The register contains three tables of rents owed to the town under the name of arrentements The arrentement consisted of an annual fee that a bourgeois paid to the town for the unlimited enjoyment of any land, meadow, garden, field, building site that he could alienate but not free by a purchase followed by payment 2 The land still belonging to the commune was therefore burdened with a kind of perpetual mortgage of an arrentement that was paid annually 3 In this form with these charges the property was hereditary and could be sold by the tenant If the latter died without heirs or if infirmities and old age made him incapable of profiting from the rented property forced him to renounce it, the town resumed all its rights and leased the property to another bourgeois
1 In the margin The penny is paid by a tax which was made on the first of October 1640 and placed in the hands of Michiel Billi 2 It was so to speak the fief of the poor 3 This payment had to be made each year on the eve of Pentecost into the hands of the mayor who left office the next day and who had to account for this money to the community Several leases were still paid to the town of Virton no more than forty years ago