224 HANNAH E. CHASE'S CASE.

Whereupon Clarke conveyed to Chase an absolute estate in fee
simple. On the twenty-sixth of the same month, in which Chase
had obtained this conveyance, he leased the property to Bryden for
the term of fifteen years, reserving an annual rent of $2000; to
which lease Chase's wife, the present plaintiff, added her relinquish-
ment of dower in the usual form. And on the same day on which
the lease bears date, Chase executed his bond to Bryden, stipulating,
in the condition, that if Bryden should pay him the sum of $17,500,
at the expiration of fifteen years from that time, and not before, or
within one year thereafter, and not afterwards, that then he, Chase,
would reconvey the property called the Fountain Inn to Bryden.
After which, on the 2d of April, 1811, Samuel Chase, jun'r, one
of these defendants proposed to purchase this property of the late
Samuel Chase, and in that proposal he speaks of the dower of the
present plaintiff as a then vested legal right. This proposal was
matured, and the property was conveyed by the late Samuel Chase
to this defendant Samuel Chase, jun'r, in trust, or out of which he
was to make provision for Matilda Ridgely and Ann Chase, two
others of these defendants, and daughters of the late Samuel Chase.

It has been urged, that Bryden always understood this contract
between the late Samuel Chase and himself to be nothing more than
a mortgage; and that he instituted a suit in this court to set aside
this absolute conveyance from Clarke to Chase, and to be let in to
redeem. It has also been urged, that Samuel Chase, one of the
present defendants, under a conviction that Bryden had a good
and available right, purchased his interest. This may be all true;
but surely the assertions of Bryden, however solemn or formal, or
the mere acts or allegations of any of these defendants, not respon-
sive to the bill, cannot be seriously regarded as a part of the legal
and pertinent proofs in the case. Therefore, all these sayings and
doings of Bryden, and of these defendants, must be entirely put
aside as foreign to the subject now under consideration. There is
then, in fact, no proof whatever, in relation to the nature of the
contract between the late Samuel Chase and James Bryden, other
than that afforded by these several deeds and instruments of writing
themselves.

The various contracts, made at different times, by the several
parties concerned, from Gough to the late Samuel Chase, exhibit
this matter in an obscure and circuitous form, from which it may
be, in some degree, relieved and shortened, without enfeebling the
pretensions of either of the present parties, by regarding Gough,