Page:Harvard Law Review Volume 32.djvu/361

Rh it follows that the Law never vests the Property in the Ordinary, and from thence it follows that the law never vests the property in. the Administrator."

For this proposition the Chief Justice cites, however, Y. B. 7 Edw. IV, Trin. 12, which is, if anything, an authority in favor of the administrator. Walsh, J. (p. 282), with the concurrence of all his associates, later said:

"If the defendant here had averred that the Administrator had aliened the Goods to him for a certain Sum, and had employed the, Money in Discharge of the Funeral, or of the Debts of the deceased, or about other Things which an executor should be forced to do, there the Sale for such Purposes should not be avoided, but should remain indefeasible; and the Reason is, because by the Commission of the Administration to him by the Ordinary, who was ignorant of the Testament, he has a Colour of Authority, though it is not a rightful one and he that has the Right suffers no Disadvantage although he be found by the Act of the Administrator, for it is no more than he himself was compellible to do."

It is difficult to see how this concession can be reconciled with the statement that the property was always in the executor and never in the administrator.

Abram v. Cunningham went even further than Graysbrook v. Fox, when it held that title given by an administrator de bonis non was worthless as against the claim of an administrator to the executor, Wolley V. Clark was an action by an executrix against the administrator and one to whom he sold goods after both had notice of the will which was later proved. The plaintiff was successful. But the element of notice differentiated the case from the earlier authorities. In Boxall v. Boxall, through the suppression of a will containing no appointment of an executor, a grant of administration was secured and a sale made thereunder to one ignorant of the concealment. This sale was held to be good though the letters were later revoked. The omission of an executor from the will makes this case, too, distinguishable. The same may be said of Craster v. Thomas, owing to the Indian Succession Act, 1865. But Ellis V. Ellis was a clean case in support of Graysbrook v. Fox