XTII.] DISTRIBUTION OF LAND IN ENGLAND. 55 



instructed a friend to bring an action against himself, 

 in due form, in the Court of Common Pleas, seeking 

 that the right to the land might be adjudged to the 

 complainant. Simply to have allowed judgment to 

 go by default, a mere cessio in jure, would not have 

 bound the heir of the owner. The owner therefore 

 alleged that some other person had warranted the 

 title of the land to him (the owner), and that person 

 was admitted to defend the action in place of the 

 owner, according to the usual course of law, as the 

 person on whom the loss would ultimately fall, if the 

 plaintiff succeeded in bis suit. At the hearing the 

 alleged warrantor made default, and judgment was 

 given that the plaintiff should recover the land in 

 dispute, and the original defendant should have an 

 equivalent out of the lands of the warrantor. 



If the defendant in the collusive action died, and 

 his heir brought his action founded on the gift in tail, 

 he was met by the objection, that his ancestor had 

 received an equivalent for the land entailed, which 

 equivalent must have descended to the present 

 claimant, as heir to his ancestor. 



It is most probable that this decision first took 

 place in a hostile suit, in which the heir in tail was 

 really in possession of the equivalent ; and that some 

 astute lawyer, seeing that the court assumed, with- 

 out proof, that the heir had inherited the equivalent 

 for which his ancestor had obtained judgment, per- 

 ceived that a door was open for escaping from the 



