Document of Mortgage Indenture

Sussex County, England, 1783. Very good. 29.75" x 21" vellum document with scalloped top edge, folded bottom edge secured with red wax seal, two vertical and three horizontal folds. In addition to the wax seal, there is an embossed blue revenue stamp and two ink stamps, one on the front and one on the rear. Exquisitely precise legal hand recounts in 45 lines the details of this Indenture of 600 pounds (approximately equal to 100K pounds at today's rate), in exchange for a parcel of land that includes multiple fields and meadows and buildings. On the rear of the document is witnessed by Susanna Thatcher and John Carey Junk, as well as six notations confirming annual payments from 1785 - 1790, most in the amount of 30 pounds, docketed by the principle, W. Harcomb. The introductory words, "This Indenture", in black include a printed or stamped symbol of the crown with the motto "Honi soit qui mal y pense", Middle French maxim, meaning "shamed be whoever thinks evil of it", and used as the motto of the British chivalric Order of the Garter. "This Indenture made the seventeenth day of January in the thirty third year of the reign of the our Sovereign Lord George the Third by the Grace of God of Britain and Ireland as king defender of the faith and so forth and in the year of our Lord...Between Lovell Gladwish of the Parish of Ore in the Count of Sussex Gentleman of the one part and Will Harcomb of Hilsham in the parish of Saint Leonard...