xiv.] DISTRIBUTION OF LAND IN ENGLAND. 59 



statute of Henry VII. differs in no essential particu- 

 lar from that of 1 Richard III., c. 7. The statute 

 of Henry VII. merely relaxes the provisions for 

 ensuring the publicity of a fine contained in the 

 earlier statute. 



There is another objection scarcely less fatal than 

 the last to the assumption of a deep political design 

 in the framers of the statute, that the design, if it 

 existed, was so clumsily carried into effect by the 

 words of the statute, that it became necessary about 

 fifty years afterwards to pass another statute, the 

 32 Henry VIIL, c. 36 (1540), to declare that the 

 4 Henry VII. applied to entailed estates at all. The 

 4th of Henry VII. was a general statute intended 

 to restore (with modifications) the ancient rule of 

 law, which made a fine or compromise of a suit con- 

 cerning land in the King's Court, a bar to the suit 

 of any one who did not claim the land comprised in 

 the fine, within a certain period after the fine taking 

 place. There was a saving clause in the statute of 

 Henry VII., and most persons now reading it would, 

 I think, conclude that the right of an heir in tail 

 was within the saving clause, and therefore not 

 intended to be affected by the general enactment. 



There is also the third objection, that the law had 

 already admitted the right of the tenant in tail in 

 possession to acquire an absolute right to his land, by 

 means of a common recovery, and further, that the 

 common recovery was more effectual than the fine, 



