guineas less tender than in the preceding year.
Two years later (1781) the 7 lots were severally let to Mark Sargent, John Lee, Thos. Milward and William Pollard, the total amount of rents offered being £10.11s. But in the next year there was an entire change, the several pieces of so-called waste land being let to Thomas Deeprose for £17.10s. It is presumed however, that Deeprose over-reached himself in this speculation, for in 1784 the whole of the ground from the Bathing house to the Priory Bridge only realised £7, Mr. John Polhill being the highest bidder.
During the next two or three years an agitation was renewed against the Corporation as claimants to the ownership of the waste beach, much of it being that which the sea had overrun and receded from. Some of the disputants contended that the fishermen had a chartered right of free use, and others that the Government, if so minded, could claim the foreshore on the strength of an Act of Parliament passed before the time of Queen Elizabeth. During this contention - not the first nor the last - at an assembly on the 14th of August, 1789, Mr. Milward opened the business with the information that he had received a notice from Mr. Acton (an attorney and ex-Town Clerk) importing that if he or the Corporation made any encroachment on the waste land an action would be brought. Mr. Milward remarked that by oral testimony as well as by several deeds and leases it appeared that for almost a century the waste land had been let to divers parties, and he believed the right was vested in the Corporation only. The assembly then by a majority resolved that they believed the right was still in the Corporation, and a motion was carried that Edwd. Milward be granted a lease of the waste sea beach between the Bathing-house and the Priory Bridge at £10 per year.
Apparently strengthened by the foregoing representation and resolution, the Corporation, in 1791, gave notice to Willm. Brett and William Carley that they had encroached on on (sic) the Corporation ground, opposite the battery. The said Wm. Brett (grandfather of the present writer) built what is now known as 10 East parade, but of what the alleged encroachment consisted, but whether of the entire ground or only a few inches, does not appear. In the same year a grant of land was made to surgeon Samuel Satterley for the erection of what was afterwards known as 1 to 5 Marine parade.
It is presumed that Brett set his house back to its present position, whilst Carley (who was an auctioneer) disregarded the notice and continued a recalcitrant until 1795, when at the Quarter Sessions on Jan 15th, Richard Edwards, Thomas Hutchinson and John Sargent gave evidence that they believed the ground on the south side of Carley's house, lately erected, belonged to the Corporation, and that they recollected capstans to have stood on the saw ground between the lower lighthouse and the fort, nearly opposite Carley's house and Wingfield's warehouse; also rope-shops standing thereon. One, who like myself, remembers even at a later period, the capstans placed within a few feet of the houses and other property in that district, might reasonably suppose that the evidence of these three witnesses told more for the claims of the fishermen than for the Corporation. But, perhaps, a little enquiry into the position or character of the witnesses may help us to judge the value of their testimony. Edwards, being a freeman, might have been biased in favour of the Corporation. Hutchinson might have been free from that taint, all that I have learnt of him being that he was one of a Hastings crew, who were seized at the entrance of Portsmouth harbour, and taken to Barfleur, in France, and there imprisoned. Sargent, however, appears in a very different light. In 1792, he was ordered to be prosecuted for refusing to act as overseer for St. Clement's parish, and in 1798, he was fined 10s for declining to act as a juryman. Also, later in the same year, he was sentenced to a month's imprisonment and to stand in the pillory two market days for committing an unnatural assault.
In 1798 there appears to have been a more than usually strong determination to wrest from the Mayor and jurats their authority over the sea-beach waste. Forty persons were sworn in as constables, the junior Edward Milward surrendered his lease of the ground between the bathing room and the priory, and certain persons were appointed as a committee of management for the said waste. One of the arguments of the disputants was that, being out of the town, the western limit of which was George street, the ground in question did not legally belong to the Corporation. It was, however, ordered by the latter, that proceedings be taken by the Town Clerk against James Halloway for an alleged ursupation (sic) of waste ground belonging to the Corporation. That there was not an amicable feeling between the prosecuting body in this case and the defendant may be -
