Appendix CASE ONE - Collection Point® | The Total Digital Asset ...

18 Legal History in the Making
enfeoffment to use made by Brill. According to the respondents, the intention
declared by the feoff or to his feoffees was that they were to make estate, not
to Joan Ardale his daughter, but to Joan the daughter of John Cabron and to
her bodily heirs. If this woman died without issue, reversion of the holding was
to be sold with the money to be disposed for Brill's soul. Stodey and Boydon
support their contention by reference to the written last will of Brill which, they
assert, contains this intention. To add even more force to their claim, they note
that this will was proved before the ordinary of the diocese of London, and thus
bears his seal. But this must already have been clear to the court, for the will,
we are told, was present in chancery and had been opened and read. Finally,
the respondents address the possibility of subsequent revision of this provision
by Brill, stating that he declared to them no last will other than that described,
and this they offer to prove as the court will. 14
It seems to have taken John and Joan Ardale some time to recover from the
reply made by Stodey and Boydon. But within nine months they had another bill
in chancery concerning the matter (C1/9 no. 218). It is a rare example wherein
the hand of the Address is not the same as the bill hand - nor, indeed, is it that
of the memorandum. Further, the Address is written in English, while the bill,
like its precursor, is in French, indicating that it was added some time after the
original drawing of the instrument, although not in the chancery. This new bill
is written in a hand different from that of the earlier one, but was clearly copied
from it. Changes in morphology and orthography are evident throughout C1/9
no. 218, but are not extreme, indicating differences in the personal preferences
of the two scribes who wrote the bills. 15 The most significant change in the
later bill does not, however, involve language but substance. In response to
14 One other important aspect of this examination deserves attention: the explicit mention that the
feoffor declared orally to his feoffees the provision in his written last will that concerned their obligations
with respect to the use he had established. This might be taken to indicate that enfeoffments to use were
regularly governed by a written statement of the intention of the feoffor, and not simply an oral agreement.
But if there were regularly made a written record of such conditions it would be expected that petitioners
whose claims rested upon them would be eager to put forward such documents in support of their cases.
This is only very rarely the case, and it must be generally assumed that in cases concerning conditions
upon enfeoffments to use, any mention of the feoffor declaring his will with respect to such a condition,
and where a written record of this condition is not expressly mentioned, must be taken as a reference to
an expression of intention and not construed as a reference to a written will. See, Haskett, 453-56.
15 Many of the changes involve substitutions in the plural inflections of es for ez, or vice-versa. The writer
who copied from the earlier bill tends to substitute ez for es more than the reverse, for it appears in five and
two instances respectively. There are also examples of the substitution in C1/9 no.218 of 'vouz' for 'vous',
and 'redressez' for 'redresses', which also indicate the preference of the later scribe for ez forms. Other
changes involve the addition of a final e, the removal of a u and alterations from ei to a i, e to o, ou to o, e to ea
and y to i. More substantial is the change in the description of the place requested for the appearance of the
respondents, 'Chauncellerie' becoming 'Chauncerye' (1.74). There are also alterations in the presentation
of names: 'Bryll' becomes 'Brill', 'Stodey' becomes 'Stodeye' and the names of the towns in which the
holding in question is located change from 'Westylbery' and 'Estylbery' to 'Westilbery' and 'Estilbery'.
One change indicates that the copying scribe in a single instance mistranscribed the earner bill. Rather
than naming Thomas Boydon as a respondent, he has written 'Thomas Roydon'. Compared with the
evidence of the earlier bill and the examination, it seems likely that this is a simple error, rather than an
intentional change.