THIS CONVEYANCE made the . . . day of . . . BETWEEN A.B. of etc. of the one part and C.D. of etc. of the other part WHEREAS the said A.B. is the estate owner in respect of the fee simple in possession of the messuage hereinafter described and hereby conveyed free from incumbrances and has agreed to sell the same to the said C.D. for £I,000 NOW THIS DEED WIT NESSETH that in pursuance of the said agreement and in con sideration of the sum of ii,000 paid to the said A.B. by the said C.D. (the receipt whereof the said A.B. doth hereby acknowledge) the said A.B. as beneficial owner doth hereby convey unto the said C.D. ALL THAT messuage or tenement situate etc. and known as etc. TO HOLD the same unto the said C.D. in fee simple. And the said A.B. hereby acknowledges the right of the said C.D. to pro duction and delivery of copies of the following documents of title [mentioning them] and undertakes for the safe custody thereof IN WITNESS etc.
It will be observed that throughout the deed there are no stops, the commencement of the several parts being indicated by capital letters. The draft conveyance having been approved on behalf of the vendor, it is engrossed upon stout paper or parch ment, and there remains only the completion of the sale, which usually takes place at the office of the vendor's solicitor. A pur chaser is not entitled to require the vendor to attend personally and execute the conveyance in his presence or that of his solici tor. The practice is for the deed to be previously executed by the vendor and delivered to his solicitor, and for the solicitor to receive the purchase money on his client's behalf, since a pur chaser is safe in paying the purchase money to a solicitor pro ducing a deed so executed, when it contains the usual acknowl edgment by the vendor of the receipt of the money. Upon the completion, the documents of title are handed over except in the case above referred to, and any claims between the parties in respect of interest upon the purchase money, apportioned out goings, or otherwise are settled. The conveyance is, of course, delivered to the purchaser, upon whom rests the obligation of affixing the proper stamp—which he may do without penalty within 3o days after execution (Stamp Act 1891). It may be added that, subject to any special bargain, which is rarely made, the costs of the execution by the vendor and other parties whose con currence is necessary, and of any act required to be done by the vendor to carry out his contract, are borne by the vendor.
Upon the sale and conveyance of a leasehold property sub stantially the same procedure is observed as above indicated in the case of a freehold. A few additional points, however, may be specially mentioned. Under an open contract the vendor cannot be called upon to show the title to the freehold reversion. Accord ingly, the abstract of title begins with the lease, however but the subsequent title need not be carried back for more than 3o years before the sale. The purchaser, apart from stipulation, must assume, unless the contrary appears, that the lease was duly granted, and upon production of the receipt for the last payment due for rent before completion, that all the covenants and pro visions of the lease have been duly performed and observed up to the date of actual completion. The vendor's covenants for
title implied by his assigning "as beneficial owner" include, in addition to the covenants implied by those words in a convey ance of freehold, a covenant limited in manner above men tioned, that the lease is valid, and that the rent and the provisions of the lease have been paid and observed up to the time of con veyance. Where the vendor, as is the common case, remains liable after the assignment for the rent and the performance of the covenants, the purchaser must covenant to pay the rent, and perform and observe the covenants and provisions of the lease and keep the vendor indemnified in those respects. This cove nant is implied unless a contrary intention appears. (As to leases see LEASE, LANDLORD AND TENANT.) Procedure.—In some cases rights attaching to real estate are protected by peculiar remedies. At an early period it became more convenient to try the right to the possession of, rather than the right to the property in, real estate. Possessory tended to super sede proprietary remedies, from their great simplicity and elas ticity. The general mode of trying the right to both property and possession was from the time of Henry II. the real action, the form called "writ of right" (after Magna Carta gradually confined to the Court of Common Pleas) being used to determine the prop erty, that called "assise of novel disseisin" being the general means by which the possession was tried. About the reign of Elizabeth the action of ejectment became the ordinary form of possessory remedy. Real actions existed until the Real Property Limitation Act 1833, by which they were finally abolished, with unimportant exceptions. The assise of novel disseisin, the action of ejectment in both its original and its reformed stage, and finally the action for the recovery of land in use since the Judicature Acts are all historically connected as gradual developments of the possessory action. There are certain matters affecting real estate over which the Court of Chancery formerly had exclusive jurisdiction, in most cases because the principles on which the court acted had been the creation of equity. By the Judicature Act 1925 (re-enacting the Act of 1873) there are assigned to the Chancery Division of the High Court of Justice all causes and matters for (inter alia) the redemption or foreclosure of mortgages, the raising of portions or other charges on land, the sale and distribution of the proceeds of property subject to any lien or charge, the specific performance of contracts between vendors and purchasers of real estates, includ ing contracts for leases, the partition or sale of real estates, and the wardship of infants and the care of infants' estates. In the case of rent a summary mode of remedy by act of the creditor still exists (see DISTRESS, RENT).