Page:Landholding in England.djvu/64

 tokens, and sometimes by writing, and for the most part made by such persons as be visited with sickness, in their extreme agonies, and pains," or when they had hardly "any good memory." Thus many heirs have been disinherited, lords have lost their wards, marriages, reliefs, heriots, escheats and aids; hardly any person can be sure the land he has bought is his own, or against whom to bring an action to recover his title. Widowers have lost their "tenancy by courtesy," women their dowers; manifest perjuries have been committed; the King has lost the profits and advantages of the lands of persons attainted, and many other inconveniences have happened, and daily increase, "to the utter subversion of the ancient common laws of this realm."

To avoid all these evils, it was now enacted that whoever held lands to the use of another, should be adjudged to be in lawful possession of those lands. "The Statute," says Blackstone, "conveys the possession of the use, and transfers the use into possession." He who uses is "complete owner, as well in law as in equity."

At first, this diminished the power of Chancery, because the Common Law Courts began to look on uses as a mode of conveyance. But the lawyers again found a way to evade the Statute of Uses, and to increase the power of the Chancery. The usual method was this: A conveyed lands to B to the use of C to the use of D. The Statute of Uses decided that only the first use could be executed, and the Common Law Judges laid it down that the powers of the statute were exhausted when once it had been called into operation, and "the limitation of a further use to another person was therefore void."

So the Common Law refused to recognise the right of D to the use. D's only hope was in the Chancellor, to whom he appealed. The Chancellor, "who hath power to moderate and temper the written law and subjecteth himself only to the law of nature and conscience," ruled that, as the obvious intention of A was that D should have the use, this was a trust in equity, though not in law, and ought "in conscience" to be performed. So the old device was revived, and these second uses came to be known