Page:Landholding in England.djvu/65

 as "trusts," and the Statute of Uses had done little but change a word.

The Statute of Uses enacted that fines for alienation, etc., should be paid to the King. It also tried to ensure that secret conveyances introduced into uses should be destroyed, and conveyances be made only by the "solemn and open livery of seizin." It was certainly a very bad thing that the real ownership of any lands should be doubtful or unknown. But here too the statute was outwitted. One way of creating uses was by "bargain and sale." By this, the legal owner (bargainor) contracts to sell his interest in the land to another (the bargainee), and the bargainee pays, or promises to pay for the land. At Common Law, there must have been a proper legal conveyance; but Chancery laid it down that "a use was thus raised in favour of the bargainee, and that the bargainor was the bare legal owner holding to the use and profit of the bargainee" (Digby). The Statute of Uses made "bargain and sale" valid. Before the statute, B would have got the equitable interest; after it, he got the full legal interest. There was no notoriety about "bargain and sale," and thus the legal interest in lands could be conveyed by strictly private acts, which need not be recorded in writing, and might be incapable of legal proof." So the same year Parliament passed the Statute of Enrolments, to prevent clandestine conveyances. And now no estate, nor any use thereof, could be conveyed by bargain and sale, unless said sale was made by writing indented, sealed and enrolled in one of the King's Courts of Record, or within the county where the land in question was situated.

Once more the lawyers defeated a statute. Estates less than freehold—such as those held for a term of years—were not mentioned. So if A bargained to sell B the land for one year there need not be enrolment. The bargain for one year raised a use for one year to B, and by the statute gave B possession of his term as if he had actually