Page:Harvard Law Review Volume 32.djvu/363

327 could make a good title to leaseholds belonging to the estate. In Slater v. May, Chief Justice Holt said:

" that it was reasonable there should be such an administrator, and that this administration stood upon the same reason as an administration durante minori aetate of an executor, viz. that there should be a person to manage the estate of the testator, till the person appointed by him is able."

Administration may also be granted temporarily during the illness or lunacy of the executor; or pending a search for a lost will; or until the will should arrive from a foreign country. These administrations admit the principle of a power and, at least in the case of an administration durante minore aetate, a complete power, to deal with the estate even though there be an executor. The logical result of the holding in Graysbrook v. Fox would be to hold all these administrations void, "traps for the unwary."

At length the law of England received a definite turn in the right direction in the recent case of Hewson v. Shelley in the Court of Appeal. Letters were granted to the widow of a roan who was erroneously supposed to have died intestate. The administratrix sold to a purchaser a portion of the deceased's real estate. A will was found and executors appointed. In an action by the executors to recover possession of the realty sold the Court of Appeal, reversing Astbury, J., who conceived himself bound by the earlier cases, held that the grant of administration was not void and that the purchaser had acquired a good title. Phillimore, J., after review- ing the earlier authorities said (p. 44): "It seems to me that the true view is that till the Ordinary was concluded by probate he had for the benefit of all those interested, including, at any rate in ancient times, the soul of the deceased for the repose of which masses were to be provided, the power to commit administration and to pass the property thereby, subject to that administration being recalled and the power and title of the administrator determined upon production possibly, upon probate certainly, of a will. ... It is not as if we were asked to decide that the mere discovery of a will avoided all the acts