224 The Period ot Constitution iviaKing
But uses were not recognised by the law, and the crucial
question was where an authority could be found to force
the legal owner to keep his honourable agreement. For
when the practice became general, trusting to personal
honour proved an inadequate guarantee. The same re-
source was found as in other cases in which the common
law failed to provide a remedy; the distressed beneficiary,
who was being defrauded of his equitable rights, appealed
to the Chancellor as the depository of the king's all-
powerful and over-riding justice. The Chancellor inter-
fered and, by fine or imprisonment, forced the legal
owners to keep faith. It was not long before this work,
developing subdivisions and minutiae that cannot be ex-
amined here, was the chief and characteristic business of
the Court of Chancery. Thus during the last two centur-
ies of the middle ages, a transformation of the land laws
was well under way, * and a new court with a special juris-
diction had arisen. For Chancery's monopoly of this new
field completed its separation from the parent stem;2 by
the reign of Edward IV., the Chancellor, in his judicial
capacity, no longer acted for the Council. His court
had already created considerable supplementary law, and,
1 On this strange method of changing a body of law, Maitland com-
ments: "It is an exceedingly curious episode. The whole nation seems to
enter into one large conspiracy to evade its own laws, to evade laws which
it has not the courage to reform. The Chancellor, the judges, and the
parliament seem all to be in the conspiracy. And yet there is really no
conspiracy: men are but living from hand to mouth, arguing from one
case to the next case, and they do not see what is going to happen."—
Sketch of English Legal History, p. 123. It is apparent that, as this way of
manipulating legal ownership grew more common, the number of occa-
sions upon which the great landholders could collect reliefs, and the king
reliefs ^and primer seisins (see above, p. 121, note i), would decrease.
There is some evidence that king and lords were becoming aware of this
during the fifteenth century; but Henry VIII. was the first king who was
•fully aroused to the situation. He attempted to cope with it by forcing
through Parliament the famous Statute of Uses in 1536. For a discussion
of the failure and the peculiar legal results of this statute, see Pollock,
Tk® Land Laws, pp. 97-106. For further discussion of the Chancellor's
jurisdiction, see W, P. Baildon, Introduction to Select Cases in Chancery
(Selden Society, vol. x.).
m * Yet this separation did not deprive the Council of all its civil jurisdic-
tion. At the present day it is, through its judicial committee, practically a
court of ap|>eal from the ecclesiastical courts and from the courts in the
crown colonies and dependencies.