PAROL AGREEMEKT FOR A LEASE. 311 



being the subject of equitable jurisdiction, of which a si)ecific perform- 

 ance will be granted. Lord Chancellor Henley said, " How can a 

 master judge of repairs in husbandry ? What is a proper ditch or 

 fence in one place may not be so in another." Where a tenant has 

 committed breaches of covenant by waste, treating the land in an un- 

 husbandlike manner, A-c, and been guilty of various breaches of cove- 

 nant for which the lessor had a right of re-entry, he is not entitled to 

 a specific performance of an agreement for a lease {Hill v. Barclay). 

 And in Neshilt v. 3Ieyer specific performance was refused of an agree- 

 ment to grant a lease for a term expired before the hearing of the 

 cause, as the acts of waste, which were confined to the cutting down of 

 70 or 80 poles of the value of £3 in order to repair the fences, would 

 not entitle the plaintiff, iu an action on the covenants to be inserted in 

 the lease, to more than nominal damages. 



Wiere iqmn a ]mrol ayreement for a lease (the land, the rent, and the 

 terms of years being certain) the tenant was let into imssession, and the 

 landlord received a sum of money from him for the stock on the farm, 

 Sir J. Stuart Y.C. decreed that the tenant was entitled to a specific 

 performance of the agreement {Pain v. Combes). But if under an 

 agreement for a lease the tenant files his bill for specific performance, 

 and yross acts of waste and yross breaches of covetiant arc jiroved ayainst 

 him, the Court will not grant a lease, the only effect of which would be 

 to compel the landlord immediately to sue the tenant for breach of the 

 covenants ; but where the alleged acts of waste and breaches of covenant 

 are explained or contradicted on the other side, the Court will not take 

 such doubtful questions into consideration, as a reason for refusing a 

 decree for specific performance {ib.). A Court of Eqiiity will ?iot 'inter- 

 fere yenerally to restrain an action of ejectment brouyht ayainst a lessee for 

 breaches of covenant in the lease, except for breaches in nonpayment of 

 rent {Nokes v. Gibbons). And where a lessee covenanted to make 

 certain drains, it is not an equitable ground of interference that he 

 employed persons to make the drains, but that they did not do the 

 work properly {ih.). It is laid down (Prec. Chan. 561) that where a 

 man on a promise of a lease to be made to him, lays out money on im- 

 provements, he shall oblige the lessor afterwards to execute the lease, 

 because it was executed on the part of the lessee ; besides, that the 

 lessor shall not take advantage of his own fraud, and run away with 

 the improvements made by another : if no such expense had been on 

 the lessee's part, a bare promise of the lease though accompanied with 

 possession, as where a lessee by parol agreed to take a lease for a term 

 of years certain, and continued in possession on the credit thereof, 

 there being no writing to make out this agreement, it is directly Avithin 



