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As if I give lands to Christ-Church in Oxford, and the name of the corporation is Ecclesia Christi in Universitate Oxford; this shall be holpen by averment, because there appears no ambiguity in the words: for the variance is matter in fact.

But the averment shall not be of the intention, because it doth not stand with the words. For in the case of equivocation the general intent includes both the special, and therefore stands with the words: but so it is not in variance; and therefore the averment must be of matter that doth induce a certainty,1 and not of intention: As to say, that the precinct of " Oxford," and of" the University of Oxford," is one and the same; and not to say, that the intention of the parties was, that the grant should be to Christ-Church in the University of Oxford.

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1 I have conjecturally substituted "certainty" for " quantity." One MS. has a blank.

READING

ON THE

STATUTE OF USES.

PREFACE.

THIS was Bacon's Double Reading1 in Gray's Inn, in the Lent vacation, A. D. 1600. Coke had read to crowded audiences in the Inner Temple on the same subject in 1592,2 and Bacon had argued for the defendants in the great Chudleigh case in 1594; so that we can readily imagine motives for this choice of subject. We have, however, no indication of his having taken any care of his work after the delivery.

It was first published very incorrectly and evidently from a bad MS., in 1642. Better MSS. have been used and more pains taken by subsequent editors. I have used the common editions and three MSS. in the Harleian collection, Nos. 1858, 6688, and 829, (whereof the second ends abruptly in the middle, and the latter only embraces the last part or "division,") taking indiscriminately what appeared to me the best reading from each. Any merely conjectural emendations of my own I have always noticed as such, as also those

1 One of the Ancients that had formerly read reads in Lent vacation, and is called Double Reader. Preface to 3 Rep. From several entries in the books of Gray's Inn, to which I have had access by the kindness of the treasurer, Mr. Broderip, it seems there was some difficulty in getting the office well filled. In 36 Eliz. the Judges made an order giving them audience next after serjeants.

2 Article Coke in Penny Cyclopædia.

8 But see infra, p. 293. note 3.

various readings which make a serious difference in meaning, but not generally those which are mere matters of style, or which make a clear sense where the common reading was obviously corrupt.

Mr. Rowe, in his elaborately annotated edition of 1804, has divided the treatise into three discourses, corresponding to the portions to which I have affixed separate headings. He has not, however, taken any notice of the plan of the work as indicated by Bacon himself, nor at all adequately pointed out how much is missing of what that plan embraced.

The reading was to extend over six days,1 and on each day there was to be provided an introductory discourse on matter without the statute, a division on the statute, and a few cases for exercise and argument.

The

The subjects of the six introductions are set forth, and it is very clear that the first part of our treatise exactly corresponds with the first day's matter. only deficiency I can conjecture is in the recapitulation at the close, which stops short with the "nature and definition of an use," and omits its inception and progress,” which are fully discoursed upon in the body of the lecture.

But it seems equally clear that we have no fragment of any of the other five intended introductions. The remainder of our treatise is entirely on "the law itself;" and besides, the subject of the second day's introduction was to be "the second spring of this tree of uses since the statute," which naturally required the exposition of the statute itself to have gone before.

Bacon not having laid out his six days' divisions as

1 In the books of Gray's Inn is copied an order of the Judges that each double reader should give at least nine readings.

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