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Indiana University Studies 
to be needed, since the Statute of Enrollments of bargain 
and sale deeds had been avoided by the deed of lease and 
release, but the scheme did not prove a success. In the time 
of George II the Statute of Mortmain was modified so as to 
permit gifts inter vivos and check deathbed donations to cor- 
porations, and a statute was passed giving a landlord the 
power to sell goods distrained for rent. Otherwise the law 
of real property remained as it had been codified by Lord 
Coke. 
Personal Property. In 1670 was passed the Statute of Dis- 
tributions, said to have been drafted by Edward Hyde, Earl 
of Clarendon, for the administration of personalty in case of 
intestacy, and this statute has been the basis for the distribu- 
tion of personalty in Anglo-American law ever since. In 
1623 was passed the Statute of Monopolies making void all 
existing monopolies and patents except those granted to the 
first inventor of some new manufacture to be used within the 
kingdom, and they were cut down to twenty-one years, and 
as to the future were to be given for fourteen years or under. 
This act is the foundation of the present patent laws of the 
world. In 1709 was passed a Copyright Act. In the seven- 
teenth century the right to the exclusive publication and print- 
ing of a book had been recognized as a common law right, 
but it had proven practically worthless because of difficulty 
of proving damage and because defendants were liable to be 
paupers. The Copyright Act abrogated the common law, re- 
quired record of title, gave the author the exclusive right of 
publication for fourteen years after 1710, with a right to 
renew for another fourteen years, and gave the power to cer- 
tain dignitaries to regulate the price if unreasonable. This 
act was repealed in 1842, but was amended and revived again 
in 1911. 
Contracts. The law of contracts continued to develop thru- 
out this period. Bilateral agreements were enforced thru 
special assumpsit in the seventeenth century as unilateral had 
been enforced in the sixteenth ; and the quantum counts were 
developed thru general assumpsit in the seventeenth century 
as the indebitatus counts had been developed in the sixteenth 
century. Lord Mansfield laid the foundation for the law of 
implied conditions, 3 " and developed whatever notions of moral 
33 Kingston v. Preston, 2 Doug. 689. 
