Page:William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England (3rd ed, 1768, vol II).djvu/365

 Ch. 21. that it has at leat the ame force and effect with a feoffment, in the conveying and auring of lands: though it is one of thoe methods of transferring etates of freehold by the common law, in which livery of eiin is not neceary to be actually given; the uppoition and acknowlegement thereof in a court of record, however fictitious, inducing an equal notoriety. But, more particularly, a fine may be decribed to be an amicable compoition or agreement of a uit, either actual or fictitious, by leave of the king or his jutices; whereby the lands in quetion become, or are acknowleged to be, the right of one of the parties. In it's original it was founded on an actual uit, commenced at law for recovery of the poeion of land; and the poeion thus gained by uch compoition was found to be o ure and effectual, that fictitious actions were, and continue to be, every day commenced, for the ake of obtaining the ame ecurity.

is o called becaue it puts an end, not only to the uit thus commenced, but alo to all other uits and controveries concerning the ame matter. Or, as it is expreed in an antient record of parliament, 18 Edw. I. "non in regno Angliae providetur, vel et, aliqua ecuritas major vel olennior, per quam aliquis tatum certiorem habere poit, neque ad tatum uum verificandum aliquod olennius tetimonium producere, quam finem in curia domini regis levatum: qui quidem finis ic vocatur, eo quod finis et conummatio omnium placitorum ee debet, et hac de caua providebatur." Fines indeed are of equal antiquity with the firt rudiments of the law itelf; are poken of by Glanvil and Bracton in the reigns of Henry II, and Henry III, as things then well known and long etablihed; and intances have been produced of them even before the Norman invaion. So that the tatute 18 Edw. I. called modus levandi fines, did not give them original, but only declared and regulated the manner in which they hould be levied, or carried on. And that is as follows: Rh