are allowed as evidence; the laws of Oleron as settled by Richard 1st, as other ordinances established by King John, Edw. 1st and 3rd, and other princes, sans concurrence of parliament, have the force of laws in the Admiralty Court. The orders for government of the navy, which were made an Act of Parliament, 13 Car. 2nd, were long before in use, and were originally appointed by the crown, or persons authorized by the crown; nor is there anything in the petition of right against this, and now, though the martial law at land is settled only from year to year, that of the sea is perpetuall and binding on all parts of the world where the king's ships goe.

Authoritys to prove the right of pressing taken from an ancient MS. supposed to be wrote in time of Edw. 3rd, called the Black Book of the Admiralty, wherein are ordinances published by Rich. 1st, John, Edw. 1st and Edw. 3rd for ordering sea affairs, and there is reason to believe many of these regulations were long before the times of those princes, but digested by them into one body.

Vide No. 1, Art. 2; vide the famous inquisition at Queenborough, 49 Edw. 3rd, before Lord Latimer, Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports, and Wm. De Nevell, Admiral.

Conformable to these rules, practice has been to grant press warrants, as appears by Rymer's Fœdera. And the precedents produced are no part of the services performed by the Cinque Ports or other sea towns by virtue of particular customs, but such services as our kings have required by their right of sovereignty.

Tome 1, p. 180; do. 358; tome 3, p. 429; tome 4, pp. 225, 527, 716; tome 5, pp. 233, 378, 811, 815; tome 6, pp. 169, 708, 715; tome 7, pp. 195, 373, 501, 507; tome 8, 700, 730; tome 9, 107, tome 10, 417; tome 11, 843, 850; tome 12, p. 4; tome 16, 22; tome 17, 245.

N. B. Mr. Rymer's collections were done no lower than the 4th Car. 1st.

N. B. Though the kings of the realm before the reign of Hen. 8th, having no navy of their own, nor any established sea force, but what was furnished by the Cinque Ports and some other towns by reason of tenure, used when occasion required to press ships as well as mariners, yet when Hen. 8th formed a royal navy, pressing ships was less frequent; but there doe not want instances of that practice since the Revolution.

N. B. This power of the crown is vested in the lord admirall. Vid. 2 Gul. & M. c. 2, touching commissioners of the admiralty. And N. B. The commissioners have no express authority from the king to press.

Lastly, cited passages, where parliament acknowledges the king's right to press ships and seamen. Rot. Parl. 45 Edw. 3,

n. 32; 47 Edw. 3, n. 28; Rot. Parl. 2 Rich. 2, p. 1, n. 67; 2 Rich. 2, p. 2, n. 30; stat. 15 Rich. 2, c. 3; 2, 3 Phil. M. c. 11, s. 8; 5 Eliz. ss. 41, 43; 6 & 7 Will. c. 18, s. 19; 7 Will. c. 21, s. 15; 1 Annæ, c. 16, s. 2; 6 Annæ, c. 31, c. 37; 9 Annæ, c. 26, s. 1.1

Concludes that there is the strongest proof of this power of pressing in the crown from authoritys founded on the principles of the common law, and virtually confirmed by severall statutes.2

Chamberlayn's State of Great Britayn, fol. 30. (N. B. Fleetwood, in his Cronicon Pretiosum, calls Chamberlayn an excellent author).

The English tongue is a mixture chiefly of the old Saxon and the old Norman, which was part French, part Danish, with a large mixture of the British and Roman languages.

The names of shires, citys, towns, and villages, places, and men in England are generally Saxon, and so are most nouns appellative, and a great part of the verbs.

Mem. v. character of English, the long-lived. Anno 1671, Henry Jenkyns of Yorkshire dyed aged 168 years. Anno 1635, Parr dyed, aged 152.

Nov. 11, 1734. Lord Hardwick, C. J. showed at Sir Joseph Jekyl's, Master of the Rolls, a small book, wherein was a collection of proclamations in Edw. 6th's time, printed by Grafton, the then king's printer, and among them a proclamation condemning all to the gallies who should spread false rumours; and N. B. This proclamation is not to be found in Rymer's "Fœdera."

Mr. Onslow, the speaker, declared, 1st November, 1736, that he thought giving money was not originally an act for the legislature; but the commons gave the money as the clergy gave money, and that the reason of its being made a legislative act was to levy it by force. Vide Madox Baronia Anglica, commended by Onslow; vid. Tyrrell's History, said by Onslow to be the best history extant of parliamentary constitutions. N. B. It appears by Wright's book, that escuage, which was money for military services, was granted per commune consilium.

We propose to continue, and probably to conclude, this Note

Book in our next number.

On margin :-" Vid. Stats. 2 Annæ, c. 19; 3 & 4 Annæ, c. 11; 4 Annæ, c. 10; 5 Annæ, c. 15; 6 Annæ, c. 10. Temporary Acts to authorize pressing mariners."

* On margin-" Emlyn thinks it clear that pressing is unlawful."

ART. VII.-THE ASSIGNMENT OF REVERSIONARY INTERESTS.

THE effect of an assignment by the husband of his wife's choses in action upon her right by survivorship is a point which, at one time, attracted considerable attention and provoked warm discussion in courts of equity. It was, at an early period, settled that, if the choses in action were of such a nature as to admit of their immediate reduction into possession, the wife might, by such assignment, be deprived of her right. The choses in action of the wife, in the event of their having been actually reduced into possession by the husband, were held to belong to him; and, further, as, upon a well-known principle of equity, whatever a party agrees to do is considered as having been actually done, an assignment of a chose in action belonging to the wife by the husband, who was in a position to reduce the property into possession, was regarded as a virtual agreement that such a step would be really taken by him, and was consequently held to be a reduction into possession.1 Efforts, not less rash than vigorous, were made to extend that principle to reversionary interests. The doctrine, however, appears never to have rested on any more solid foundation than vague analogies and incidental dicta. The decision in one of the early cases was subsequently, on all hands, admitted not to be law;2

As to the acts which constitute a reduction into possession by the husband of his wife's choses in action, it may be, once for all, remarked, that an actual payment or transfer to the husband, or to his account, is a reduction into possession (Glaister v. Hewer, 8 Ves. 195; Ryland v. Smith, 1 Myln. & Craig, 53; Re Jenkins, 5 Russ. 183); and that it is so, although it should have been made during the life of a prior tenant for life (Doswell v. Earle, 12 Ves. 473). Possession by husband, as executor or trustee, is not a reduction into possession of his wife's share of residue so as to give him a title against her right by survivorship (Baker v. Hall, 12 Ves. 497, 501; Wall v. Tomlinson, 6 Ves. 413). Receipt by husband of interest is not a reduction into possession (Hore v. Woulfe, 2 Ball & Beat. 424; Nash v. do., 2 Madd. 133; Horwood v. Fisher, 1 You. & Col. 110). A suit in equity for a legacy, even after a decree for an account, is not a reduction into possession, according to the case of Adams v. Lavender, 4 Clel. & You. 41. But compare Forbes v. Phipps, 1 Eden, 502; Nanney v. Martin, Ch. Ca. 127; and Eden's notes to the case of Hargate v. Annesley, 3 Bro. C C. 361.

2 Atkins v. Dewberry, 1 Salk. 327; Gilb. Eq. R. 88. In the case of Gage v. Acton, 1 Salk. 327; 1 Raym. 515, there is reported an obiter dictum of Lord Holt, to the effect that a release by the husband of a reversionary interest of the wife bars her right by survivorship. This alleged opinion of Lord Holt, however, did not receive the sanction of the other judges. But although a husband may release, at law, a possibility of the wife, it by no means follows that he can

and in another,1 more recently decided, the arrangement, which the order of court permitted to be carried into execution, was entered into for the accommodation of both parties.

The two cases, which have been usually quoted as betraying very clearly the leaning of Lord Hardwicke's mind upon this point, are those of Bates v. Dandy, and of Grey v. Kentish.3 In the former, while the contingency, of the husband dying in the lifetime of the wife, was distinctly before his mind, he admitted that the husband might assign a possibility to which his wife happened to be entitled, provided such assignment were not voluntary, but for valuable consideration; and from the expressions there employed, whether essential or not to the decision of the case before him, it has been, not without reason, argued that, supposing Lord Hardwicke to have had reversionary interests in view when he alluded to "possibilities," he must have considered the assignment of such reversionary interests to be, in every event, valid :-whether the husband happened to survive his wife, the interest continuing reversionary until after her decease; or whether the wife survived the husband, and the interest which, at the time of the assignment, was reversionary, had become, in the lifetime of the husband, an actual interest in the nature of a chose in action. In the latter case, a husband had assigned a contingent and reversionary interest of the wife in a legacy as a security for repayment of a sum of money received by him. He became bankrupt; and died subsequently to the decease of the person entitled for life: so that, in this respect, the case was special, inasmuch as the assignment was not absolute, but only in the nature of a security, and destined to return into the hands of the husband's assignees. Lord Hardwicke seems never to have entertained a doubt concerning the fact that the wife had, at the period of the bankruptcy, an

assign it in equity. In questions of this nature there is no analogy between a release and an assignment. Vide the language of Sir Thomas Plumer, in the case of Purdew v. Jackson, 1 Russ. Ch. R. 49, 50.

1 Howard v. Damiani, 2 Jacob & Walker, 458. There are various other cases which seem to have found a place by hereditary right in all the successive discussions of this subject, and which, upon examination, will be found to bear only a very distant relation to it. Nothing beyond the slightest hints are to be met with in such cases as that of the Duke of Chandos v. Talbot, 2 P. Will. 602; Wright v. Morley, 11 Ves. 12; Carteret v. Paschal, 3 P. Will. 197; Anon. 2 Roll. R. 134.

29 Ves. 96. A full note of Lord Hardwicke's judgment in this case will be found in 3 Russell's Ch. Ca. p. 72. The interest agreed to be assigned was a present interest.

39 Ves. 100, 102. The opinions ascribed to Lord Hardwicke are discordant. The statement of the facts is too loose and incorrect to be implicitly relied on, Vide Atk. R. 549, 551, note by Sanders.

VOL. VII. NO. XIII.

S

assignable interest. When, therefore, he directed the whole legacy to be transferred to the wife, although there had been a particular assignment of it for valuable consideration, the claim of the widow may have prevailed simply on the ground that the assignees did not claim under an actual assignment for valuable consideration. The chief object which Lord Hardwicke had in view was merely to distinguish between the assignment of a possibility at law, on the one hand, and in equity, on the other; it being, in the former case, inoperative; while, in the latter, a court of equity will sustain it.

1

These dicta of Lord Hardwicke can scarcely be regarded as amounting to more than a very general expression of opinion that the wife's possibility might be assigned by the husband, and that such assignment, though void at law, will be in equity supported, in some events against every person and in all cases against himself. But there appears to be nothing in his language to justify the notion that such assignment can bar the right of the wife surviving. Nor are we led to more precise knowledge of his opinion upon this subject by any thing which fell from him in the case of Hawkins v. Obyn, because any rules established for determining in what cases a husband may or may not be considered as a purchaser, under a marriage settlement, of all the present or future fortune of his wife, are totally inapplicable to questions which arise as to how far a husband, not being a purchaser under a marriage settlement, may, for valuable consideration, assign a reversionary interest belonging to the wife. In the former case the question depends upon the agreement into which the parties have entered before marriage, while the wife is free from all control, and when there can be no doubt about her authority to assign to her intended husband any possibility to which she then is or eventually may become entitled. In the latter case, any agreement made prior to the marriage cannot at all affect the inquiry; which must turn upon the extent of the power which the husband is said to acquire by the marriage in the absence of any antecedent contract. No decisive inference can be drawn from the language of Lord Hardwicke in the case of Hawkins v. Obyn; and, upon another occasion3, he seems to have thought that an event might have

Sir William Grant considered the decision in the case of Grey v. Kentish as recognizing the right of the wife surviving to the whole fund, against the claims, at all events, of the assignees under the general assignment, comprehending reversionary interests which the bankrupt may have in right of his wife.

2

Lord Hardwicke, according to the report of that case (2 Atk. 549, 551), is represented as having expressed himself in terms corresponding with the language attributed to him in the cases of Bates v. Dandy and of Grey v. Kentish.

3 Bush v. Delway, 1 Ves. 19, 20. This case is reported likewise in 3 Atk. 533.