Friday Frivolity: A Mansion for a Peppercorn?!? Oh, Those Royals!
Caroline Davies, who apparently drew the short straw and was rewarded with the Prince Andrew beat, reports in The Guardian that the Crown conveyed to the Prince the thirty-room Royal Lodge. The home is owned by the crown estate, which manages properties on behalf of the state. Revenues go to the treasury. The lease entitles the Prince and his family to remain on the property until 2078.
Royal Lodge sits on 98 acres in Windsor Great Park. The conveyance suggests that, in exchange for the conveyance, Prince Andres is obligated to pay one peppercorn (if demanded). The reporting suggests that the Prince shares the abode with his ex-wife, Sarah Ferguson. I guess I don’t understand the lives of the royals. There are numerous cottages on the grounds as well as a driving range, tennis courts, and accommodations for security guards. Pictured below are the entry gates to the property, so that gives you a sense of the modesty of the outbuildings on the property.
Image by Alan Hunt, CC BY-SA 2.0.
Andrew began his residency in 2002, after the death of the Queen Mother. Queen Elizabeth II also gave him a residence, Sunninghill (below), as a wedding gift. Prince Andrew sold Sunninghill in 2007 for £15 million.
Image by Dee Earley – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0
But now, there is pressure, presumably from non-Royals, who wonder why the Prince and his ex-wife, both of whom seems to have had close ties with Jeffrey Epstein, should get to live in such splendor. In connection with that outrage, we have learned that the official price for the conveyance is but one peppercorn, and that, only if demanded. My colleague, Paula Dalley, pointed out that peppercorn rent is a familiar concept in English property law. Property is often encumbered with various obligations associated with the land. The owner may convey the property for a peppercorn, but the real consideration is the assumption of responsibility for the legal obligations associated with the property.
Sure enough. It is no easy thing to live in a royal mansion. The Prince had to pay £1 million up front on the property, which is valued at £20 million, and he is reported to have spent £7.5 million on repairs to the property. So the peppercorn apparently does not constitute the sum total of the considerations. Nonetheless, it seems possible that the crown estate could be bringing more money into the treasury, if that were a goal, by selling the property for its full value and leaving it to the buyer to keep up the maintenance.
The Crown, it seems, delights in eccentric forms of consideration. Contracts Prof Ann Lousin has shared with us the following bit of trivia regarding Blenheim Palace (below):
After John Churchill defeated the French at the Battle of Blenheim, Queen Anne gave him the royal lands near Oxford and the money to build what is probably the largest private home in Britain. She also made him Duke of Marlborough.
In return, the Queen demanded that each duke present a replica of the French banner taken at the battle, to the monarch every year By terms of her gift, the current duke is to present it to the monarch at Windsor Castle every August, near the date of the battle. So every duke has done so for over 300 years. Failure to present the banner replica will cause the vast holdings to revert to the crown.
