with B, in writing or not, for the sale of
land, and B paid the price, but A remained in legal possession, the
court of chancery enforced the use or equitable interest in favour of
B. The effect of a _bargain and sale_ (as such a transaction was
called) after the statute was to give B the legal interest without any
livery of seisin. This fresh danger was met in the very year of the
statute itself by an enactment that a bargain and sale of an estate of
inheritance or freehold should be made by deed publicly enrolled. But
the Statute of Enrolments was in terms limited to estates of freehold.
It was allowed that a bargain and sale for a term, say, of one year,
must transfer the seisin to the bargainee without enrolment. And since
what remained in the bargainer was merely a reversion which "lay in
grant," it was an easy matter to release this by deed the day after.
By this ingenious device was the publicity of feoffment or enrolment
avoided, and the _lease and release_, as the process was called,
remained the usual mode of conveying a freehold, in possession down to
the 19th century.

It was not until 1845 that the modern system of transfer by a single
deed was finally established. By the Real Property Act of that year it
was enacted that all corporeal hereditaments should, as regards the
immediate freehold, be deemed to lie in grant as well as in livery.
Since this act the ancient modes of conveyance, though not abolished by
it, have in practice become obsolete. Traces of the old learning
connected with them remain, however, embedded in the modern conveyance.
Many a purchase-deed recites that the vendor is _seised_ in fee-simple
of the property. It is the practice, moreover, to convey not only "to"
but also "to the use of" a purchaser. For before the Statute of Uses, a
conveyance made without any consideration or declaration of uses was
deemed to be made to the use of the party conveying. In view of the
operation of the statute upon the legal estate in such circumstances, it
is usual in all conveyances, whether for value or not, to declare a use
in favour of the party to whom the grant is made.

In its popular usage the word "conveyance" signifies the document
employed to carry out a purchase of land. But the term "conveyancing" is
of much wider import, and comprises the preparation and completion of
all kinds of legal instruments. A well-known branch of the conveyancer's
business is the in