defective titles

defective titles. A Commission for Defective Titles was first issued by James I in 1606 to enable his subjects ‘to quietly and privately enjoy their private estates and possessions’. The main object was to prevent prying into land titles caused by the search for concealed lands. Participating Old English and Gaelic Irish landholders secured letters patent in return for promising rents and services to the crown. Ironically the same dispensation was exploited by New English adventurers to secure title to formerly concealed lands, to change leases into ownership, and to obtain easier tenures. These sharp practices, which impoverished the crown, continued under a second commission issued in 1615.

The Old English wanted parliamentary confirmation of the Graces limiting royal claims to land held privately over the previous 60 years, but instead Wentworth created a Commission of Defective Titles with statutory authority in 1634. Wentworth's object was to boost revenue by forcing landholders, both native and planter, to convert to the higher knight's tenure (see land tenure), which made them not only liable to heavier crown rents but also subject to financial and religious exploitation by the court of wards.

Futhermore in the case of tenures (1637) the Irish judges questioned the validity of patents issued by the earlier commissions under James. Far from securing land titles, Wentworth was now threatening all land titles prior to 1634. These high‐handed land policies were a major grievance against Wentworth in 1641.

In 1684 another Commission of Defective Titles, known as the Commission of Grace, sought to secure the Restoration land settlement following a renewed concealment campaign. However, when James II came to the throne, Protestant landholders feared that it would become a weapon to disinherit them.

Hiram Morgan