RELATIONS OF LAW AND EQUITY AS AFFECTED BY THE STATUTE OF USES A BY CHARLES NEATE, M. A. FELLOW OF ORIEL COLLEGE Oxford AT THE CLARENDON PRESS M.DCCC.LXXIII [All rights reserved ] L.Eng. Ces € Real Prop 30 INTRODUCTION. THE subject of this book is the change wrought in the law of Real Property by the great Statute of Uses, and other statutes which were its consequences or its complement, as regards both the legal and the equitable estate. The primary object and intention of the Statute of Uses was no doubt, as is apparent from the preamble set forth in full at the end of the last book, to bring back the land of the country, under the conditions of tenure, and the jurisdiction of the Common Law Courts, from both of which it had been the aim, and to a great extent the effect, of the equitable jurisdiction to exempt or withdraw it; and this intention is further evidenced by the establishment of a new Court of Wards and Liveries, 'for the survey and management of the fruits of tenure,' as Reeves describes it, which was done by two several Acts passed respectively within five and six years of the date of the Statute of Uses. The result of the statute was to restore in a great degree the jurisdiction of the Common Law Courts, but to alter also in some measure, more perhaps than was intended, the character of the legal estate, by conferring on it some of the advantages and facilities of transfer which before the statute belonged to the equitable estate alone; nor did the statute prevent the growth of a new equitable estate, subject as the old one had been to the jurisdiction of Courts of Equity, but maintained and developed with a different purpose. Indeed, after a time, the two jurisdictions, in their several dealings with the real property of the country, lost the antagonistic character which had marked their earlier relations, and B |