A brief apology of Thomas Cartwright against all such slanderous accusations as it pleaseth…A brief apologie of Thomas Cartwright against all such slaunderous accusations as it pleaseth…

Thomas Cartwrightes answer.

Thomas Cartwrightes answere.

Here is a charge of a purchase of three or four good Manors, and two good leases, & both got (for the most part) by the spoil of th'Hospital, except the price of some small Cottage, &c. For the purchase of three or four Manors, I never purchased any Manor in my life but the Manor of Saxmundehā in Suffolk, whereof I have yet but he moiety, nether shall have these fourteen or fifteen years, if one Mr Johnsons lease be available, as hitherto he hath enjoyed it by me: who have not disturbed his possession. The rent that he yieldeth for th'one half of the Demesnes is but xxx. shillings by year. The rent of the demesnes that I receive (although enhanced as far as the Tenant may live thereof) is yet but xxvi. pound by year. Th'other ⟨image 13⟩rents for Copyholds come yearly to a iij. pound or thereabouts, as I remember. So that the whole of that I receive cometh to little above xxx. pound by the year. To purchase this I sold of the inheritance my Father & grandfather left, as fair a house for a farm, not only as is in that town where it standeth, but in divers towns about, which had between eight or nine score Acres of arable land belonging unto it, with commons, meadow & pasture agreeable to the Farms in that country, by year more then three times worth the value that either my father or I received for it, & yet we received between eight and nine pounds yearly of clear rent discharged of all quit rents. That Mr Sutcliffe may the better enquire into it, the Farm is situate in Waddon in the county of Cambridge, seven miles from Cambridge, where I had also a coat with a close adjoining unto it, which I sold when I did sell th'other. Now where he sayeth I purchased my lands with my Hospital, I know not why he should so often term it my Hospital, rather then (as it is truly called) the Hospital of the Right honourable the Earle of Leicester: But this I know and profess constantly, that neither I nor any for me purchased one foot of land since I came to the Hospital: I sold an annuity in fee-simple of xii. pound x. shillings by year since I came thither, as my L. chief Justice of her Majesties common pleas doth well know, before whom I acknowledge a fine: Leases of the Hospital I never made but one only, for which the house & not I received thirty pounds.