justice." They did not even proceed by indictment, but examined men themselves, sometimes at their private houses. And now they began to "enthral and change the subjects' lands with tenures in capite, by finding false offices"—that is, feigned and invented duties. So they made them pay for the seven incidents to which tenures in capite were liable.[1] The last vestiges of the Saxon system were vanishing.
CHAPTER IX.— HENRY VIII.'S STATUTE OF USES
THE preamble of a statute is often the most illuminating part of it. Like all other human documents, it may contain false statements, and put forth false motives, but none the less, it reveals the intention of the framers, and the general state of things to be altered for better or worse.
The great Statute of Uses of 27 Henry VIII. {1536) was intended to destroy the distinction between legal and "beneficial" ownership of land, and to make the person who benefited the legal tenant, liable for all burdens. This was undoubtedly in accordance with justice. It was also designed to destroy the power which had grown up (through the introduction of uses) of disposing by will of interests in lands. The preamble says that "divers and sundry imaginations, subtle inventions and practices have been used," to evade the Common Law, and to convey lands from one to another "by fraudulent feoffments, fines and recoveries, and other assurances craftily made to secret uses and trusts, and also by will and testaments, sometimes made by bare words (nudeparol), sometimes by signs and
- ↑ Aids, relief, primer seizin, wardship, marriage, fines for alienation, and escheat. Primer seizin was the sum demanded of an heir who inherited when of full age. The orphan heir of a tenant in capite while under age became the ward of the feudal lord, who could sell his ward's marriage. (See the "Paston Letters.") Escheat, or "falling in," meant the reversion of lands in capite to the feudal lord, when a tenant died without heirs of his blood, or when his blood was "corrupted" by attainder.
