Page:Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States (1st ed, 1833, vol I).djvu/71

 CH. II.] down to the period of the American Revolution. Marriages, except in special cases, were required to be celebrated in the parish church, and according to the rubric in the common prayer book. The law of inheritance of the parent country was silently maintained down to the period of the American Revolution; and the distribution of intestate estates was closely fashioned upon the same general model. Devises also were regulated by the law of England; and no colonial statute appears to have been made on that subject until 1748, when one was enacted, which contains a few deviations from it, probably arising from local circumstances. One of the most remarkable facts in the juridical history of the colony, is the steady attachment of the colony to entails. By an act passed in 1705, it was provided, that estates tail should no longer be docked by fines or recoveries, but only by an act of the legislature in each particular case. And though this was afterwards modified, so as to allow entails to be destroyed in another manner, where the estate did not exceed £200 sterling in value, yet the general policy continued down to the American Revolution. In this respect the zeal of the colony to secure entails and perpetuate inheritances in the same family outstripped that of the parent country.

§ 51. At a very early period the acknowledgment and registry of deeds and mortgages of real estate were provided for; and the non-registry was deemed a badge of fraud. The trial by jury, although a privi-