96 History of the English Landed Interest. 



equitable estates, of seisins, of uses, of trusts executed and 

 executory, of powers at common law and in equity, of terms 

 of years outstanding and assigned, of mortgages, of all the 

 complex interests — often fictitious, and even contradictory — 

 by which the same person may be at one side of Westminster 

 Hall the owner and at the other a trespasser^ which form the 

 Real Property Law of this country, would awaken in the 

 reader a kind of despair." 



No wonder, then, that we find in the writings of this age 

 frequent attempts to revert back to forms of public registry, 

 which had so simplified alienations in primitive times. 



In the Lords journals of 1669 we read that this uncertainty 

 as to the titles of estates was one cause of the decay of rents 

 and value of lauds, ^ and not long afterwards Dr. ChamberJaine 

 suggested the following remedy : " That (as hath been long 

 practised in the United Netherlands) Registers may be settled 

 in every Hundred, or in every County at least, and all Lands 

 and Houses may be entred in that Book, and therein all 

 Alienations to be set down in Alphabetical Order, and none 

 to be authentic if not there entred, that so no man hereafter 

 may be cheated by a Premorgage or any other way, but that 

 Men may be satisfied in what they possess and what they may 

 call their own." ^ 



And indeed the controversy on this subject is still as ani- 

 mated as it was two hundred years ago. Many a victim of 

 the practices called "tacking a mortgage" and "consolida- 

 tion of securities " since, would have had reason to bless Dr. 

 Chamberlaine had his proposal met with practical results.^ 

 Nor was it for want of earnestness that this writer failed in 

 his undertaking. He returns to the subject in a postscript. 

 " Of the many grievances of this Nation, none," says he, 



1 Vol. xii. p. 273. 



^ England's Wants, and Sereral Proposals very Adxantageous for Eng- 

 land, humbly offered, etc. By Dr. Chamberlaine, 1689. 



^ Even in Middlesex, where such a registry exists, tacking of mort- 

 gages is possible. The Act 4 and 5 Will. & Marj^ attempted, though 

 ineflfectually, to protect the innocent mortgagee, and the Act of 44 and 45 

 Vict. c. 41, s. 17, commonly called the Ck)uveyancing Act of 1881, partially- 

 abolished the consolidation of securities of a mortgagee. 



