Description:Thomas Webster wrote to the Duke of Sutherland in 1851 claiming to be suffering from ‘great difficulty and distress combined with a damaged reputation’.
Webster attributed his distress to ‘the arbitary and oppressive manner’ in which he had been treated as tenants of the Duke at Normacott Grange Farm.
Webster’s letter tells is that he and his family had come to the farm in 1847 with a capital of one thousand pounds. At that time Normacott Grange Farm was ‘in a very impoverished state’ and Webster claimed that it had been ‘agreed on the part of the Landlord’ that the land would be put ‘into tenantable repair’.
Webster goes on to describe an agreement which was made that he, as tenant, would pay ‘one years rent’ from Michaelmas1848-9 towards ‘draining’ the land over the course of seven years. Webster complains that the contract was not adhered to, and instead, his ‘stock was sold at great loss’ and his family was ‘ejected from the farm, ruined in circumstances and injured in character’.
Following their eviction from the farm, ‘to avoid the impending ruin’ Webster claims that he had made offers to pay the rent within a month, offers which were ‘rejected’, causing him to lose over one thousand pounds which he describes as ‘a heartrending and ruinous sacrifice’.
Webster’s letter also includes a copy of an original petition listing the names of numerous local farmers in Caverswall and Stallington who had put their names to a statement that Webster and his son had been ‘very unjustly treated’.
Webster appealed to the Duke’s ‘well known character’, asking him to ‘institute a rigid enquiry into the circumstances’ of their complaint ’and award such compensation as justice and liberality would sanction’.
Webster’s letter suggests that the family had been treated unfairly during their time as tenants of Normacott Grange Farm. However, other papers accompanying his complaint tell a different story.
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