Page:Harvard Law Review Volume 4.djvu/22

6 6 HARVARD LAW REVIEW, the point of registration, which was effected in early England by depositing a written instrument in the county court or in a monastery.^ It is interesting to notice that, upon the settlement of this country, a system of registration of deeds instantly sprang up, fully developed, as if it were an underground stream suddenly risen to the surface. ♦ When, therefore, after the Conquest, lenders desired to advance money upon landed security, the Norman judges had ready at hand, in their own civil law, fully worked out, a simple and practical system of giving security, entirely consonant with the habits of thought of the English people. Using the word vadium, gage, whether the possession was to be turned over to the pledgee or not, the Norman judges recog- nized gages or pledges of land, either with or without transfer of possession. If the pledgee took possession, the transaction was a pawn ; ^ if not, it was a hypothecation. It would be the greatest mistake to suppose that feudal seisin was essential to an effectual pledge of land in feudal times. The pledgee might leave the pledgor in possession, and still be secure, by recording a written contract of pledge in the King's Court ;^ precisely as, under Justinian, such a contract would have been reg- istered in a public office, or, under the Saxon laws, in a county court or a monastery. This provision for registration was a mere adaptation to English ground of the Roman system. Even when the pledgee of land, in feudal times, took posses- sion, he did not take a full feudal seisin ; he took only a " quasi seisin,* a seisin *' de vadio^'^ as it was called, — a "pledgee's 1 2 Bl. Com. 342, 3. 2 4 Bract. (Rolls Ed.) 74, 236. 8 Quandoque vero convenit inter debitorem et creditorem de re aliqua invadiata, accepts ^ debitore re mutuatasi non sequatur ipsius vadii tradito, quomodo confuletur ipsi creditor! in tali casu, maxime cum possit eadem res pluribus aliis creditoribus, turn prius turn posterius, invadian ? Super hoc notandum est, quod Curia domini Regis hujusmodi privatas conventiones de rebus dandis vel accipiendis in vadium, vel alias hujusmodi, extra Curiam sive ettam in aliis Cunts quam in Curia domini Regis facias^ tueri non solet nee warrantizare ; et ideo si non f uerint servatae, Curia domini Regis se inde non intromittet, ac per hoc de jure diversorum creditorum priorum vel poste* riorum aut de privilegio eorum, non tenetur respondere. Glanv., lib. x. c. 8 It is very singular that Blackstone, in quoting from this passage, garbles it, and omits the vital qualification extra curiam. . . factas, thus entirely reversing the sense. See also, as to agreements made in the King's Court, Glanv., lib viii cc. i.-iii.
 * Bract. (Rolls Ed.) 74, § 4.
 * Glanv.. lib xiii cc. 2, 26-30; 4 Bract. (Rolls Ed ) 236-240.