Letter from [George Booth (1675-1758), 2nd Earl of] Warrington, to Hugh Kinder, bailiff of Mottram in Longdendale parish, dated 26 June 1739. It is customary for Booth's tenants, when they sell their tenements, to assign them for ninety-nine years if the lives in the lease shall live so long, leaving the freehold remaining with the lessee. This practice deprives the purchaser of a vote in Parliamentary elections, and if Booth's successors ever want to levy a fine or suffer a recovery they will be put to great expense and difficulty in finding out in whom the freehold is vested. "Therefore to remedy the mischief", Kinder is henceforth to give notice to every purchaser of a tenement that he must not consent to its sale unless Booth is first fully satisfied that the freehold is legally conveyed.
Another letter from M[ary Countess of] Stamford to Hugh Kinder, dated 6 May 1771. The agent of Mr [Wilbraham] Tollemache ("Tolmarsh") [later 6th Earl of Dysart] has given instructions for the felling of the Brushes [an area of woodland in Stayley], to which M.C.S. considers she has an equal right. Kinder is therefore to employ an equal number of workmen to begin at the same time as those employed by Tollemache's agent.