed. Was this phrasing formulaic, or was it specifically a commentary on George Walker?

We do not know much about James Poore, but Woodhay is a rural village in West Berkshire, now known as West Woodhay (about 68 miles west of London). There is a memorial to a “James Poor” in the East Woodhay church of St. Martin, who died in 1779. It isn’t clear from the text of the Deed whether our James Poore was a general real estate specialist or if he was chosen because of specific expertise in partitioning property inheritances.

This indenture of 1773 is described as an “Indenture … of Agreement” or promise. It was the first step in the process of officially partitioning the family properties between Macie and Walker, which had been agreed to in principle when the Walkers were married and is mentioned in their marriage contract. In the 1773 document, the parties all promised or "covenanted" to leave the division of property up to Poore’s judgment and expertise. They also promised, crucially, to accept the results of the division.

What exactly would it have meant to Poore or to Macie and Walker to have the Hungerford family properties divided up equally? How would they determine what “equal” meant? Was there any disagreement between Walker and Macie about it? Based on the phrase “as near as he could or should be able,” it seems like all involved understood that this would be difficult. Though it could have been split up based on the number of properties, the value of the properties, or the total size (acreage) of the properties, it looks like Poore based the partition on the value of the land.

Walker had “Power... without the said George Walker her Husband” and authority over her properties, and this is neither the first nor the last time that the Deed will restate this fact. It’s interesting that this was declared so frequently. Was it required by the standards of the Deed as a legal document? Walker’s power over her lands, independent of her husband’s involvement, was guaranteed in their marriage contract. Is it possible that those terms were vague enough that they decided to state them more clearly in the Deed? If we can find a copy of their contract, we might be able to find out.

The text of Penelope Keate’s will requiring an annual payment of £100 to her daughter Henrietta Maria Walker. Original image from Will of Penelope Keate, Widow of Bath, Somerset, PROB 11/904/258, The National Archives, London.

As mentioned earlier in the Deed, Walker was entitled to an annual allowance of £100 for her lifetime, per her mother’s will, to be paid by her brother, Lumley. This was one of the few provisions of their mother’s will that Lumley successfully carried out. Was Penelope Keate skeptical of her thirty-something daughter’s marriage prospects? Walker did ultimately get married at 38, after her brother’s death, and the marriage contract included her continuing to receive that allowance. Because the sisters inherited their brother’s properties, claims, and debts in equal measures, it was decided that Macie would take on one half of that payment (to the tune of £50 annually).

This 1773 contract didn’t just create an agreement to divide up the Hungerford family properties—it also set the terms of the partition. Once the lands were divided, those properties would be legally freed from any preexisting contracts or obligations. So, for example, if Walker had borrowed money against the value of a property that Macie was given in the partition, Macie would not be responsible for that debt. The reverse was also true, that Walker was not accountable for any debts Macie had run up on properties allotted to Walker. These obligations, debts, or contracts could all be described as encumbrances.

There are many long lists of terms found throughout the Deed. Legal documents from this period (as well as more current ones) often have lists of synonyms to describe a single category, in an attempt to cover all the bases and make the contracts easier to enforce. This is part of the reason that documents like the Deed are so lengthy, but a lot of the text is taken up with different ways of saying the same thing. But there are also lists where the terms all refer to different though related concepts. You can check out any unfamiliar words and concepts in our glossary.

Detail of one of the two schedules created for the partition of lands between Macie and Walker. The Hungerford Deed, SIA Acc. 19-150, original image by Michael Barnes, 2019.

Poore prepared his proposed partition in advance of their meeting, when the lots would be chosen by drawing balls of wax out of a hat. The document he drew up included schedules or lists of properties each sister would receive in the partition. All of this was included in Macie’s 1782 lawsuit when she sued Walker to enforce the partition. The schedules were reproduced at the end of the Hungerford Deed.

A moiety is one half of a property or an estate. You could think of it as a 50% stake in an investment. In the Deed, the word often appears as part of the phrase “undivided moiety,” when the shares of two co-owners or co-heirs have not been physically divided. Because Macie and Walker’s brother had died without a will and without any heirs, by law his sisters became co-heiresses. There was no direction on how his properties should be divided up, so the partition was necessary to divide the two moieties or stakes in the family lands that Walker and Macie possessed.

Edward Woodcock served as a proxy here, someone assigned to act on another’s behalf. Macie was evidently unable to be present, and so Woodcock received the drawn-out wax ball for her.

The towns where Walker’s properties were located, highlighted on a contemporary map. The inset map shows, in red, the portion of the county that is in view. Original image: An improved map of Wilt Shire divided into its hundreds, from Large English atlas, or, A new set of maps of all the counties in England and Wales, by Emanuel Bowen, published 1785. Source: National Library of Australia, nla.obj-230787334.

Lot 1, the portion allotted to Walker, is concentrated around the town of Calne, the location of Studley House, with some outliers in Avon further to the north. These are located in the northern third of Wiltshire, a county 82 miles due west of London. The Wiltshire branch of the Hungerfords lived in Calne for generations, and several family members represented Calne in Parliament, including Macie and Walker’s great-uncle Walter Hungerford and their great-grandfather Sir George Hungerford. Though it isn’t specified in the Deed, Walker received Studley House in her portion. Considering that Lot 2 includes the manor of Durnford, it appears that Poore took each of those large, desirable properties and added additional lands to them to attempt an equitable split. DEEP DIVE LINK

The towns where Macie’s properties were located, highlighted on a contemporary map. The inset map shows, in red, the portion of the county that is in view. Original image: An improved map of Wilt Shire divided into its hundreds, from Large English atlas, or, A new set of maps of all the counties in England and Wales, by Emanuel Bowen, published 1785. Source: National Library of Australia, nla.obj-230787334.

Lot 2 was awarded to Macie, and its crown jewel is Great Durnford Manor, which had originally been the property of Macie and Walker’s father, John. Unlike Walker’s Lot 1, which is densely concentrated around Studley and Calne, Lot 2 is widely scattered. Durnford is near Stonehenge and Salisbury towards the southern edge of Wiltshire, much further south than Studley and Calne. Some of Macie’s properties are near Walker’s, in villages called Stockley and Blacklands, as well as further north in Avon, where Walker also received property. DEEP DIVE LINK

Henrietta Maria Walker’s sudden and surprising refusal to finally complete the partition of family lands is the central mystery of the Hungerford Deed. Why did Walker, who came out on top with the more valuable parcels of real estate, including her “beloved” Studley House that she had mooned over in a letter, decline to carry out the necessary paperwork? Did she feel that the partition wasn’t fair? Did she object to the equality payment? Was she angry with her sister about something else, and took it out on her by refusing to cooperate with the partition? We may never know—but we can clearly see that, like her sister Macie, Walker was not afraid to buck expectations.

What does it mean that Macie exhibited her bill? Today we would say that she filed a lawsuit. A bill was paperwork required in Chancery Court cases like this one to demonstrate that the common law could not provide a fair or just outcome for the case in question. In the lawsuit, known as Macie v. Walker, Macie accused her sister and brother-in-law of “combining and confederating” with their trustees, Keate and Gape, to thwart the partition. Macie had prepared the needed documents and only required the Walkers’ cooperation, according to her. Macie v. Walker is an opportunity to hear Macie’s own words, as bills were written in the first person. Her frustration is evident in the text of the lawsuit, as is Macie’s temper and occasional paranoia. She insinuated that the Walkers’ lawyer might be involved, and potentially that other, unknown individuals were part of the scheme.

Chancery Court in session at Lincoln’s Inn Hall. Court of Chancery, Lincoln’s Inn Hall, by Thomas Rowlandson, Augustus Pugin, and J.C Stadler, from Microcosm of London, W.H. Pyne and William Combe, published by Rudolph Ackermann, 1808–1810. Source: British Library.

Chancery Court was the high-level English law court where the battle between Elizabeth Macie and Henrietta Maria Walker was resolved. Chancery was also such a legendary money-pit of bureaucratic red tape that Charles Dickens lampooned the court in his novel Bleak House, depicting centuries-long, fortune-destroying lawsuits that only mildly exaggerated the delays and expense that plagued litigants. The slow pace of Chancery may have contributed to the length of Macie v. Walker, but ultimately, the properties the sisters tussled over were successfully divided between them after five years. Chancery was also the battleground for James Smithson’s bequest, where the United States, represented by Richard Rush, went to stake their claim to Smithson’s fortune.

Imagine that you were in Macie’s position. It’s been 16 years since your brother died and you became entitled to his estate, along with your sister. You’ve waited (more or less patiently) while your sister got married, for a real estate expert to propose an equitable split, and an additional eight years after your sister balked at making the division official. It’s hard not to sympathize with Macie’s frustration. She was seeking to get what was owed her (the lands and the equality payment) but also, essentially, damages—she wanted Walker to pay interest on what was well past due. Emotions were surely running high.

Macie requested in her lawsuit that all documents relating to the partition—like individual property deeds—be provided to Chancery to pull together all relevant information needed to divide the Hungerford lands. One of the biggest difficulties of partitioning an estate like Lumley Keate’s is that the legal trail of ownership could often be complicated. More than one property might have come into the family at the same time (by purchase, inheritance, or marriage), resulting in a single document that related to multiple properties. In a partition, the two properties might be awarded to different people. So who should keep the documents? To handle this, the Deed included agreements, known as covenants, to produce relevant documents when requested in order to prove ownership.

Walker continued to be stubbornly absent from the Chancery proceedings of Macie v. Walker. Chancery tried to speed things up by threatening to sequester or confiscate her property until she appeared in court. This threat of sequestration was carried out under the Great Seal of the kingdom, with an immense amount of power and authority behind it. This tells us something about Walker: she was bold and not easily cowed, even under threat from a government body, and she was also incredibly stubborn. Whatever Walker’s reason for refusing to participate in the partition, and whatever conflict she might have had with Macie, she could have avoided some of these consequences by simply showing up to court.

Lloyd, Baron Kenyon, Master of the Rolls of Chancery Court in 1787. Portrait of Lloyd, First Baron Kenyon, after Sir Martin Archer Shee, c. 1800–1805. Source: Royal Collection Trust. © Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, 2021.

When Macie v. Walker was escalated up through the red tape of Chancery Court, the buck stopped with the Master of the Rolls, who at this time was Lloyd, 1st Baron Kenyon (1732–1802). He was the man who decided the dispute between the sisters for good. The Master of the Rolls was originally a senior clerk responsible for the records or parchment “Rolls” of Chancery as early as 1286, who took on judicial work at the same time as the court. Kenyon was a lawyer of the Middle Temple legal society before beginning a career in Parliament. He served as Attorney General before becoming Master of the Rolls, and later was Lord Chief Justice. Today, the Master of the Rolls is the second-most senior judge in England and Wales.

Because Walker refused to appear and defend herself in court, the Master of the Rolls took this as evidence of her guilt pro confesso—literally “as though [she] confessed” to being in the wrong. As a result, the Master of the Rolls ruled in Macie’s favor and ordered that the partition of family properties move ahead. Walker was also held responsible for all court costs. This is a common outcome in British civil suits even today, where the losing party must cover all legal expenses.

After the Master of the Rolls decided the case in Macie’s favor, he assigned the next steps to Master Holford, one of the Masters in Chancery, who were senior clerks in the court. This may have been Peter Holford (1719–1804), who served as a Master from before 1774 until sometime after 1788, according to the digitized admissions registers for Lincoln’s Inn legal society. Holford was also a wealthy director of the East India Company.

How much is this in today’s money? It’s extremely hard to make those comparisons, especially because we are comparing both monetary value over time and making a conversion between two different currencies. You can find many different historical currency converters online with different results, but they all have in common a comparison of buying power. How much can you buy for £10 today versus £10 in 1787? Maybe the most useful information that we could share is that the money Walker owed Macie in the end was about 40% of her income from the lands she got in the partition. If that money was her only income, it would be like owing someone 40% of their yearly salary!

The phrase “[now] this indenture witnesseth” signals the beginning of the legally binding portion of the document, known as the habendum, where the precise nature of the transaction is described. Every clause of the habendum will begin with those words.

Why would the parties pay each other so little money? Or any money at all? For a property transfer to be legal, money had to change hands. This quantity of money was referred to as consideration, because of the legal phrase “for and in consideration of” that appears here in the Deed’s text. The two trustees, Keate and Gape, paid 5 shillings each to the sisters, which was the traditional amount. This was mostly symbolic—the properties were worth hundreds of times more than that—but it made them legal owners, allowing them to manage the properties for Walker.

In the practice of civil law, there are two types of “remedies” or court-ordered outcomes: legal (“at Law”) and equitable (“in Equity”). Chancery was a court of equity, which meant it could order a party to do something that would resolve a dispute. A legal remedy in Macie’s lawsuit would be the monetary damages (the interest paid on the equality payment), while the equitable remedy is the enforcement of the partition. Equity is usually involved in disputes over real estate, just like in the sisters’ battle described in the Deed, where a judge can order a specific action.

What did it mean that Macie and Walker’s properties were “Saved and kept Harmless” from each other? This describes at the most basic level the whole point of the promised partition—that they would agree to each other taking possession of their lands, and that they would not interfere with or cause any trouble for the properties they each now held. This is especially relevant given Macie’s accusations against her sister in the Chancery lawsuit—denying the validity of the partition and the sisters’ claims to the lands, and thwarting Macie’s attempts to use and sell her lands as she wanted. Harmless in this context means safe from loss or liability.

Why does it say that George Keate and Joseph Gape were selling the Hungerford lands to Elizabeth Macie? Wasn’t Henrietta Maria Walker selling them? Legally speaking, the trustees Keate and Gape owned Walker’s properties. This allowed them to carry out their responsibility to manage the lands for Walker’s benefit, which wouldn’t be possible if they weren’t the legal owners. Walker was the beneficial or equitable owner, and she had the authority to direct her trustees to do as she wished with her lands. Her ownership of her lands only existed within the trust, which meant she had to put a lot of faith in Keate and Gape to properly manage her estate.

Great Durnford Manor was bequeathed to the Keate family by Walter Hungerford. Original image from Will of Walter Hungerford of Calne, Wiltshire, PROB 11/809/256, The National Archives, London.

Great Durnford Manor is one of the largest and most sought-after properties described in the Hungerford Deed. In the division of lands, it was awarded to Elizabeth Macie, James Smithson’s mother. Despite Macie battling for years to obtain the manor, within four years she had sold it to an acquaintance instead of keeping it in the family to pass on to her sons. Durnford is located in the southern third of Wiltshire, a county due west of London, and Durnford itself is roughly eighty miles from the capital. There has been an estate at Durnford since at least 1086.

One of the sixteen British tax stamps, which are affixed to every parchment page of the Deed. The Hungerford Deed, SIA Acc. 19-150, image by Michael Barnes, 2019.

This 18th-century British tax stamp is just a piece of embossed blue paper—but the tax this represented ignited the American Revolution. The British Stamps Act of 1694 placed a duty on all legal documents, which required an official stamp like this one indicating that payment was made. American colonists objected to the tax because of their lack of representation in Parliament, but to the average British resident like Macie and Walker, these would have been unremarkable. The Deed’s stamps each represented one shilling and sixpence of tax (about USD $12.65 in 2021). While this doesn’t sound like much, when the tax for all sixteen stamps on the Deed is added up, the value is about half the yearly income from some of the properties Macie and Walker owned.

There are many questions about the Deed that we can’t answer now, but other documents might hold the answers. One would be the Walkers’ 1769 marriage contract. At this point in the Deed, the legal terms refer to “Power and Authority reserved and given” to Walker when she was wed and seem to imply that without this power, the partition either couldn’t take place or would be less valid legally. What could this clause be referring to? According to the Deed, Walker’s marriage settlement secured her absolute control over her own properties, regardless of her marriage status, but the document says nothing about any additional legal power described in her wedding contract. Could this simply be a reference to the fact that she, now a widow following George Walker’s death in 1783, had complete power over her own property, or a reference to the trust established for her?

While Macie v. Walker determined that Walker was in the wrong and owed her sister both the partition and back interest on the agreed-upon payment, Walker wasn’t disadvantaged in any way by the terms of the division. The terms of the Deed ensured that the annual allowance Walker had received from her brother would continue, and that Macie would pay it. In fact, if Macie was ever late on making that payment, Walker would be allowed to distrain, or seize, Macie’s property to force her to pay up. The Deed lays out that Walker’s right to seize Macie’s land was comparable to a landlord seizing their tenant’s property when rent wasn’t paid.

In the United Kingdom, the legal year is divided into four terms or sittings, beginning in October: Michaelmas term (October to December), Hilary term (January to March), Easter term (April to May), and Trinity term (June to July). These periods are named for Christian saints’ days that fall within those spans. Between terms, no cases are heard, and this added yet more delay to what was already a long process. Macie filed her lawsuit in June, and almost immediately afterward the courts took a summer break.

Westminster Hall, where the Court of Common Pleas heard cases. Court of Common Pleas Westminster Hall, by Thomas Rowlandson, Augustus Pugin, and J.C Stadler, from Microcosm of London, W.H. Pyne and William Combe, published by Rudolph Ackermann, 1808–1810. Source: British Library.

Chancery wasn’t the only court that Macie and Walker had to navigate to divide their property inheritance. After Chancery Court decided the case, part of the process of partition involved an appearance in the Court of Common Pleas. This was one of the English common law courts, which evolved, like Chancery, out of the king’s council around 1200. The Common Pleas was the only court with jurisdiction over real estate, so the sisters had to appear there to make the partition official. It was probably the final step of the whole drawn-out process. Along with Chancery, the Court of Common Pleas was dissolved in 1880 when it was merged into a new High Court of Justice.

The final piece of the puzzle in partitioning the Hungerford lands was a fine. In 18th-century English property matters, this was a binding contract. The word comes from the Latin finalis concordia. Fines were authorized by a court (in this case, the Court of Common Pleas) and recorded as evidence, which was the only way to buy and sell real estate. For Walker and Macie, these were fines sur conuzance (or cognizance) de droit come ceo, which acknowledged that the buyer had a preexisting right to the property that was changing hands. Fines included a fee, and that aspect became the primary meaning of the word we use today (payment as punishment).

With sale paperwork completed, the property was now able to officially change hands. Like every part of this process, there was a specific technical term—and enure is that formal lingo, meaning to hand over a property to its new owner after the necessary fine was completed. There were also terms for the buyer and seller. A conuzee or cognizee was the new owner, who received the fine and the property, while the person selling the property was the cognizor. These words, along with the phrase conuzance de droit, are all related to our modern word recognize, as in the new property holder was “recognized” as the legal owner.

When we take notes today, we often use lined paper to keep lines of text neat and legible. The same was true of parchment manuscripts. Along the right- and left-hand edges of every membrane of the Deed are tiny, pinpricked holes, which helped scribes and clerks keep the lines of text neat and straight. Red lines or rules surround the text area, which served another security measure—only the text within those boxes was part of the legal record. Empty space at the end of each line was sometimes filled in to prevent future alterations.

Here, Chancery Court proclaimed that Walker has an “indefeasable Estate of Inheritance in Fee Simple.” Fee simple is the technical phrase used to describe outright ownership in the world of real estate. This terminology is still used today in the United States—if you look at a property listing, there will be a category describing the type of ownership. A standard purchase will be listed as “Fee Simple.” Indefeasible is a synonym for undefeatable, and in this case, means it cannot be overturned, cancelled, annulled, or dismissed in any way. Basically, the Court declared that Walker’s rights to her property were not debatable.

Here, Macie asserted that she had a rightful claim as a co-heiress of her late brother, and as such, was both entitled to her portion of the properties and legally empowered to convey Walker’s portion to her. Walker’s declaration of the same follows.

You may notice several different writing styles in the Deed. The signal phrases are written in a distinct blackletter or Gothic handwriting, while the majority of the text is in what’s likely a secretary hand, a term describing a descendant of the medieval Chancery styles. Names of the parties to the Deed appear in cursive Italic, which at the time meant Italian style (now the term simply means slanted to the right). These different handwritings and English letter-shapes grew out of Chancery Court at the same time that modern English was developing. Chancery played a role in both processes because the amount of paperwork the court generated helped standardize grammar, spelling, and writing styles.

This is an example of how mistakes were corrected on parchment documents, which were usually made of sheepskin. Ink sits mostly on the surface of parchment, and to improve permanence, the acidic iron-gall ink was typically used as it “bites” into the parchment and partially penetrates the skin. If a correction was needed, the writer would scrape away the top layer of the parchment with a knife and add the new writing. Sometimes the letters are noticeably more cramped to fit into the available space, which can be a first clue to spotting a correction. These changes are highly visible, so this was a security measure to detect after-the-fact changes.

If there is one thing that is made clear throughout the text of the Deed, it is that Macie and Walker were completely within their rights to own, buy, and sell these properties. There are numerous statements like this one, which says that Walker has “good full right power and lawful and absolute Authority” over her lands, and an identical statement about Macie’s rights follows. While the language was formal and almost certainly a standard feature of property deeds, the repetition reminds us that these were hard-won rights. Walker and Macie must have relished reading over the Deed and seeing their claims validated on every page. Though the sisters were able to win their financial independence due to their comfortable social status and class, less wealthy women would not have been afforded such privileges.

The Deed is broken up into manageable chunks by signal phrases, and “In witness whereof” is the final formula of the document. This phrase indicates both the end of the habendum or legal terms and the agreement of all parties to those conditions. Multiple “Hands and Seals” are mentioned in the final line of the text, but there is only one seal on the Deed’s binding, with the label “Eliz. Macie” written alongside.

Because of the way the Deed is bound together, the lower edges of each page are not visible or accessible. On an earlier page this makes reading the bottom line of text difficult, but here, it looks like a signature is completely covered. The top stroke of someone’s name appears from underneath the binding, while the rest is hidden. Imaging techniques can help us reveal what is obscured, and this will be a primary focus of future research into the Deed.

There are many Hungerford family members introduced in the text of the Deed, and Mrs. Elizabeth Hungerford is an important though supporting character. The widow of George Hungerford, the cousin of Macie and Walker’s father, John Keate, Elizabeth Hungerford battled with Lumley Hungerford Keate over Studley House. Per the terms of Walter Hungerford’s will, Lumley was supposed to inherit Studley from George, who outlived both his first wife and his only daughter. When Lumley became heir to the estate, George’s second wife, Elizabeth Hungerford, was in possession of the house. Following a battle in the courts, Macie and Walker took ownership of Studley House.

Rights of common are the rights of one or more people to use land, or its produce (vegetables, grain, and so forth), that belongs to someone else. The term commoners comes from this practice of sharing common lands, and anyone entitled to do so were grouped into that category. Many common areas are owned by a local authority and have restrictions on both their use and access, like modern public parks.

A “quit rent” is a small or token rent payment that has two functions. In the feudal setting, where a tenant would owe service of some kind to the landlord (such as military service or labor), paying quit rent would free the tenant from that obligation. In addition, land and rights to use the land weren’t always passed along at the same time—a tenant or landowner might have the property in their possession, but someone else might also legally hold rights to hunt, fish, or otherwise use the land. Paying the quit rent would reserve all those use rights to the property possessor.

A lease for life is a lease made for the duration of the tenant’s lifetime. Leases for life could also sometimes be granted for the total length of multiple people’s lives—for example, in southwest England, not far from Macie and Walker’s land, a three-life lease was popular. This was either for ninety-nine years or until the death of the third of the three people named in the three-life lease. A three-life lease might include a husband, his wife, and their son, which provided long-term security for the family, and could possibly be extended in the future. Life leases were also guaranteed income for the landlord, assuming that each individual named in the lease lived a long life.

This seal is believed to be that used by Elizabeth Macie. The Hungerford Deed, SIA Acc. 19-150, image by Michael Barnes, 2019.

Seals have been used for security purposes since ancient times and, in the Western world, usually incorporated personal identifiers—like coats of arms—but post-medieval seals are less likely to have been passed down through a person’s family. This seal of Elizabeth Macie’s features a woman in profile, facing left, wearing a laurel-wreath-encircled helmet, who could be the Greek goddess Athena. Though not likely connected to Elizabeth Macie’s family history, the choice of such a figure seems in keeping with her bold and independent life choices. This seal is not intact, but traces of the lost areas are still visible.

These ribbons are part of the binding of the Deed. When a multi-page deed is unfolded, the indented first sheet is at the bottom of the stack, and the final page is on the top. Deeds were bound by folding the bottom edge of the first sheet from the bottom of the stack to the top, around the lower edge of the bundled sheets. A series of slits were cut through the parchment membranes, and ribbons were threaded through these slits and tied off. You can also see a trio of woven cord ties that were also used in the Deed, one at the center of the binding and two at the edges.