Also 5–6 quite-, (quyte-, 5 white-, etc.). [f. quite QUIT a. + RENT.]
1. A rent, usually of small amount, paid by a freeholder or copyholder in lieu of services which might be required of him.
c. 1460. Pol. Rel. & L. Poems (1866), 24. Consydere what seruyce longyth ther-to And the quyterent that there-of oute shalle goo.
1463. Bury Wills (Camden), 24. xijs. of white rente.
1511. Fabyan, Will, in Chron. (1811), Pref. p. xi. All the charges and quyterents … goyng owte of the same.
1532–3. in Swayne, Sarum Churchw. Acc. (1896), 264. To my lorde of Salisbury for quytrent, vijs. iiijd.
a. 1680. Charnock, Attrib. God (1834), II. 57–8. He that pays not the quit-rent … disowns the sovereignty of the lord of the Manor.
1706. Mrs. Ray, in Lett. Lit. Men (Camden), 208. £40 a year … out of which taxes, repairs, and quit-rent make a great hole.
1776. Adam Smith, W. N. (1869), I. II. iii. 336. The rent which they paid was often nominally little more than a quit-rent.
1848. Mill, Pol. Econ., II. vii. § 1. A tenant at a quit rent is to all intents and purposes a proprietor.
b. transf. or fig.
1607. Tourneur, Rev. Trag., I. i. Wks. 1878, II. 7. Vengence, thou murder’s Quit-rent.
1645. Quarles, Sol. Recant., III. 54. Is’t not enough that we poor Farmers pay Quit-rent to Nature at the very day?
1737. Green, Spleen, 657. Fit dwelling for the feather’d throng, Who pay their quit-rents with a song.
1833. H. Coleridge, Poems, I. 12. The rose-lipp’d shells Which Neptune to the earth for quit-rent pays.
attrib. 1782. Cowper, Table Talk, 110. The courtly laureate pays His quitrent ode, his peppercorn of praise.
2. A charge upon an estate for some special purpose. ? Obs.
1454. Rolls Parlt., V. 258/1. Devysed and by his legate ordeyned, vi mark of annuell quyte rente to the sustenaunce of a Prest perpetuall.
a. 1500. Colyn Blowbols Test., 180, in Hazl., E. P. P. (1864), I. 101. Sauf only a certeyn quyte-rent, Which that I have gevyn with good entent To pay for me, unto my confessour.
1712. Addison, Spect., No. 517, ¶ 2. The gifts of charity which … he had left as quit-rents upon the estate.
