"[Vellum Manuscript Indenture]",

This vellum indenture serves as testament to a one-year lease of a "messauage, burgage or tenement," signed March 23, 1787. The lease is between Robert Hoar, yeoman, from the Parish of Saint Clements Deanes in the county of Middlesex and Edward Wells, the younger, from Wallingford in the county of Berks Brower. Edward paid 5 shillings for the tenement in Cholsey, county of Berks Taylor, known as "Shop Orchard Garden," which was used as a public house with an outhouse. The tenement which Edward has leased was previously owned by John Saunders and subsequently the late Robert Hoar, the father of Robert Hoar named in the indenture.

The top of the indenture is cut in a jagged ("toothed") line, as was the common practice with indentures. The legal contract was duplicated on a single sheet, and then the copies were separated by a jagged edge, so that the two pieces could be fit together again to verify authenticity. The indenture includes a tax stamp and a red wax seal.

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Condition: A

Clean and bright with a small hole at top right in a blank area of the sheet.