Description:Sir John’s responsibilities as an estate owner extended beyond the management of land and overseeing of leases. As Sir John’s letters from agents George Cookes and George Plaxton suggest, the financial and social welfare of tenants was a significant concern to those managing the Leveson-Gower estates.
This concern is reflected in a petition sent to Sir John in April 1723 from the Mayor and Aldermen of Newcastle. The petition refers to a man named ‘John Glass’ who is described as ‘one of your Lordships poor tenants & burgeses’.
The petition states that Glass ‘was a little more in Drink then usuall inconsiderably engaged in Colonall Churchills Regement of Dragoons who are beating here for volanteers’.
The petition informs Sir John that Glass ‘has a wife & two Children which probably will become Chargebley to the Corporation’. The Mayor and Aldermen were concerned that Glass’s family would become dependent on the Corporation of Newcastle for financial support.
As owner of the estate, and a man of social and political prominence, the Mayor and Aldermen request Sir John to take action against this, stating that ‘your Lordships Intercession with the Colonell for his Discharge…will oblige’.