Wiltshire Titles’ Registration. 209 
are generally freehold, and may be and sometimes are so secretly 
conveyed by ill-disposed persons, that several who have purchased 
lands or lent money thereon, have been undone by prior and secret 
conveyances and incumbrances: And praying that leave may be 
given to bring in a bill for the public registering of all deeds, 
wills, conveyances, and other incumbrances, that shall be made of 
any honours, manors, lands, tenements, or hereditaments, within 
the said county of Wilts, and also for the enrolment of all bargains 
and sales thereof.” “Ordered: That leave be given to bring in 
a bill in accordance, &c.: And that Sir Richard Howe, Sir Charles 
Hedges, Mr. Montague, and Mr. Diston, do prepare and bring 
in a bill.” 
The only other references to the affair are, a second reading on 
the 19th of December; the gentlemen serving for Dorsetshire 
added to the committee in January; those for Surrey and Hunt- 
ingdon added in February; and finally, instructions conveyed to 
the committee on the following day, “That no attorney at law 
should be Registrar”; after which it disappears from the pages of 
the Commons’ Journal. 
This petition clearly enough exhibits the opinion entertained by 
~ men of property at the early part of the 18th century respecting 
the conveyances then in use for landed property: but the chief 
objection to them appears to be that they were not safe as against 
“prior and secret conveyances.” The Act proposed was never 
passed, but the decision of the Courts of Equity have since that 
period formed a good protection against the fraudulent and secret 
practices complained of. The care which during the last and 
present century has been bestowed on the documentary proof of 
titles has greatly contributed to discourage and frustrate secret 
conveyances. Indeed the commission of such a fraud is now a 
very unusual circumstance; the grievance felt at the present day 
being one of a different kind, consisting in fact of the element of 
expensiveness, as the result of that elaborate investigation, and 
cumbrous verbosity which are deemed requisite for the due pro- 
tection of a purchaser or party accepting a security in freehold 
land. It is chiefly for remedying this, that a Commission has been 
25 
