Seventeenth-Century Patents for River Improvement

This survey of monopolies granted by the Crown illustrates respect of the law, and a sensitivity to property rights balanced with recognition of the need for projects to benefit the ‘common weale’. John Gason’s and William Sandys’s patents were the only ones which purported to give authority for the compulsory purchase of land. Gason’s revised patent (1619) specified the method of assessment of damages which had been specified in the first statutory authority for compulsory purchase of land in 1539, and in 1621 statutory authority was sought from Parliament for the compulsory purchase powers granted by Gason’s patents. Sandys’s patent was more problematic, being granted in 1638 during Charles II’s Personal Rule and without the possibility of Parliamentary approval; it had been claimed the previous year that Sandys ‘went about to entitle his Majesty to men’s inheritances’.