Laws Relating to Real Property and Conveyancing

diminished by sub-infeudation until the passing of the Statute of Quia Emptores. Alienation by a tenant in chief of the Crown without licence was a ground of forfeiture until 1. Edw. III. St. 2. C. 12, by which a fine was substituted. The modes of con veyance at this time were only two, feoffment with livery of seisin for corporeal hereditaments, grant for incorporeal heredita ments. Livery of seisin, though public, was not officially recorded like the old English transfer of property. The influence of local custom upon the land law must have become weakened after the circuits of the judges of the king's court were established by Henry II. Jurisdiction over litigation touching the freehold was taken away from the lord's courts by 15 Ric. II. c. 12.

The common law, so far as it dealt with real estate, had in the main assumed its present aspect by the reign of Henry III. The changes which have been made since that date have been chiefly due to the action of equity and legislation, the latter sometimes interpreted by the courts in a manner very different from the intention of parliament.

The most important influence of equity has been exercised in mortgages and trusts, in the doctrine of specific performance of contracts concerning real estate, and in relief from forfeiture for breach of covenant.

History of Real Estate Legislation.

The reign of Edward I. is notable for three leading statutes, all passed in the interests of the superior lords. The Statute of Mortmain (7 Edw. I. st. 2. c. 13) is the first of a long series directed against the acquisi tion of land by religious and charitable corporations. The statute De Donis Conditionalibus (13 Edw. I. c. I) forbade the aliena tion of estates granted to a man and the heirs of his body, which before the statute became on the birth of an heir at once alien able (except in the case of gifts in frankmarriage), the lord thereby losing his escheat. The statute Quia Emptores (18 Edw. I. c. I) preserved those rights of the lords which were up to that time subject to be defeated by subinfeudation, by enacting that in any alienation of lands the alienee should hold them of the same lord of the fee as the alienor': the statute, however, does not bind the Crown. The practical effect of this statute was to make the transfer of land more of a commercial and less of a feudal transaction. The writ of elegit was introduced by the Statute of Westminster II. in 1285 as a creditor's remedy over real estate. It has, however, been considerably modified by sub sequent legislation.

The reign of Henry VIII., like the reign of Edward I., is sig

nalized by three important Acts. The one which had the most lasting influence in law was the Statute of Uses, 27 Hen. VIII. c. Jo (see TRUST), the object of which was to destroy altogether the system of uses and equitable estates. It enacted, in sub stance, that whoever should have a use or trust in any heredita ments should be deemed to have the legal seisin, estate and pos session for the same interest that he had in the use ; in other words, that he should become in effect the feudal tenant without actual delivery of possession to him by the actual feoffee to uses or trustee. In its result the statute was a fiasco. After a decent interval it was solemnly decided that the Act transferred the legal possession to the use once only, and that in the case of a conveyance to A to the use of B to the use of or upon trust for C, it gave the legal estate to B and left C with an interest in the position of the use before the statute. The statute thus formed the foundation of that complicated system of trusts fastened upon legal estates and protected by courts of equity, to simplify which was one of the objects of the Acts of 1922-25. The Statute of Uses was intended to provide against secrecy of sales of land, and as a necessary sequel to it the Statute of Enrolments (27 Henry VIII. c. 16) enacted that all bargains and sales of land should be publicly enrolled. Bargain and sale was a form of equitable transfer which had for some purposes superseded the common law feoffment. But the Statute of Enrolments was in terms limited to estates of freehold, and its unforeseen effect was to establish as the ordinary form of conveyance until 1845 the 'Tenants in chief of the Crown were liable to a fine on alienation until 12 Car. II. c. 24.

conveyance by lease and release'. It was allowed that a bargain and sale for a term, say, of one year, must transfer the seisin to the bargainee without enrolment. And since what remained in the bargainer was merely a reversion which "lay in grant," it was an easy matter to release this by deed the day after. By this ingenious device was the publicity of feoffment or enrolment avoided, and the lease and release, as the process was called, remained the usual mode of conveying a freehold in possession down to the i9th century. The third Act, 32 Hen. VIII. c. I (explained by 34 and 35 Hen. VIII. c. 5), was passed to remedy the inconvenience caused by the fact that uses having become legal estate by the Statute of Uses were no longer devisable (see WILL).