FROM 1583 TO 1702. 87 



the Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, Justices Windham, 

 Jones and Scroggs being directed to assist. It was reported 

 with amendments on March 6, read a third time on March 7, 

 and sent the same day to the House of Commons. Here it 

 was read a second time and committed on April 2. On April 

 1 1 , the Committee reported that they had made several 

 amendments to the bill, with all which except one, to make it 

 a temporary act, the House agreed, passed the bill, and 

 returned it to the Lords. These amendments were agreed to, 

 and the royal assent was given on April 16, when the Houses 

 adjourned. 



The first clause of this Act provides, that ' from and after 

 June 24, 1677, all leases, estates, interests of freehold or terms 

 of years, or any uncertain interest of, in, to, or out of any 

 messuages, manors, lands, tenements, or hereditaments made 

 or created by livery of seisin only or by parole or not put into 

 writing and signed by the parties or their agents so making or 

 creating the same lawfully authorised by writing, shall have 

 the force and effect of leases at will only, and shall not either 

 in law or equity be deemed or taken to have any other or 

 greater force and effect, any consideration for making any 

 such parole leases, or estates or any former law or usage to 

 the contrary notwithstanding.' 



Of course the obvious and natural interpretation of this 

 clause, according to the practice of modern times, when 

 statutes have no retrospective effect, and actual rights, however 

 acquired, are held to be sacred, is, that the ancient forms of 

 conveyance were to be valid as far as concerned all interests 

 created before June 24, 1677, but were to be nugatory after- 

 1s. But I have long been convinced that the clause was 

 intended to destroy, and succeeded in destroying or reducing 

 to tenancies at will, those numerous freeholds which had been 

 ted under fee-farm rents, and by ancient forms of convey- 

 ance, and were not fortified by documentary evidence. Bet\\ 

 the Restoration and the Revolution there is an extraordinary 

 ppearance of those numerous freeholders whom one reads 



