Further Land Legislation Examined. 255 



which dates back to pre-Conquest days, was termed a " fine," 

 which was strictly not so much the accommodation as the ter- 

 mination of a suit.^ 



Though the statute 4 Hen, VII. c. 24 made no apparent re- 

 ference to entails, indirectly it was a covert blow against the 

 statute De Donis. It did not repeat the declaration of the latter 

 statute that fines, as against the issue, should be void, but it 

 enacted generally that fines of land levied with proclamation, ^ 

 shall include as well " privies " {i.e. representatives of the 

 parties to the fine), as " strangers " {i.e. persons not represen- 

 tatives of the parties to the fine). Any one not a party to the 

 fine had powers to vindicate his claims within five years from 

 the date of levying the fine. This extension of the time, from 

 one year and a day, allowed by the Statute of Nonclaim in the 

 first Edward's reign, to five years, allowed by the seventh 

 Henry's statute, has deceived historians with the idea that it 

 had the opposite effect on estates tail to what had really been 

 intended. But it must be remembered, that barring the right 

 by Nonclaim was abolished by the statute of 34 Edw, III. c. 

 16, and only restored under less rigorous conditions by that of 

 Henry YII. ; and what doubts existed as to whether fines could 

 be considered a sufficient bar to the issue of a tenant in entail 

 were effectually removed by the statute 32 Henry VIIT, c. 36, 



By the reign of Henry VIII, Uses had become universal, and 

 their defects patent to the whole landed interest. They and 

 even feoffments were usually made secretly,^ so that suitors for 

 land met with the greatest difficulties in attempts to discover 

 the legal tenant. The complaints of defrauded creditors and 

 dowerless widows were united with those of the king and his 

 great feudal lords, who had been, by the same means, mulcted 



^ Cruise, Dig. Tit. 35, cli. i., ss. 1-6. It has been explained as the final 

 agreement or conveyance iipon record, for the settling and assuring of 

 lands and tenements, acknowledged in the king's courts by the cognisor 

 to be the right of the cognisee. 



^ Vide " Fine," in Jacobs' Law Diet. There were two kinds, viz., the fine 

 according to the statutes, because it had been pleaded, whereas the fine 

 without proclamation was termed a fine at the Common Law, and w' as 

 levied in the old manner prior to the statute 4 Hen. VII. c. 2i. 



^ Craig and Macfarlane, Hist, of England^ Bk. XL., ch. iii. 



