Woburn First Nat. Bank v. Woburn, 1075, 1079, 1102 Woerz v. Rademacher, 436, 447, 449, 581, 672 Wolf v. Merritt, 792 Wolfe v. Howes, 187, 354 Wolfe v. Van Nostrand, 34, 41, 44, 235. Wood v. Bach, 977 Wood v. Brown, 535, 536 Wood v. Chapin, 391, 433, 812, 815, 818, 819, 940, 945, 988 Wood v. Gordon, 782 Wood v. Jackson, 893, 896. Wood v. Rabe, 436, 805, 811, 884 Wood v. Seely, 725, 737, 739 Wood v. Taylor, 28, 270, 297, 341, 797 Wood v. Ward, 444 Wood v. Weyant, 1000 Woodward v. James, 383, 444, 445, 537, 549 Woodruff v. Oswego Starch Co., 162, 163 Woods v. Breder, 149 Woodworth v. Genesee Paper Co., 103 Woodworth v. Paine, 186 Wright v. Douglass, 424, 425, 430, Wright v. Sadler, 112, 113, 124, 128, 134, 397, 398 Yale v. Dederer, 738, 975 Young v. Heermans, 453, 479, 895, 896 Young v. Overbough, 805 Young Women's Christian Home v. Youngs v. Carter, 701, 893 Z. Zarkowski v. Schroeder, 171, 463 Zartman v. First National Bank of Zelzer v. Cook, 774 INTRODUCTION. CHAPTER I. Historical Review. As the modern law of real property, among most English-speak ing peoples, is composed of common as well as statute law, it necessarily subsists on very ancient foundations, for the common law relating to real property is, whether rightly or wrongly in fact, generally assumed to be the older portion of our jurisprudence.1 It is, therefore, conceived that a preliminary dissertation, treating of several features of the archaic law of land and inculcating the leading principles of conveyancing at different epochs, may form no irrelevant introduction to even the most modern of all statutes concerning real property. Statutes can never be read aright without reference to the antecedent state of the law. The law of the present is so inextricably blended with past institutions and with a historic terminology that we are forced, whether we will or not, constantly to recur to original sources. The present law of real property in the State of New York is but a statutory modification of the former English law relating to lands and estates therein. The history of limitations of estates in lands marks successive stages, mounting like steps of a stairway from an ancient foundation to the present modern and statutory structure. Mr. Butler2 in his day counted five stages from the feudal settlement; and to these we in this country have. to add others, denoting the results of a transmigration of a people, the occupation of a new country, the establishment of a subordinate colonial government, a revolution in that government, the reforms consequent upon such a great organic change and, finally, 1 Inderwick, The King's Peace, 5; Williams, Per. Prop. 31. Yet it may well be doubted whether private property in land is not a later conception than private property in cattle, goods, etc. But as the earliest written evidences of English law are concerned mainly with land, it is not erroneous to affirm that the com mon law of land is the older, in so far as the recognized sources are concerned. 2 Charles Butler, Esq., of Lincoln's Inn, the author of many of the notes contained in the 13th edition of Coke on Littleton and in his day one of the leading conveyancing counsel of England. statutory innovation. It is not necessary or even desirable to advert to all these stages in detail. It will suffice to point them out and to suggest briefly the bearing which they have on the law of conveyancing in our own day. The reader may then readily resort to the appropriate authorities, and where these are lacking, to original sources, if he choose to pursue the inquiry further. Sources of English Law. All the English law of real property, at the time it was made the law of New York in the year 1664, was referable to three great causes: (1) The feudal settlement, giving rise to the common law concerning land; (II) Equity, founded upon the civil or canon law; (III) The national renaissance, or awakening, in the reign of King Henry VIII, which was attended by statutes of great significance, materially altering the common or archaic. law of land. The rise of the original limitations of estates in lands will be found to correspond very closely to the epochs indicated. Subsequently to the period of the Reformation came a fourth epoch, embracing the period of the Civil War in England, the abeyance of the monarchy and the express abolition of the feudal or military tenures. The restoration of the monarchy was followed by great activity in the American colonies; colonial constitutions were then regularly formulated by the law officers of the Crown. From these general instruments of colonial government, it is obvious that in legal theory all the land in the colonies became terra regis or Crown-land held by tenants of the Crown by the reformed socage. tenure.3 Effect of American Revolution. When the American Revolution broke out, the monarchy was at first put in abeyance in so far as the socage tenure was concerned, and the newly-organized State was then informally substituted for the Crown in all its prior legal relations to land. When independence of the Crown was at last achieved, the theory that the State, or the people as a political corporation, had been substituted for the Crown in its old legal relations to land was formally acted on by the Legislature. Lands were next made allodial, and finally, by the Revised Statutes of 1830, the remnant of the rules of the common law which had feudalism for their base was abrogated, and a uniform system of rules was applied to land. But as these new rules were more often mainly statutory extensions of principles having theretofore a limited appli 3 In other words, the law of land in the new country reflected the actual condition of the contemporaneous English law on a like subject. 4 People v. Trinity Church, 22 N. Y. 44; Seneca Nation v. Christie, 126 id. 122. |