Mr Errington in 1936 bought a house in Milvain Avenue, Newcastle upon Tyne, for his son and daughter in law, paying £250, and the remaining £500 coming from a mortgage, paid off with 15s a week by the newly weds.

The three-judge panel in the Court of Appeal unanimously held that the daughter in law did not have to move out of the house, because she was entitled to stay and pay off the mortgage as part of a binding agreement with the father, for varying reasons.

Denning LJ held this was no mere tenancy at will; the father could not have revoked his promise once the couple had begun performing the act of paying off the mortgage instalments.

The rule that a licence could always be revoked at will was ‘altered owing to the interposition of equity.’ His judgment continued:[1] What is the result in law of these facts?

A good instance is Howard v Shaw, (1841) 8 M. & W., page 118, where a person was left into exclusive possession under a contract for purchase.

The first case to show this was Becker v Palmer, 1942 A.E.R., page 674, where an owner gave some evacuees permission to stay in a cottage for the duration of the war, rent free.

The Master of the Rolls, Lord Greene, said (at page 677): "To suggest there is an intention to create a relationship of landlord and tenant seems to me to be quite impossible.

When a requisitioning authority allowed people into possession at a weekly rent, Minister of Health v Bellotti, 1944 K. B., page 298, Southgate Borough Council v Watson, 1944 K.B., page 541, Ministry of Agriculture v Matthews, 1950, 1 K.B., 148: when a landlord told a tenant on his retirement that he could live in a cottage rent free for the rest of his days, Foster v Robinson, 1951 1 K.B., 149, 156, when a landlord, on the death of the widow of a statutory tenant, allowed her daughter to remain in possession paying rent for six months, Marcroft Vagons Ltd. v. Smith, 1951 2 K.B., page 496 when the owner of a shop allowed the manager to live in a flat above the shop, but did not require him to do so, and the value of the flat was taken into account at £1 a week in fixing his wages, Webb Ltd. v. Webb, 24th October 1951 (not yet reported): in each of these cases the occupier was held to be a licensee and not a tenant.

The result of all these cases is that, although a person who is let into exclusive possession is prima facie to be considered to be a tenant, nevertheless he will not be held to be so if the circumstances negative any intention to create a tenancy.

But if the circumstances and the conduct of the parties show that all that was intended was that the occupier should be granted a personal privilege, with no interest in the land, he will be held only to be a licensee.

Applying the foregoing principles to the present case, it seems to me that, although the couple had exclusive possession of the house, there was already no relationship of landlord and tenant.

I ought perhaps to mention two cases which appear at first sight to revert to the former view: The first is Rogers v Hyde, 1951 2 K.B., page 923, where a landlord promised that a sharing arrangement (which was really a licence) should "be within the Rent Acts".

The other case is Thompson v Earthy, 1951 2 K.B., page 596, where a husband, for good consideration, gave an undertaking that he would allow his wife and children to remain in his house rent free.

I notice however that, in coming to this decision, Mr Justice Roxburgh emphasised that the wife was not a licensee, basing himself on something I said in Oldgate Estates v Alexander, 1950 1 K.B.