BUCKINGHAM VS. DORSET. 31

THE ATTORNEY GENERAL
AT THE RELATION OF
LARKIN BUCKINGHAM
vs.
JANETTE DORSEY.

MARCH TERM, 1847.

PROCEEDING TO AVOID A PATENT FOR ALLEGED FRAUD.]

A WARRANT of resurvey does not authorize a party to include a vacancy not
contiguous to the tract or tracts to be resurveyed. And a person who has
not a title to the land on which he obtains a warrant of reaurvey, does not,
in virtue of such warrant, acquire a right of presumption in the adjoining
vacancy.

Yet, patents obtained by a party who has no legal title to the original, or upon
a certificate of resurvey, including vacancy not contiguous to the original,
will not be vacated, except for fraud in fact, charged and proved, though upon
caveat filed in the land office, they would have been refused.

A proceeding against an innocent purchaser, without notice, to set aside a pat-
ent forty-seven years after its date, and forty-five after the patentee had sold
and conveyed the land to such purchaser, cannot receive the countenance of
a court of equity.

[In the year 1795, Samuel Chase, by virtue of a warrant of
resurvey, taken out in 1793, on a tract of land then owned by
him, called "Mansfield Purchase," took in several vacant par-
cels, some of which, as appears by these proceedings, were
not contiguous to the original tract, and obtained a patent in
1795, by the name of "Chase's Forest." In 1797, he sold a
part of this land to William Hobbs, who, by his will, devised
the same to defendant. In 1841, the testator, Buckingham,
took out a special warrant for Buckingham Place, which was
located upon a part of the land, included in the survey. The
certificate of survey being duly returned, a caveat was filed
against it by the defendant, Dorsey, in 1842, which is still
depending. The bill was filed in this case to vacate the patent
obtained by Chase, on the ground of fraud, in taking in tracts
not contiguous to his own land.]