ction on it, but the
court of chancery early interposed to prevent oppression. It held the
penalty of a bond to be the form, not the substance of it, a pledge
merely to secure repayment of the sum bona fide advanced, and would not
permit a man to take more than in conscience he ought, i.e. in case of a
common money bond, his principal, interest and expenses. This equitable
relief received statutory recognition by an act of 1705, which provided
that, in case of a common money bond, payment of the lesser sum with
interest and costs shall be taken in full satisfaction of the bond. An
obligee of a common money bond can, since the date of the Judicature
Act, obtain summary judgment under O. xiv. (R.S.C. 1883) by specially
endorsing his writ under O. iii. R. 6.

Bonds were, however, and still are given to secure performance of a
variety of matters other than the payment of a sum of money at a fixed
date. They may be given and are given, for instance, to guarantee the
fidelity of a clerk, of a rent collector, or of a person in an office of
public trust, or to secure that an intended husband will settle a sum on
his wife in the event of her surviving him, or that a building contract
shall be carried out, or that a rival business shall not be carried on
by the obligor except within certain limits of time and space. The same
object can often be attained--and more conveniently attained--by a
covenant than by bond, and covenants have in the practice of
conveyancers largely superseded bonds, but there are cases where
security by bond is still preferable to security by covenant. Thus under
a bond to secure an annuity, if the obligor makes default, judgment may
be entered for the penalty and stand as security for the future payments
without the necessity of bringing a fresh action for each payment. In
cases of bonds with special conditions, such as those instanced above,
the remedy of the obligee for breach of the condition is prescribed by
an act of 1696, the procedure under which is preserved by the Judicature
Act (O. xxii. R. 1, O. xiii. R. 14). The obligee assigns the particular
breaches of which he complains, damages in respect of such breaches are
assessed, and, on payment into court by the obligor of the amount of
such damages, the court enters a stay of execution. A difficulty which
has much exercised and still exercises the courts is to determine, in
these cases of special conditions, whether the sum for which the bond is
giv