Family members as trustees for a 31 year old in 1627 [closed]

Question

On 22 June 1627 Henry Carleton of Chichester and his trustees Matthew Carleton of Dorking in Surrey and John Weston of Inchreed contracted to buy land and buildings (http://www.thekeep.info/collections/getrecord/GB179_MIL_2_14_2).  Henry was the son of George Carleton bishop of Chichester and Avis Weston of Mayfield, so presumably the trustees were family members.  I'm trying to figure out why he was still acting with those trustees at age 31.  His father died in 1628 and I haven't been able to locate his will.  Henry went on to become MP for Arundel in 1640 and was an officer in the Civil War, so presumably was not of limited capacity.  Is anyone aware of any common situation at this period that might have required representatives of both his parents' families being involved in this way?

Answer 1

You're applying the word trustee in the usual modern sense. Here it means holding land or property for someone's benefit. I would assume Matthew Carleton was going to run the house and John Weston was going to farm the land.

Edit: my suggestion was based on the fact that Weston was described as a yeoman rather than a gentleman but they could have held the land/property jointly if they were both his uncles or something. Maybe the land came from the Weston side originally?

Comments

Thank you Matthew.  It looks as if the land and buildings in this case were all tenanted, so perhaps Matthew Carleton and John Weston were going to jointly manage the tenancies for Henry.  I think I'll go down to the East Sussex Record Office and take a look at the original documents to see if there are any clues.  I'm very grateful, however, for your pointing out that the nature of the trusteeship need not (and almost certainly was not) of the type common today.