The Controversy over a Land Registry. 99 



to which the process was especially liable, but to the pernicious 

 nature of the process itself. But, as has already been pointed 

 out in the earlier portion of this work, the use of Common 

 Recoveries was invented to avoid, as much as might be, the 

 inconveniences caused by the statute De Donis. Without some 

 such process the tenant in tail could have made neither jointure 

 for his wife, nor provision for his children, nor payment of his 

 debts. For want of some better substitute the State reluct- 

 antly acknowledged the necessity for the practice, but hedged 

 it around with a series of Acts in the hope of preventing the 

 invention of others still worse. For the powers afforded by 

 Feigned Recoveries were closely connected with the system 

 of mortgages and other means of raising money on landed 

 property, and these in their turn created abuses, to remedy 

 which the outcry for registration arose. Nor would those 

 abuses have been allowed to exist if legislation only had sufficed 

 to prevent them. The following preamble to 13 Eliz. c. 5 

 shows how alive statesmen had become to the evils of the 

 system : — 



"For the avoiding and abolishing of feigned, covenous and 

 fraudulent Feoffments, Gifts, Grants, Alienations, Conve^-ances, 

 Bonds, Suits, Judgments and Executions, as well of Lands and 

 Tenements, as of Goods and Chattels more commonly used and 

 practised in these days than hath been heard of heretofore ; 

 which Feoffments, Gifts, Grants, Alienations, Conveyances, 

 Bonds, Suits, Judgments, and Executions have been and are 

 devised and contrived of Malice, Fraud, Covin and Collusion, 

 to the end and intent to delay, hinder or defraud Creditors and 

 others of their just and lawful Actions, Suits, Debts, Accounts, 

 Damages, Penalties, Forfeitures, Heriots, Mortuaries and Re- 

 liefs, not onl}^ to the Let or Hinder ance of the due Course and 

 Execution of Law and Justice, but also to the overthrow of 

 all true and plain Dealing and Bargaining between man and 

 man, without which no Commonwealth or civil Society can 

 be maintained or continued." 



We need not give in detail the provisions of this Act which 

 was intended to prevent these evils, for that they proved in- 

 effectual is evident by the necessity of such further legislation 



