CROWN DEBT, in English law, a debt due to the Crown. By various statutes—the first dating from the reign of Henry VIII. (I S41 )—the Crown has priority for its debts before all other creditors even in bankruptcy proceedings. At common law the Crown always had a lien on the lands and goods of debtors by record, which could be enforced even when they had passed into the hands of other persons. By the Act of 1541 specialty debts were put practically on the same footing as debts by record. Simple contract debts due to the Crown also became specialty debts, and the rights of the Crown are enforced by a summary process called an extent. (See WRIT.) The difficulty of ascer taining whether lands were subject to a Crown lien or not was often very great, and a remedy was provided by the Judgments Act, 1839, and the Crown Suits Act, 1865. Later, by the Land Charges Act, 1900, no debt due the Crown operated as a charge on land until a writ of execution for the purpose of enforcing it has been registered under the Land Charges Registration and Searches Act, 1888. Both Acts were repealed and substantially re enacted by the Land Charges Act, 1925.
The preference for debts due to the Crown, the duchy of Lan caster and the duke of Cornwall was abolished in the case of insolvent estates by the Administration of Estates Act, 1925.