London Is Still Paying Rent to the Queen on a Property Leased in 1211 | Hacker News Reader

London Is Still Paying Rent to the Queen on a Property Leased in 1211

atlasobscura.com

223 pointsAJRF122 comments

This sort of thing happens in the US, too, at least in the Northeast corner of it. The land that my house sits on is owned by the Unitarian Universalist church down the street, and each year I owe them $4 or the equivalent in livestock or firewood. To date I've always found it easiest to mail them a check but someday if I'm feeling grumpy maybe I'll give them a duckling.

How did you come to own a house that's built on land you don't own? And aren't you worried about what may happen in the future?

It's quite common (in the UK) to have properties that haev a leasehold but not freehold.

Generally speaking leases are cheap and long (100 years?) and get renewed decades before the lease term ends. It does reduce the property value a little.

Quite common here in Norway as well, especially for cabins and holiday homes. Interestingly, as recently as 2012, the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg ruled that landowners were allowed to change the terms of land leases when they came up for renewal, overruling the national supreme court [1]. Before that, they were obliged to offer the exact same terms, adjusted only for inflation.

[1] http://www.newsinenglish.no/2012/06/13/lease-holders-now-on-...

On a hundred year bond, "adjusted for inflation" can already be a nasty surprise (5% inflation a year over a century gives you about a 2^7 multiplication factor, or two zeroes)

Why would that be a nasty surprise? The real value is unchanged. Unless you're saying the adjustment only happens at renewal, and not annually?

Often that's the case and in some countries you typically owe the whole value for the next 40 years when it's renewed. Of course it could be absorbed in the mortgage.

It happens here in the US in Washington, too, with houses on Indian reservations owned by people who are not part of the tribe. They have long leases (around 100 years) on the land, and own the house on top of the land.

The terms of the leases typically require that the lessee return the land to its original condition when the lease expires, which means demolishing or moving the house and replanting appropriate vegetation, but I've read that usually the tribe will accept the lessee leaving and turning the house over to the tribe.

If you are ever buying a house in Washington and see something that seems too good to be true, like a beachfront house at a low price, look carefully for something about a land lease. The practice of leasing land from tribes and building houses on it goes back a long way, and some of the early leases are expiring in a few years.

When I was in the UK recently I remember seeing ads for 999 year leaseholds. I thought that was very strange: like you kinda own it but kinda don't.

Leaseholds that long usually come with a share of the freehold.

I've noticed this when looking for apartments in New York.

When you see an especially cheap apartment that has nothing obviously wrong with it when you look at the pictures, it's one of these three things:

1) The building doesn't own the land it's built on.

2) The current owner is renting it to a rent-controlled tenant who refuses to leave until they die.

3) Maintenance fees are $3000 a month for a studio due to severe mismanagement or something.

This is not uncommon. In China, the government owns all of the land and grants long-term leases to people. It happens stateside, too. For example, all of the land in Irvine, California is (was?) owned by the Irvine Company and the people living on it own the structures but lease the land.

Very much is. As well as a lot of other cities.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irvine_Company says that the company owns about 1/5 of Orange County. Including several cities.

One of those cities is Anaheim, so that suggests that Disney is leasing the land for Disneyland from the Irvine Company!

Curiously, many cities are organised as corporations, though I'm not entirely sure of the specifics of this. I don't believe most lay claim to the land within their boundaries.

Historically, residents/property owners have often chosen to form a municipal corporation which basically creates a layer of government.

In the case of the Irvine Company, it's the descendant of the Irvine Ranch which never sold off most of its land holdings.

The story of the development of the Los Angeles basin is an interesting one that I've been going through over the past few days. "Why does Los Angeles even exist?" being one question. "Why did it out-grow San Francisco?" being another.

The 1906 quake and topography likely had a lot to do with it. Just at the time the Westward migration really started in earnest, San Francisco burnt down, and LA didn't have to build any bridges to get between places.

Mix up some oil and water for added fun.

Not sure on that. It specifies Anaheim Hills. Anaheim proper seems like it might be outside the listed areas. That said, maybe? Seems like it would be publicly obvious.

You are right. Reading closely, they only own some of Anaheim.

Certain lakes around where I live are owned by the Army Corp of Engineers.

You can get a 100 year lease on the land you want and it's usually renewed with out hassle. I'm sure there are exceptions.

Along the Susquehanna River in Pennsylvania, there are hundreds of cabins, some now turned into year-round homes, that are on land leased in the early 1900's. In recent years, a number of issues have arisen to change the lease requirements and renewal terms. At least 100 of these properties are on land that has been given to conservation groups by the power company and those leases are not being renewed and the cabins are, slowly due to court battles, being razed.

When the dams were built they forced a few towns to relocate since they would be underwater. It's only relative.

Where were the leaseholders when the decision was made to give the land away? Was it Army Corp land or Power company land?

The real question (in Europe at least) is why the church and "nobility" are allowed to keep their land that has often been obtained by dubious means.

Almost all land in America that's not owned by the indigenous population has been obtained by dubious means.

Generally, might makes right.

Much of the land in America that's not owned by the indigenous population has been obtained by dubious means.

Generally, might makes right.

Many of whom obtained it by dubious means from different tribes of indigenous peoples.

If you look back far enough, a huge amount of the land we live on was obtained by violence, theft, or deception. If the first person in the chain of ownership got it by dubious means, they had no right to sell it, and nor did the next person, and so on. By convention, we don't look that far back and ask people to prove their right to ownership. Further back than time immemorial[1] and it's just accepted without further justification.

As for royalty and the church, the United Kingdom is not a republic: it's a constitutional monarchy with an established church (the church is part of the state and the monarch is head of the church).

There may come a time when the church is disestablished (against the wishes of the antidisestablishmentarians — never thought I'd have a chance to use that word on Hacker News) and the monarchy abolished, but for the moment that's what we have and there's no real justification for "removing" the property of either.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_immemorial

What's this established church of the UK?

The Church of England, of course! You may have heard of them as Anglicans. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_of_England. Edit: technically not established for the whole UK, probably.

The C of E is definitely not the established church in Scotland (in fact we don't have an established church - the Church of Scotland is pretty well independent of the state).

Then there is Wales, and last but definitely not least when it comes to complicated religious issues, Northern Ireland.

My father was from Ulster, and I have a photo of him leading the marching band leading an Orange parade. I also have a confirmation certificate verifying that he's a good Presbyterian who "is loyal to the Queen and loves God"... I thought the ordering of monarch before deity was particularly telling.

The Lords Spiritual of the CofE are members of the House of Lords, which is part of the UK parliament, and not an England-only house.

Unlike the other nations, England doesn't have any independent government, so it doesn't really make sense to say that the CofE is the established church of England alone, because there is no English establishment for it to be part of.

So, the CofE is the (only) established church in and of the of UK. The fact that The Kirk and The Church in Wales are not established just means that the only bishops that get to interfere with everyone else's business are from English bishoprics.

I can appreciate that argument about the Lords Spiritual - but I can't see how the C of E can be the established religion outside of England.

NB Wikipedia would appear to agree with me:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_religion

You appear to be right, although it doesn't make sense (like a lot of things here, so it's not that much of a surprise). How can a nation without a government have an established religion?

As jacalata said, it's the Church of England, the Anglican Church. If you're American, you might be more familiar with the word Episcopalian, which is the American branch of the Anglican Communion, a community of Anglican Churches in various countries around the world.

Historically, England (and I'm talking about England here, not Scotland, which has a different arrangement) was a Catholic country, until the Pope wouldn't give Henry VIII a divorce. He created the Church of England with himself as its head.

Anglicanism is a broad church with some congregations that are basically similar to Catholicism (outside of the Roman Catholic church) with the ritual and ceremony — High Church congregations — and some which which are Protestant.

The Queen is the head of the Church of England, and the Archbishop of Canterbury is the senior priest. Senior members of the Church of England have the right to sit the the House of Lords, which is the second chamber of the British Parliament, so as you can see, the Church, the Monarchy (which is nominally the executive), and the legislature are all tied together — that's what it means to have an established church.

edit: messed up the Roman numerals

Henry VIII. May want to fix :-)

Thanks!

Disestablishment would just remove the CoE's official status with the state. The church would continue to exist and own its property. Likewise, the monarch's family would still own theirs after the abolition of the monarchy. This assumes it isn't stolen by an unjust law or a revolution, of course.

Where would we find land that wasn't obtained by "dubious means" at some point in its history?

The first humans, maybe?

Because the "commoners" haven't organized in UK to take them away and because the "church" and "nobility" control the establishment that makes and enforces laws. Establishment derived politicians have largely managed to sway public emotions through appeals to tradition and nostalgia for the empire.

In many other parts of the world the property of the nobility was largely taken away - eg. in India a few decades after independence in the 1970s - though the smarter kings managed to retain some control by sensing which way the wind was blowing early and turning into businessmen amd politicians. One strategy used was to endow property to "public" trusts, take controlling board seats and starting businesses contracted by these trusts to extract the income.

It's common in the US, and institutionalized to the point that the homeowner is in no danger of the 'landlord' revoking the lease. It is frequently historical and in such cases most states require by law the landholder to 'sell' the land to the homeowner on request, usually for a trifling sum. The term for this in the mid-Atlantic is "ground rent," if you want to look for more info.

Nobody really owns the land their house is built on in the USA... stop paying your property taxes (rent) and you'll see who owns it.

It's you, and you're in arrears on a tax obligation.

Did I get it right?

I don't owe any taxes, but finding the ones that do is a good way to find cheap properties...

This is such a tired claim. Every civilization ever has been built under the aegis of, if no one else, each other.

Of course you own it. The question is what "ownership" means. Ownership of a property is best defined by delineating the specific rights that you can exercise with respect to it. You may bar people from entering it. You might not be able to bar the government from entering it or making certain uses of it. There's a good chance you can't keep people from being underneath your house and extracting valuable minerals, if they're far enough down. Your rights don't extend very far above the earth.

But you knew all that when you made the purchase.

> There's a good chance you can't keep people from being underneath your house and extracting valuable minerals

6ft in my (Commonwealth) country.

Have always found it cool that ordinary Americans operate their own oil wells on their (sometimes small) properties.

> But you knew all that when you made the purchase.

and you didn't have any other options.

There's this underlying assumption that people seem to have that they have an absolute right to have absolute control over some piece of land. I'm really confused where that comes from. Was it that way in the past? I suppose, in various places and eras. But far more common was that you had enough power to deter the powerful around you, and you were for all intents and purposes a state. I can understand wanting to be a state, but you don't have a right to be one.

I suppose you can think of that way. But consider that the reason you are able to "own" any property is because there is a legal system in place(1). In someplace without an operating rule of law, a warlord could easily take "your" property.

Even if you're a King, if you stop paying your knights/army you probably won't hold on to your lands for much longer. Would you say (A) the army "owns" the king's land or (B) the army just makes it possible for him to continue owning it?

(1) Unless you are a Law unto yourself i.e. have your own army.

It's not just a way of thinking about it - it's the actual legal arrangement. In pretty much every state today, you don't own any land (unless you're a monarch, or a noble with an ancient allodial title) - you own an estate in land, but the government (or the monarch in person) owns the actual land.

you used to be able to get a thing called an allodial title, but it's basically extinct now.

Primary versus secondary property, sovereign and allodial versus infeudinated ownership. Different in autonomous kind due to a difference in degree of autarky.

You are right - I ran across this a few years ago which surprised me:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fee_simple

We all must pay service to our feudal lords.

It's not necessarily a bad thing - it's how you take a legacy system and adapt it to the new conditions without too much breakage. By making the government, in effect, the one and only feudal lord in its jurisdiction, and every land owner its vassal, the existing laws and precedent retain meaning, so you don't have to start from scratch - just change the things that need fixing.

  The land, the land,
  'twas God who made the land,
  The land, the land,
  The ground on which we stand,
  Why should we be beggars
  With the ballot in our hand?
  God gave the land to the people.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Land_(song)

I don't know about the rest of the UK but here in Scotland if you build property on someone else's land the property belongs to them (NB I've never seen a leasehold in Scotland but feudalism was only officially abolished a few years back!).

It makes some sense from a practical standpoint. It would get pretty sticky if your tenant built a house and then demanded you stay away from it even after the rental agreement lapsed.

In Germany, too. A house and the land on which it stands do not form distinct properties but only one, the reasoning is they are physically connected and the house cannot be separated from the land while still being used as a house.

The GDR had in the years of its existence softened this doctrine due to its ideological despice for property in general and their conception of public property (sort of modern fief: delegation of usage rights) in particular. Under this conception it was possible to have separate ownership in buildings. This was more or less a incentive and financing game: let the populace build the buildings out of their own savings, and as long we have not abolished property altogether, they might as well own the buildings.

However the land registration (Grundbuch) normally includes the buildings. This was however handled differently for different types of buildings. Apartment houses were more properly documented, smaller buildings (holiday homes, garages) nearly never. This was a big problem after reunification, because buying a realty, one could not be sure if there remained rights from third parties to the buildings on the realty.

https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkseigentum#Sachenrechtsbere...

There's also such a thing as "mineral rights", which is separate from land ownership. Hereabouts (Western WA), a lot of land that is built up used to be logged, and the companies that did, like Weyerhauser, often still hold mineral rights after selling off the land.

This raises the interesting question of what is better. To pay $4 per year or to buy out the obligation for a higher amount. To buy out it would have to be an amount which compensates to make up for what would be lost in the future (how do you even calculate that). To pay in advance for X years creates a problem as well. Hard to forget to pay every year, harder to keep track of something that needs to be paid every 20 or even 100 years. Excess paperwork overhead.

Yup, and it's been interesting to see the approach the different churches have taken. My town is a land grant town, so the Unitarians, Congregationalists, and Episcopalians own large tracts of land that are tied up in 999-year leases. The Episcopalians view this as a bother and they'll basically give up the freehold if you pay all the lawyer's fees. The UU's, on the other hand, are taking the long view and won't sell the leasehold; at least the offer I made (granted, at a cocktail party) was politely refused.

> The UU's, on the other hand, are taking the long view and won't sell the leasehold;

different churches have different interpretations of the scriptures, thus in particular different estimations of when the Second Coming and Apocalypses is to happen, etc. :)

Calculating the present value of a perpetual annuity seems appropriate.

> how do you even calculate that

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Present_value#Present_value_of...

If you owed me $4, I'd be much happier with a duckling.

For about a day, then you'd probably pay $100 for someone to take it.

How about cooking it?

If you can slaughter and dress one of the cutest things in nature then you are a broken soul.

I am joking of course. I would have not problem killing a cow/chicken with my own hands to eat it, but I don't think I could ever bring myself to kill a bunny or duckling or similarly cute animal. My heart swoons when I see them. I'm a pretty stone faced guy most of the time, but I think I would literally shed a tear.

My grandparents dropped out of retirement in Australia, bought a smallholding, and raised pigs, chickens and calves for most of the rest of their lives.

My grandmother had no trouble slaughtering their livestock ("Oh, Bully was such a sweet calf," she'd say, chewing her way through a steak), but apparently there were a couple of smallholdings down the road which couldn't bear to kill their own pigs.

To solve this, they would swap pigs with each other.

A duckling?

you'd need dozens of them

Certain parts do Rio de Janeiro are "owned" by the heirs of the royal family and every time someone sells property they get a cut. Brazil has been a republic since 1889.

Since no one else has mentioned it, in the UK (and other Commonwealth countries) these are called "peppercorn" rents: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peppercorn_(legal)

On my previous house, we had a leasehold of just our garage, oddly, with a peppercorn rent of £1 a year. Being young and innocent, I did ask whether I actually had to pay this, but my solicitor just laughed.

For the other side of that laugh, see Richard Feynman's "I want my dollar!" story: http://www.e-reading.mobi/chapter.php/71262/33/Feynman_-_Sur...

(Find "I want my dollar!" toward the bottom of the page)

It turns out there was technical paperwork signing over patent rights to the government at a dollar each...

I remember asking the same thing when I was a young researcher at my university too. I never got my dollar.

My grandmother lived most of her life in an enormous Edwardian apartment in Hampstead, North London. The place was worth over GBP3MM last I looked, but she paid the fixed rent of seventy pounds a year that had been negotiated in the 1930s with no termination or renegotiation possible until she left in the late '90s.

(Note: the relative value of seventy pounds in 1930 isn't a simple conversion, because economic conditions have changed. See https://www.measuringworth.com/ukcompare/relativevalue.php?u... for a discussion).

How much is it worth to you for me to create Duckling as a Service (DaaS)?

Likewise France's oldest debt: https://modeledbehavior.com/2010/01/31/the-worlds-oldest-exi...

The UK has never been through a "year zero" forcible reconstitution, so its constitutional and administrative arrangements are full of little adhoc anomalies (the various islands like Sark and Man, the City, "County" Durham, chancel repair liability, and so on). Mostly these are a fine and picturesque addition to the texture of the nation. There's certainly no real appetite to "fix" things, although Scotland managed to abolish the feudal system (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abolition_of_Feudal_Tenure_etc...)

However, this means that the sort of internal tensions which in the US get nailed to the mast of the constitution instead float around, un-crystallized. Until now, when the "brexit" vote has triggered a cascade of constitutional crises: is parliamentary consent required to leave the EU? How does this affect the Good Friday Agreement? What about Scotland? What exactly is the constitutional status of the Human Rights Act and why do the conservatives keep trying to abolish it? And so on.

There also a bond from a Dutch water board (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_board_(Netherlands)) issued in 1648 that still pays interest: http://news.yale.edu/2015/09/22/living-artifact-dutch-golden...

The article refers to "London", but likely that means what is now the City of London, just one of 32 boroughs of Greater London. Few live in the City of London ("the City") these days, it's mostly business and finance.

London vs City of London: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLqs5ohhass_QScZFYoQX-...

A really well-make explanation of the "City of London" I recommend CGP Grey's videos https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LrObZ_HZZUc

The City is fascinating in the UK context, it really is more like a different country. It's strangely archaic being more of the 1200s than the 21st century. It can alter its own constitution, still permits business voting long abolished in the rest of the UK, and avoided much of the modernisation and reform elsewhere.

There's now only about 10,000 residents - most of whom are in a single estate - the Barbican. Business votes now far exceed individuals.

That doesn't touch on freemen, livery companies, and all the other archaic complexity.

Secret City covers a lot of it, but the film is as much about the financial crisis.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_of_London

In what elections do businesses vote? Local or national? Could one set up a thousand shell companies and get a thousand votes?

Elections for the Common Council of the City of London Corporation. So local only.

Votes are provided based on corporation size, so just setting up shell companies won't work.

It's not quite that businesses get to vote. Businesses get to nominate some number of their employees as electors. I was an elector for a former company of mine. I could have voted however i liked, had i not quit the company before an election came along.

All good points. Also, the City of London has it's own police force, quite separate from the Metropolitan Police (the Met) who cover the other 31 boroughs of London.

One thing I wasn't sure of after reading the article, are the objects then given back to the city after the ceremony or do they need to provide more objects the next year.

The former seems implied from the age of the items, but that doesn't seem like rent to me.

That's what it sounds like to me too. Like the objects are brought out for the ceremony of "paying rent", but ownership of the items doesn't really change hands.

It'd be pretty interesting, though, to see & analyze history through an 800 year stretch of commodity products.

They are indeed returned after the ceremony. I suppose it helps keep the tradition without the tedium of trying to source another six oversized horseshoes every year. And the building of a pointless stock of blunt agricultural tools somewhere in Buckingham Palace too, I guess.

I was wondering about it as I read, too. I pictured a long hallway lined with 800-odd sets of items, maybe with a plaque here and there to provide context of what was happening in the country at that time.

Ah, only the Brits to turn a rental agreement into a photo op for tourists :)

Part of the ceremony should be sending some robbers in the night to steal them back, and if the guards catch them then have a public "flogging". Turtles all the way down you see.

From a page linked within the original article:

> The six horseshoes and the sixty-one nails themselves probably date from the 1360's. After being rendered to the Queen's Remembrancer, they are preserved in his Office and, with the permission of the Crown, they are loaned to the City Corporation to be rendered again the following year.

(http://www.cityoflondon.gov.uk/services/education-learning/s...)

If there's one thing you'd expect the city of London to excel at, it's finding a loophole that lets them pay a debt to the crown using property the crown loans them. If they're really doing it right, they probably get to bill the crown for holding the goods for them.

All these weird antiquated ceremonies and traditions remind me of Doug Stanhope's take on the UK still having a monarchy @ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ctOHo4RzZEc - tiny quote: "for gods sake is this a country or a renaissance festival, what kind of Dungeons and Dragons bullshit is that?"

This is part of a massive misunderstanding. Monarchy is not gone at all, it's a functioning power system, waiting for the day when it's time for a comeback. Similarly the catholic church. They just swap out the pope for a pro-gay one and otherwise just wait. These systems think in centuries.

And yet, while we're getting ready to votes for the lesser evil of Kang and Kodos, the Queen is well into her seventh decade on the throne, still enjoying approval ratings that democratic politicians can only dream about.

https://yougov.co.uk/news/2015/09/08/monarchy-here-stay/

It's rather easier to enjoy a high approval rating when what you need to do to maintain it is to not express any opinions and avoid taking any decisions and give sufficiently magnanimous answers to a few unimportant questions here and there, and not being caught doing anything offensive.

delegation done right.

Stratfield Saye House is rented from the Queen too, for the price of one silk flag per year. Although this has only been going on for a mere 200 years. http://royalcentral.co.uk/blogs/insight/annual-waterloo-cere...

There is a urban fantasy novel by Mike Sheldon based on the two oldest quit rents mentioned in this article.

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6673065-sixty-one-nails

Ha! This was my first thought too! An enjoyable read, the protagonist becomes progressively less sympathetic through the series

I'm torn between finding these kinds of things completely ridiculous and appreciating keeping old traditions alive. There's just something neat about these kinds of things. Hilariously pointless, but neat.

It's also symbolic, representing the abstract notion of a stable government in a real and tangible way. Such symbols can be useful.

"But each fall, usually in October, the city and the crown perform the same exchange, for no particular reason other than that they always have."

It's tempting to laugh at this silliness, but 1000 years from now coders will still be putting the open curly brace in C code on a separate line for no particular reason other than that they always have.

Reminds me of that bit in The Last Continent -

They'd never stopped, or even thought of stopping. You couldn't stop Tradition. You could only add to it. The three men reached the shadows by the main gate, almost blotted out in the whirling snow. The bledlow on duty was waiting for them. 'Halt! Who Goes There?' he shouted. McAbre saluted. 'The Archchancellor's Keys!'

'Pass, The Archchancellor's Keys!'

The Head Bledlow took a step forward, extended both arms in front of him with his palms bent back towards him, and patted his chest at the place where some bledlow long buried had once had two breast pockets. Pat, pat. Then he extended his arms by his sides and stiffly patted the sides of his jacket. Pat, pat. 'Damn! Could Have Sworn I Had Them A Moment Ago!' he bellowed, enunciating each word with a sort of bulldog carefulness. The gatekeeper saluted. McAbre saluted. 'Have You Looked In All Your Pockets?' McAbre saluted. The gatekeeper saluted. A small pyramid of snow was building up on his bowler hat. 'I Think I Must Have Left Them On The Dresser. It's Always The Same, Isn't It?'

'You Should Remember Where You Put Them Down.!'

'Hang On, Perhaps They're In My Other Jacket!' The young bledlow who was this week's Keeper of the Other Jacket stepped forward. Each man saluted the other two. The youngest cleared his throat and managed to say: 'No, I Looked In . . . There This . . . Morning!' McAbre gave him a slight nod to acknowledge a difficult job done well, and patted his pockets again. 'Hold On, Stone The Crows, They Were In This Pocket After All! What A Muggins I Am!'

'Don't Worry, I Do The Same Myself!'

'Is My Face Red! Forget My Own Head Next!' Somewhere in the darkness a window creaked up. 'Er, excuse me, gentlemen—'

'Here's The Keys, Then!' said McAbre, raising his voice. 'Much Obliged!'

'I wonder if you could—' the querulous voice went on, apologizing for even thinking of complaining. 'All Safe And Secure!' shouted the gatekeeper, handing the keys back. '—perhaps keep it down a little—'

'Gods Bless All Present!' screamed McAbre, veins standing out on his thick crimson neck. 'Careful Where You Put Them This Time. Ha! Ha! Ha!'

'Ho! Ho! Ho!' yelled McAbre, beside himself with fury.

Isn't 1211 four hundred years before the King James bible?

Odd thing to recognize but you are right King James Bible is from 1611.

> a knife, an axe, six oversized horseshoes, and 61 nails

It looks like, based on the photo, that the horseshoes take 10 nails each, so that could why they are accompanied by 60 nails.

So why 61? A spare?

"For want of a nail the shoe was lost..."

21 spare nails, 2 spare shoes.

Or 3 horses with a limp and a spare nail.

More impressive to me is the fact that Britain is still paying interest on a debt from 1720 (due to South Sea Bubble krach)

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/28/world/that-debt-from-1720-...

In Germany there is still payments going on which date back to the German mediatization because of compensations for exproriated property or liabilities on the propriety which switched the owner to some other princes and in turn now the state.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_mediatization

Considering that since then some three or four kings/dynasties have been rather unceremoniously disposed of ... looks like a bit of a formality, to rub it in.

I mean, you execute/exile/etc the person you owe the debt to, and keep paying it to the one you pick to replace him in the job of president - er, I mean, king?

I'm just waiting for someone to make use of an obscure provision to settle a dispute through Trial by Combat.

trial by combat was formerly abolished by Parliament in 1819

Formally?

Someone tried in 2002: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1416262/Court-refuses...

The US is still paying for Gitmo, they also might still be paying for Alaska :P

That's what "rent" means.

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