The Reformation Parliament which sat from 1529 to 1536 was one of the most constitutionally significant assemblies in the history of these islands.Footnote ¹ Moreover, with the passing of the Statute of Uses 1536 it was also one of the most significant in the history of English (and Irish) private law.Footnote ² The importance of the Statute of Uses has long been recognised and should not be understated.Footnote ³ The statute enacted the most radical reform of English landholding since at least Quia Emptores (1290), and perhaps even the Conquest. This chapter explores the statute’s origins and its passage through Parliament: from its earliest drafts, to the Commons rejection of proposed reform, then through the courts, to its eventual enactment in 1536. It will be argued that orthodox accounts of the statute’s passage are inadequate, and an alternative view is proposed.

The mischief that the Crown sought to remedy with the passage of the Statute of Uses was the avoidance of feudal incidents caused by feoffments to uses. A use of freehold land would be created when a landholder enfeoffed feoffees to uses for the benefit of cestui que use.Footnote ⁴ It was common practice by the fifteenth century for landholders to seek to avoid the common law rule prohibiting the devise of land by last will by enfeoffing feoffees to their own use and to perform the feoffor’s last will.Footnote ⁵ One effect of feoffments to uses to perform last wills was that the land would not be inherited and therefore the feoffor’s feudal lord would be deprived of incidents arising from inheritance.Footnote ⁶ From the fourteenth century, the Crown had sought to protect itself from the avoidance of incidents, with varying degrees of success, through the provisions of the Statute of Marlborough, c. 6, and from the mid-1520s there was a renewed focus on the avoidance of incidents,Footnote ⁷ which culminated in the passage of the Statute of Uses. The effect of the Statute of Uses was to annex legal title to the use, that is to say, following the creation of a use the feoffees would no longer stand seised of the land but, by operation of the statute, legal title would follow the use and cestui que use would be seised.

The passage of the Statute of Uses through the Reformation Parliament was difficult, with the Crown facing significant opposition from the Commons. Our understanding of the statute’s passage is shaped by a number of draft bills, and other documents related to the statute which came to the attention of historians following the late nineteenth-century publication of volumes five to eleven of the Letters and Papers of Henry VIII.Footnote ⁸ Reconstructing the passage of the statute through Parliament has, however, proved particularly challenging.Footnote ⁹ It has been generally thought that following a compromise with a number of peers a bill was put before the Commons which was then rejected in 1532, leading King Henry VIII to turn to the courts. This led to the litigation in Dacre’s Case (1533–35), following which the Commons position was untenable, and they were forced to capitulate by passing the eventual Statute of Uses, a defect in which was remedied by the swift passage of the Statute of Enrolments.Footnote ¹⁰

Through detailed analysis of surviving draft bills, this chapter will argue that the traditional interpretation of the passage of the Statute of Uses and the Statute of Enrolments is incorrect. We will consider six earlier draft proposals, four of which were rejected, to present a more complete picture of the origins of both statutes.Footnote ¹¹ Consideration will first be given to the drafts leading up to the Commons rejection of the Crown’s proposal in 1532, before turning to the litigation in Dacre’s Case and the later drafts. Reconstructing the passage of the statutes and presenting a more accurate and complete account allows for more detailed consideration of both difficult doctrinal questions relating to the Statute of Uses and important constitutional issues relating to the relationship between the Crown, Parliament and the courts in the mid-sixteenth century.

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Understanding the progress of early drafts of the Statute of Uses has not proved to be straightforward. The publication of Letters and Papers of Henry VIII brought to our attention a number of documents relating to the Act. Of these, two in particular have shaped our understanding of the passage of the statute: the text of a draft bill, and an agreement between Henry and a number of peers on the feudal incidents of primer seisin and wardship. Both are dated in Letters and Papers to 1529; however, as we shall see, the agreement with the peers appears to have been later.Footnote ¹²

Furthermore, we know from Thomas Cromwell’s remembrances that Henry instructed him to prepare a ‘bill of primer seisin’ to be presented in the third session of Parliament, which ran from 15 January to 28 March 1532.Footnote ¹³ We also learn from Edward Hall, who was sitting in the Commons at the time, that on 18 March 1532 Henry confronted the Commons, lamenting their lack of progress on his ‘bill concerning wards and primer seisin’ and saying that he already had the agreement of the peers to limit the avoidance of feudal incidents.Footnote ¹⁴ After their rejection in March 1532 of Henry’s ‘bill of primer seisin’, the king turned to the courts in Dacre’s Case (1533–35), following which three further drafts of the Statute of Uses and one of the Statute of Enrolments were calendared in Letters and Papers.

It seems clear that the bill presented to the Commons in 1532, as reported by Hall, was the one drafted by Cromwell. Furthermore, the agreement with the peers in Letters and Papers must be what Hall reported the king as relying on in his confrontation with the Commons in March 1532. However, understanding the draft bill in Letters and Papers has proved more difficult. It is unlikely that this draft bill was the one prepared by Cromwell in 1532; as we shall see, it is more likely that it was a separate draft prepared and rejected earlier in the Parliament.

As noted, the editor of Letters and Papers calendared the earlier draft bill immediately before the agreement with the peers and dated both to 1529.Footnote ¹⁵ This approach was followed by Holdsworth but is likely to reflect no more than the date for the beginning of the Reformation Parliament.Footnote ¹⁶ For the draft bill, a date of 1529 seems likely but for a number of reasons it is unconvincing for the agreement with the peers.Footnote ¹⁷ Of the peers who signed the agreement, five were ennobled on 1–2 December 1529, after Parliament had been summoned: Barons Bray, Burgh, Hussey, Wentworth and Windsor. Indeed, of those five, three had sat in the Commons at the opening in August.Footnote ¹⁸ The first session concluded on 17 December, and with only a very short period between their ennoblement and the end of the session, it seems unlikely that the agreement can be dated to 1529.

Although it seems clear that a date of 1529 can be dismissed, settling on a more accurate date is difficult. The agreement must have been concluded before 18 March 1532, when the king referred to it when lamenting apparent lack of progress in the Commons for his ‘bill concerning wards and primer seisin’.Footnote ¹⁹ However, the task is complicated by the presence of two other signatories: Thomas Grey, marquis of Dorset, and Edward Stanley, earl of Derby. The negotiations with the peers must have begun, and been at an advanced stage, before 10 October 1530, the date of Dorset’s death. In addition, the negotiations are unlikely to have concluded much before 24 January 1531 when Derby, following his maturity, sued his livery and entered into his inheritance.Footnote ²⁰ The earl’s date of birth is uncertain: it was most likely late 1509 or 1510,Footnote ²¹ which would make him around twenty-one in January 1531. It is possible that the king allowed Derby to enter into his inheritance early on condition of his agreement, which could suggest a late 1530 date for the agreement.

Ascertaining the connection, if any, between the draft bill and the agreement with the peers has proved difficult. The main provisions of the bill were radical and proposed wholesale reform of landholding. First, the bill proposed the abolition of all entails, so that upon enactment all lands, tenements and other hereditaments would be held in fee simple.Footnote ²² A later clause would have excluded the nobility from this abolition while providing that any alienation by a nobleman must be licensed by the king. Second, the bill would have rendered all uses invalid unless enrolled in the Court of Common Pleas. Third, it provided that, immediately following the sale of any land, tenement, or other hereditament, the deed was to be read out in the parish or parishes in which the land lay and was then to be registered in the shire town. The remaining provisions concerned limitation and should be viewed very much as measures to simplify landholding. A limitation period of five years following a fine or recovery was proposed, after which the land was to be treated as held in fee simple. A further limitation period of forty years was outlined in the final provision, within which any claims against title must be made.Footnote ²³

It has been suggested that this earlier draft bill was designed to effect a degree of social engineering by reasserting the social and economic privileges of the nobility under the king,Footnote ²⁴ but as Bean has argued, ‘such an imaginative scheme’ seems very unlikely.Footnote ²⁵ The proposed abolition of entails in the draft bill is perhaps better seen as symbolic, the real focus of the bill being elsewhere. Following the decision in Taltarum’s Case (1472), entails could be broken by common recovery.Footnote ²⁶ Although the abolition of entails would have removed the need to effect a common recovery, and indeed the expense of doing so, it is likely that the concession to the peers was ‘intended as a sop to the pride of the nobility’,Footnote ²⁷ as opposed to being of any tangible benefit. It has been argued that the concession to the peers in the draft bill persuaded them to support Henry’s efforts to limit loss of feudal revenue through uses in his agreement with the peers.Footnote ²⁸ This position is untenable: whilst there was some advantage to the peers in the provisions of the draft bill, it is difficult to suggest that this was enough to justify a quid pro quo in relation to incidents. Furthermore, a textual analysis of the draft bill renders it very unlikely to have been the same as Cromwell’s ‘bill concerning wards and primer seisin’ which was rejected in 1532.Footnote ²⁹

An alternative explanation has been offered by Ives, who argues that the earlier draft bill and the agreement with the peers were unrelated as the draft bill, rather than being an official proposal, was in fact written by a ‘well-intentioned but inexperienced’ amateur.Footnote ³⁰ To support his position, Ives advances two arguments. He contends firstly that the impractical nature of several of the provisions, particularly in relation to registration, suggest that it was ill-conceived and not an official proposal, and secondly, that the draft bill focused on general reform, rather than being specifically aimed at the avoidance of feudal incidents through uses.Footnote ³¹

The first of Ives’ arguments is not wholly compelling. As he himself accepts, ‘[t]he fact that suggested legislation is ill-conceived does not, of course, establish that it is unofficial in origin’.Footnote ³² Furthermore, that a radical proposal to completely overhaul late medieval English landholding would create difficulties is not merely unsurprising, it is to be expected. The second limb of Ives’ argument is more interesting. He argues that the draft bill was unlikely to be official as it was not focused on the avoidance of feudal incidents. However, this is a somewhat anachronistic observation, as contemporary critiques of uses also considered wider issues.Footnote ³³ Furthermore, the registration requirement for uses would have addressed concerns relating to certainty and permitted the pre-existing legislation concerning incidents (the Statute of Marlborough, c. 6 (1267) and 4 Henry VII, c. 17 (1490)) to be more easily enforced.Footnote ³⁴

The most plausible explanation is that the draft was official but did not directly correspond to the agreement with the peers in the manner that has been suggested. The evidence connecting them is shaky at best. Indeed, when the contents of the two are considered side-by-side, it appears to be far more persuasive that they were unrelated; the contents of the draft bill and of the agreement with the peers are manifestly different. It seems that the early draft bill received a cold reception in the first session of Parliament and the Crown changed tack, likely reaching an agreement with the peers by January 1531.

The agreement with the peers was likely concluded ahead of the second session of Parliament, 16 January to 31 March 1531. In his chronicle, Hall makes no reference to a bill being presented to the Commons in the second session,Footnote ³⁵ and Cromwell’s ‘bill concerning wards and primer seisin’ was prepared for the third session, 15 January to 28 March 1532. The Imperial ambassador to England, Eustace Chapuys, reported to Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor, in March 1531 that ‘[t]he Parliament continues, but has done nothing, as I am told, and it is supposed the King keeps it sitting for some mysterious purpose’.Footnote ³⁶ It seems likely that following the agreement with the peers, the king entered into a period of negotiations with the Commons over feudal incidents which may have been the ‘mysterious purpose’. In another letter, dated 30 January 1532, Chapuys reported that Parliament was debating feudal incidents,Footnote ³⁷ and on 14 February 1532, Chapuys wrote that the king was seeking to obtain one-third part of feudal property.Footnote ³⁸ This corresponds with the agreement for one-third with the peers and the date fits with the Commons’ subsequent rejection of the proposal on 18 March 1532, reported by Hall. In other respects, however, Hall’s account appears, at least initially, somewhat difficult to reconcile with Chapuys.

Following on from his recounting of Henry’s speech to the Commons, Hall explained that the king’s proposal was for half of military tenure land to be devisable by last will,Footnote ³⁹ as opposed to the two-thirds in the agreement with the peers and outlined by Chapuys. He then goes on to declare that the Commons erred in either not accepting this proposal or at least not pushing back against the king to negotiate him down to a third or a quarter, ‘which offer [Hall] was credibly informed the king would have taken’.Footnote ⁴⁰ As he was a lawyer and an MP sitting in the Commons at the time, it is tempting to defer to Hall. For Bean, Hall was more reliable than Chapuys, and he argued that Hall’s assertion suggests that Henry had in fact reached a second agreement with the peers for one-half, which was rejected by the Commons. This is rather tenuous and not an especially convincing reading of the evidence. As the Imperial ambassador resident in England, Chapuys had good access to information and was writing contemporaneously; his accuracy is too readily doubted by Bean. Although Hall had better information − he was very possibly in the room throughout − he was likely writing much later.Footnote ⁴¹

It is possible to reconcile the accounts of Hall and Chapuys. It is more likely that Hall, writing at least a decade later, misremembered the order of the king’s proposals, than that Chapuys, writing contemporaneously, was wrong in February 1532. The most plausible explanation appears to be that, rather than Henry increasing his demands after the agreement with the peers, there was a significant period of negotiation, initially with the peers, in which Henry started at half and was negotiated down to a third. Negotiations then continued with the Commons and Henry instructed Cromwell to prepare a ‘bill of wardship and primer seisin’, based on the agreement with the peers, ahead of the third session. This bill was eventually rejected by the Commons in March 1532, prompting Henry’s strikingly ominous foreshadowing that he would ‘search out the extremity of the law’.Footnote ⁴²

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Following the failed attempt to legislate, Henry then turned to the courts. The first peer to die, having enfeoffed feoffees to perform his will, following the Commons’ rejection of the bill in March 1532 was Thomas Fiennes, Baron Dacre of the South (died 9 September 1533): Dacre’s Case was to be the king’s test case.Footnote ⁴³ The case began with an inquisition post-mortem in Chancery, before being referred to the Exchequer Chamber. Following the exertion of significant pressure on behalf of the Crown, the king prevailed and it was held that uses of freehold land were incapable of being devised by will.Footnote ⁴⁴ Furthermore, not only were future wills devising land considered to be invalid, but any title that was traced through a will at any point in the past was now vulnerable.Footnote ⁴⁵ The king’s threat to ‘search out the extremity of the law’ had been realised beyond the Commons’ worst imaginings. The situation was untenable, and legislation required. The only real question was how the Crown would approach a remedy.

Surviving documents calendared in Letters and Papers give important insight into the Crown’s approach. Three drafts of the Statute of Uses and one of the Statute of Enrolments have survived which enable us to trace the development of the Crown’s thinking in light of the litigation in Dacre’s Case.Footnote ⁴⁶ Turning first to the Statute of Uses, it is clear that two separate approaches to legislation were considered. The first proposed a scheme which was to apply common law rules for legal title to uses but this was not pursued beyond an initial draft.Footnote ⁴⁷ The second proposed to annex the legal estate to the use and would become the Statute of Uses. Two drafts have survived, the first an early draft and a second which was the same in substantive content but was in a more formal and parliamentary styleFootnote ⁴⁸; indeed, it is almost identical to the Statute of Uses itself.

The first draft was clearly an early version. It is more concise and without the style or character expected of a formal bill but is nonetheless interesting and informative. The comparatively short document begins by declaring that the common law had been subverted by uses. The remedy proposed, as noted, was, in effect, to apply the common law of real property to uses.Footnote ⁴⁹ As Baker notes, the bill sought to effect an extension of the provision in 4 Henry VII, c. 17 (1490), which treated the heir of cestui que use who died intestate as if his ancestor had died seised.Footnote ⁵⁰ It was viewed by Holdsworth as being ‘useless, or almost useless, to the king’,Footnote ⁵¹ and by Lehmberg as ‘not very advantageous to the Crown financially’.Footnote ⁵² The central point to this argument is that the draft would not prevent the devise of land. However, as noted by Bean, this is a misreading of the text. Whilst certainly ‘clumsy’, the effect of the provision was to treat the cestui que use as if he had been in possession at common law, which would include preventing the devise of land by last will.Footnote ⁵³

It has been presupposed that this initial draft, like the later drafts beside which it is calendared, was prepared after the decision in Dacre’s Case.Footnote ⁵⁴ However, this is almost certainly not the case. If the decision in Dacre’s Case was as fundamental and substantively damaging to the security of title as it appears to have been, then the Commons was in no position to object to anything Henry’s government put forward. There was no need in 1535–36 for subtle negotiation or compromise; following Dacre’s Case, the Commons had lost. Furthermore, the draft did nothing to remedy the vulnerability that landholders faced in the decision in Dacre’s Case. It is much more likely that the initial draft can be dated to the period before the decision in Dacre’s Case.Footnote ⁵⁵

It has been suggested that a memorandum of October 1533 demonstrates that Cromwell was contemplating further legislation at this point.Footnote ⁵⁶ This relies on reading two consecutive notes on instructions to the Crown’s lawyers – the first relating to the order of the king’s wards and the second to investigate Lord Dacre’s will – as being connected. The inquisition following Dacre’s death was not held until January 1534. Although possible, it therefore seems unlikely that Cromwell was considering legislation before the inquisition, and the reference to ‘order of the king’s wards’ is rather too vague to support a conclusion that Cromwell was considering legislation. However, later in 1534, the inquisition had been traversed by Dacre’s feoffees, and it appears that Cromwell was less than confident of a positive outcome. In autumn 1534 he sought the advice of the judges,Footnote ⁵⁷ and a memorandum noting the need for Cromwell to find ‘some reasonable way to be devised for the king’s wards and primer seisin’ could suggest that he was considering legislation.Footnote ⁵⁸ Although the Dacre litigation had begun, the outcome was far from certain. It can be suggested that the ‘reasonable way to be devised’ in the memorandum was the draft bill,Footnote ⁵⁹ but that it was not pursued beyond this initial draft. The memorandum suggests that the bill may have been prepared ahead of the sixth session, 3 November to 18 December 1534.Footnote ⁶⁰ The content of the draft, particularly the preamble, strongly resembles the complaints raised in the Damna Usuum, a contemporary list of complaints on the ‘mischiefs, wrongs and inconveniences’ which were caused by the employment of uses.Footnote ⁶¹

Parliament was set to return in November 1535, following the decision in Dacre’s Case in Easter Term, but due to plague it did not return until February 1536.Footnote ⁶² There is some evidence of very minor negotiation over the precise form of the eventual Statute of Uses. This can be seen in two further drafts: the first an early draft which was subject to slight amendments before a second in formal parliamentary style which was almost identical to the eventual Statute of Uses, with only some minor deletions to clause 10.Footnote ⁶³ The main provision was for the legal estate to be annexed to the use. Where previously, following a feoffment to feoffees to the use of cestui que use the feoffees would stand seised with the cestui que use merely having the use of the land, by operation of the Statute of Uses, following such a feoffment legal title would cease to be vested in the feoffees and would automatically vest in the cestui que use. The solution enacted by the Statute of Uses was remarkably simple yet there were significant oversights.

As well as express and resulting uses, the statute also executed implied uses that arose to the benefit of the purchaser on a bargain and sale. Following the Statute of Uses, the purchaser would stand seised by virtue of the statute, thus removing the time to make enquiries.Footnote ⁶⁴ Before the Statute of Uses this was common practice and would have caused significant difficulties for conveyancers. Unlike issues relating to dower and jointure, which were addressed in the Statute of Uses itself,Footnote ⁶⁵ it appears that the drafters did not recognise the problem with implied uses until a relatively late stage. This was addressed by the passing of the Statute of Enrolments later in the seventh session.Footnote ⁶⁶

The Statute of Enrolments has long been recognised as part of the same scheme as the Statute of Uses. Indeed, Francis Bacon, in his 1600 reading at Gray’s Inn, stated that it was ‘but a proviso’ to the Statute of Uses.Footnote ⁶⁷ The eventual Statute of Enrolments was short and contained no preamble. It prevented the automatic execution of implied uses by providing that no estate or inheritance or freehold would pass by virtue only of a bargain and sale unless the bargain and sale was ‘indented, sealed and enrolled’ within six months at a court of record in Westminster or in the county in which the land was situated.Footnote ⁶⁸

Like the Statute of Uses itself, we are assisted in understanding the origins of the Statute of Enrolments by the survival of an earlier draft bill.Footnote ⁶⁹ The draft bill is a great deal more ambitious and sophisticated than that which was eventually passed. An initial point to make is that the draft bill is far longer than the eventual Statute of Enrolments. In addition, unlike the statute itself, the draft contains a broad preamble in the conventional style.Footnote ⁷⁰ Following the preamble, the substance of the draft begins by providing that after the last day of July 1536 the use of any lands, tenements and hereditaments should not pass unless agreed in writing, made under seal and enrolled.Footnote ⁷¹ The remaining clauses outline a series of administrative reforms empowering the king to appoint officers in each shire who would be responsible for recording and entering the same writing within forty days on to a roll to be deposited in the Chancery which could be inspected by interested parties. Failure to enrol within the specified forty days would result in the disposition being void.

The content of the draft bill is interesting. The draft speaks of declared uses, proposing that all uses would be invalid unless they were declared in writing and enrolled. That is to say, it applied to express uses, and resulting uses arising from a feoffment or other form of conveyance, for no express use or consideration, but not uses implied into a bargain and sale. The Statute of Enrolments that was eventually enacted was far more limited and addressed only implied uses. The inclusion of other uses in the draft bill and not in the eventual Act itself may explain Lehmberg’s apparent confusion in arguing that the Statute of Enrolments was specifically addressed to ‘secret conveyances’,Footnote ⁷² which are generally understood to have been resulting uses, such as in 1 Richard III, c. 1.Footnote ⁷³

The fact that the draft gives a date of the end of July 1536 after which uses were to be invalid unless they were in sealed writing and enrolled is interesting. The seventh session of Parliament ended on 14 April 1536, so the draft must have been completed before then – indeed completed with time to change tack and pass the subsequent Statute of Enrolments. It is likely that the draft’s July date was proposed to allow time to implement the administrative bureaucracy that the king was empowered to establish, the scale of which was substantial, and is suggestive of a date far in advance of the end of parliamentary session in April. The Statute of Uses itself was to take effect from 1 May 1536. As this draft of the Statute of Enrolments would have taken effect, had it been enacted, almost three months after the Statute of Uses, it appears unlikely that it was prepared after the Statute of Uses.

That the draft required the enrolment of all declared uses appears to suggest a number of things in relation to the drafting of the Statute of Uses. The draft bears a striking similarity to the first draft bill dated to 1529 in Letters and Papers, which required all declared uses to be enrolled with the Common Pleas.Footnote ⁷⁴ Indeed, it may be that this draft of the Statute of Enrolments is a more developed, and narrower, version of the 1529 draft bill. The 1529 draft was quickly rejected in favour of a more direct approach focused on feudal incidents, but it may be that those who prepared it continued to propose a much broader reform to the law of real property. With regard to the draft’s purpose, and its relationship to the Statute of Uses, two alternative explanations can be suggested.

The first is that it was an alternative to the Statute of Uses in which, rather than attaching legal title to the use, the Crown could seek to protect itself from loss of feudal revenue by requiring all declared uses to be enrolled. As we have noted in relation to the 1529 draft bill, it is possible that this would have provided a greater protection to the Crown from loss of feudal incidents, but only to a limited extent in allowing easier enforcement of earlier legislation. If the draft was prepared before the decision in Dacre’s Case, this understanding of the draft of the Statute of Enrolments may be more plausible, as a creative means of providing some protection to the Crown, but it seems unlikely. A more probable explanation for the draft is that it was prepared alongside the Statute of Uses and was intended to apply to those uses of land which were not caught by the Statute of Uses, that is to say, uses of non-freehold land and those with active duties.Footnote ⁷⁵ This could therefore represent a more holistic reform to the law of uses generally, and one which sought to reconcile uses with the broader law of real property. However, it is likely that as a result of practical and administrative difficulties it was ultimately not pursued, only for the idea of enrolment to be quickly resurrected in a hasty reassembling of the initial draft directed solely at implied uses to address the flaw in the Statute of Uses.Footnote ⁷⁶

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Ascertaining the precise path through the Reformation Parliament of Henry VIII’s attempts to address the uncertainty caused by uses, including the loss of revenue from the avoidance of feudal incidents, is far from straightforward. Previous historians have suggested that an initial bill, linked to an agreement with the peers, was rejected by the Commons in 1532 before the litigation in Dacre’s Case led to the Crown prevailing and the enactment of the Statute of Uses. In this chapter, we have seen that close evaluation of the evidence supports a re-evaluation of this orthodoxy, particularly in the period before Dacre’s Case.

A textual analysis of the 1529 draft Commons bill and the agreement with the peers demonstrates that they are manifestly different schemes and suggestions of a close connection between them is unconvincing. It is much more probable that rather than one Commons draft bill we have two: the 1529 bill,Footnote ⁷⁷ which was quickly abandoned, and, following a period of sustained negotiations and subsequent agreement with the peers,Footnote ⁷⁸ Cromwell’s ‘bill of wardship and primer seisin’, which was rejected by the Commons in March 1532.Footnote ⁷⁹

At this point, the Crown changed tack and sought to pursue the avoidance of incidents in the courts in Dacre’s Case. Likely doubting the outcome in Dacre’s Case, it seems that Cromwell prepared a compromise bill for the sixth session of Parliament, in late 1534, but it was not presented.Footnote ⁸⁰ Following this, substantial pressure was applied to the judges, ensuring the Crown’s success in Dacre’s Case, and the Commons were undone. At this point it appears that two schemes were considered. Firstly, one which would require the enrolment of all uses, evidenced in what has become known as the draft of the Statute of Enrolments,Footnote ⁸¹ and a second which became the Statute of Uses, and for which two drafts survive.Footnote ⁸² The first scheme likely faltered due to administrative unworkability; however, following the eventual passage of the Statute of Uses, a scheme of enrolment was resurrected to prevent the automatic execution of implied uses.

In his 1600 reading, Francis Bacon described the Statute of Uses as ‘the most perfectly and exactly conceived and penned of any law in the book’.Footnote ⁸³ As we have seen, its origins and drafting are rather more complex than Bacon allowed. The statute that was enacted in 1536, and transplanted to Ireland in 1634, was the result of sustained negotiations and significant intellectual, parliamentary and judicial scrutiny. As well as providing a far clearer understanding of technical questions relating to uses and trusts, the passage of the Statute of Uses and the Statute of Enrolments elucidates important features of the relationship between the Crown, the peers, the commons and the judiciary in this fundamentally important period in our history.