Westminster Hall, and provoked the complaints of the Commons, who denounced it as illegal and oppressive.

The protection thus afforded to the cestuique use, had an immediate effect in increasing the number of feoffments to uses. Sir Robert Atkyns, in arguendo,† says of uses and trusts, " they have the same parentsFraud and Fear; and the same nurse-a Court of Conscience." Without, indeed, the Court of Chancery had taken uses under its protection, we may fairly presume that they would never have become permanently implanted in our law of real property. Under its careful and provident superintendance this great innovation flourished greatly, and increased the power of the Court by enlarging its jurisdiction and multiplying its business. Sir Edward Coke, in a speech which he delivered in the House of Commons, in 1621, tells us that in the reign of Henry VI. not more than 400 subpoenas were, on an average, issued out of Chancery; but that in the reign of James I. the yearly average was not less than 35,000! The bar of the court seems proportionably to have increased; for we learn from Bishop Hacket, the biographer of our last ecclesiastical Chancellor, that the Chancery was at

The 17th Richard II. cap. vi. gives a power to the Chancellor of awarding damages against any one who should obtain a subpoena by false statement. By the 15th Henry VI. c. iv., it is enacted that no one shall sue a subpœna until he had found surety to satisfy the defendant his damages, if he should not verify his bill.

↑ Attorney-general v. Sir George Sands. Hardres. 491.

tended by fifteen serjeants or lawyers of the greatest eminence. Lord Bacon, in a letter which he addressed to the House of Lords, declares that he usually made two thousand decrees and orders in a year.

With all the benefits which they produced, conveyances to uses were the source of much mischief and the occasion of much fraud. Persons, possessed only of a limited interest in property, being tenants for life or for years, would convey their interests to others for their own use, and committed waste with perfect impunity; the reversioner, or person next entitled, being ignorant against whom to bring his action. This was remedied by the 2 Henry VI. c. 5.

They contributed, without doubt, to swelling the ranks of rebellious factions. When the penalty of treason may be evaded, we may expect that traitors will increase. This was found to be the case in Ireland, in the reign of Edward II., in consequence of which the Irish parliament passed an act (Stat. Kilkenny, 3 Edward II. c. 4,) which rendered void conveyances made for the purpose of enabling landed proprietors to commit treason, or other crimes, with impunity.

The greatest disadvantage remains yet to be mentioned. The Statute of Richard III. chap. 3, recites, "That by privy and unknown feoffments great unsurety, trouble, costs, and grievous vexations daily grow betwixt the king's subjects; insomuch that no man that buyeth any lands, tenements, rents, services, or other hereditaments, nor the last will of men to be performed, nor leases for term of life or years,

nor annuities granted to any person or persons, &c. be in perfect surety, nor without great trouble and doubt of the same, by reason of such privie and secret feoffments." The remedy provided by the act was, the bestowal, on the beneficial owner of the right of aliening, not only the use but the possession. Still the remedy was inadequate to the evil; for the right of the legal owners to alien was not taken away. In fact, it was no unusual occurrence for those in whom only the bare legal right resided to dispose of the estate and if the cestuique use had not exercised the power of alienation given him by this act, and if the purchasers had received no notice of the uses, subject to which the seller had held the estate, the cestuique use lost his property without the possibility of recovery. After the passing of the act of Richard II. the beneficial and legal owners, by making different dispositions of the property, would sell it twice over-deceiving purchasers, and enriching themselves.

For the remedy of these evils, which loudly called for legislative interference, was enacted that famous statute which, whatever might have been its intention, has effected a most striking and important change in the system of our jurisprudence, the Statute of Uses, (27 Hen. VIII. c. 10).

The motive of the framers of this important measure has been variously stated. According to Sir Edward Coke, they believed, "that uses were so subtle and perverse, that they could by no policy or provision be governed or reformed; and therefore,

as a skilful gardener will not cut away the leaves of weeds, but extirpate them by the roots; and as a wise householder will not cover or stir up the fire which is secretly kindled in his own house, but utterly put it out; so the makers of the said statute did not intend to provide a remedy and reformation, by the continuance or preservation, but by the extinction and extirpation of uses: and because uses were so subtle and ungovernable, as hath been said, they have with an indissoluble knot coupled and married them to the land, which, of all the elements, is the most ponderous and immoveable." Lord Bacon, however, in his admirable reading on the statute, asserts, "that the statute did not intend to abolish uses, but only to regulate them, by removing the abuses to which they had become subject." It is difficult, however, to agree to this opinion (in which, however, a very learned writer, Mr. Sanders, has concurred), if the preamble of the act is to be taken as recording the intentions of its authors.

The point is one of mere historical interest, and scarcely of such importance as to deserve discussion, even if it admitted of determination. If the intention of the statute had been to destroy uses, the strict construction which the judges put upon its language would have entirely prevented that intention being effectuated. The act declares, that where

* In this, the loss of forfeitures, &c., which the king and other lords had incurred, was especially dwelt upon. When the earl of Sussex was appointed to the Irish government, one of his instructions was to introduce a statute of uses.

any person is seised of lands to the use of another, that such person as shall have such use shall be deemed seised of the same lands in the same way as they were seised of the use. This act provides for a case in which there were only two persons concerned-a feoffee to uses, and a cestuique trust; but it did not provide for a case in which a conveyance should be made to one person for the use of another, for the use of a third. It was held, therefore, that the statute operated upon such a transaction as this, simply in transferring at once the legal estate to the first person for whom the use was declared, and stopped there without affecting the third person in whom the use would still remain. All, therefore, that was required to prevent the abolition of uses under the statute, was to create two trust estates instead of one; "and by this means," says Lord Hardwicke,* "a statute made upon great consideration, introduced in a solemn, pompous manner, hath had no other effect than to add at most three words to a conveyance."

There is something of exaggeration in this. Whether or no the statute effectuated the intentions of its framers, it was not an impotent piece of legislation-seeing, to borrow the language of an excellent writer, that it operated to communicate to the "legal ownership all the flexible and popular qualities of the use;" for in the words of a learned judge,‡ "the

• Davenport v. Oloys, 1 Atk. 591.

+ Hayes' Introduction to Conveyancing.

Judge Walmesley. Bacon's Reading on the Statute of Uses.