ns as be ffeoffees to my use imediately after my Decease shall
deliver estate in fee of and in my Tenement in Royston called the
Ramm's head, to certain honest persons as shall be named and appointed
by mine executors to the performance of this my last Will and
Testament. I will that the yearly profitts of the said Tenement, the
Lord Rent, reparcons, and other charges deducted and allowed, then the
Rent thereof comeing nere every year to be taken and retained by two of
the Antient of the said ffeoffees and putt in a Box Locked, and so to
remaine in the safe custody of the said ffeoffees unto such time as any
manner of Tax, Subsidie, and whatsoever any manner of other charges
shall be granted unto the King or his heirs, Kings of England by Act of
Parliament, and then the Money so coming of the Rent of the said
Tenement to discharge and acquit all such Persons as then shall dwell
in the said Towne of Royston, that is to mean within the side of
Cambridge, every man and person after their porcon, and I will the said
two ffeoffees, or their heirs, shall at the end of every three years
make a true and faithful accompt of the revenues of the said Tenement
to the Prior of the said Monastery, or to his successors Priors, and
when it shall happen any great sume to remaine in the said Box then I
will that part of the said sume, that is to witt, all that is more than
four Pounds, shall be disposed in deeds of charity amongst the poor
Inhabitants within the said Towne of Royston by the good Discretion of
the said Prior and successors."

Little thought William Lee that within less than a dozen years
Monastery and Prior would be no more, and still less that the time
would come when no tax or subsidy to the King should be levied directly
upon the inhabitants of the town. The beneficial interest of the
townspeople in the trust, however, remained, and the question arose
how, in the absence of any such levies and charges upon the {39}
towns-people by King and Parliament, as were common enough in his day,
the provisions of the benefactor's will were to be interpreted.

During nearly the whole of the reign of George III., and also during a
part of that of George II., the Parochial Parliament for Royston,
Cambs., made short work of that knotty point, by simply treating the
Estate as parish property; the houses were let and rents collected by
the Overseers, and the revenue is duly entered in the year's parochial
balance sheet, with the nam