Thanks very much Matt . Your thoughts on the problems involved in this matter are much as mine have been , although more clearly organised than mine . Despite the discussion on the list , I don't think we really know exactly what was going on . The intent of the vestry may not have been quite in step with the fine points of the law . Perhaps they knitted it up for themselves as they went along - the indentures were not likely to be the subject of judicial scrutiny . Regards, Robert >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>. Certainly an area of land had no legal existence and could not enter into legal contracts of any sort - only a person or corporation could do that. However John is right in substance, if not in legal form. These were pauper apprenticeships, where the parish was putting pauper children out to apprenticeship in order to get rid of the expense of maintaining them. It was sometimes difficult to find masters willing to take such apprentices on, and some parishes had a system by which every farm was obliged to take one, in order to get rid of the paupers and spread the burden around fairly. This was probably what Holwell was doing - allocating poor children to the different estates - ie farms - in the parish. But while the vestry book loosely referred to the child as apprenticed to an estate the actual indenture of apprenticeship would surely have been entered into by the current farmer occupying that estate. I confess that I'm not sure would happen to the apprenticeship if the farmer died or just gave up his tenancy and moved away. The normal procedure when a master died was for his apprenticeships to be taken over by some other person, often his heir or someone chosen by the relevant guild - in Holwell the pauper apprenticeship was probably taken over by the new tenant of the farm in the same way. However a normal apprenticeship, being an unbreakable personal contract between two individuals, would not be terminated by the master moving the location of his business. Did the Holwell tenants take their pauper apprentice with them when they moved away, or did the parish ignore the legal technicalities and make the next tenant of the farm take the apprentice over? I don't know. Matt Tompkins <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<