Page:Harvard Law Review Volume 4.djvu/134

118 Il8 HARVARD LAW REVIEW. not at all to the final relief sought, namely, payment of the debt; and yet it has never been doubted, since the time of Lord Nottingham,^ that the admission of assets or the accounting should be followed up by a decree for the payment of whatever the plaintiff is found entitled to receive ; and this decree is made upon the principle of avoiding a multiplicity of suits. The ulti- mate relief, therefore, is consequential upon the primary relief, a creditor's bill against an executor being in this respect like a bill for an account.^ Creditors' bills against executors constitute one of the oldest heads of equity jurisdiction. At how early a date this jurisdiction was habitually exercised, it seems impossible to say. It was well established in the time of Lord Nottingham ; ^ and before his time few doctrines of equity were well settled, or can be accu- rately traced. We must now inquire into the rights of a creditor of a deceased debtor to call upon equity to assist him in enforcing payment of his debt out of the land of his debtor. It has already been re- marked that feudalism secured complete dominion over the land of deceased persons; and that is the reason that the land of a deceased person descends to his heir, instead of going to his executor. What effect had this upon the rights of creditors? The chief object of feudalism was to secure the performance by tenants to their lords of the services for which the former held their lands from the latter. Hence feudalism did not favor the claims of creditors; for, if the creditors of a tenant could compel payment of their debts out of the tenant's land, the latter might lie unable to perform his services to his lord, and if the creditors of a deceased tenant could compel payment of their debts out of th^ land which had descended to the tenant's heir, the latter might be unable to perform the services to his lord, the obligation to perform which had descended to him with the land. Hence, in English-speaking countries, the rights of creditors against the land of their debtors depend almost wholly upon statute. A judgment creditor could, indeed, at common law take in execution 1 In Parker v. Dee, supra, the plaintiff having obtained an account, the defendant pressed for a dismissal of the bill; but Lord Nottingham said (1 Eq. Cas. Abr. 130, pi. 5, 2 Ch. Cas. 201) : " When this court can determine the matter, it shall not be a handmaid to other courts, nor beget a suit to be ended elsewhere." '-* See Vol. 2, p. 259; Vol. 3, pp. 238, 242.
 * See Parker v. Dee and Pigott v, Nower, supra.