448 JONES v. JONES.

the then eolonies of Great Britain, and received as law in Mary-
land, which subjected the whole of a debtor's real estate to be
taken in execution and sold for the payment of his debts.

Whence it appears, that the lien arising from the judgments of
Dawson and Spencer, at their respective d§tes, fastened upon the
real estate of Jesse Jones, adhered to it after his death, and would
have followed it into whosesoever hands it might have passed until
they were satisfied, or the right to sue out an execution upon them
had become entirely barred. But a judicial lien of this kind may
exist after the case has abated by the death of a party; and yet no
execution could be immediately issued against the lands upon
which it attached, after the death of the party, until the judgment
had been regularly revived. And this was in fact the situation of
Spencer's judgments. Hence although it will be necessary, in the
further consideration of this case, to recollect the nature and extent
of the judicial lien with which the real estate of Jesse Jones had
been encumbered during his lifetime; yet the authority of the
sheriff to make the sale he did, after the death of Jones, under the
fieri facias, issued on Dawson's judgment, must be deduced from
other principles of law.

By the common law a fieri facias bound the goods of the defend-
ant from its teste, so that any sale made by him, after that time,
was void; because it was thought, that, if it were not so, every
execution might be avoided by a sale; and it was presumed, that
the sheriff would execute such writs immediately; and that there
would be thereby such notice in the neighbourhood as to prevent
any deception or fraud. But this notion of a retrospective lien,
going back to the teste of the writ, was abused; writs were taken
out one under another, so as to obtain liens upon the goods of
debtors, without delivering them to the sheriff, by which means their
sales and all commerce were made uncertain. To prevent which
it was declared, by the statute of frauds, that the goods should be
bound only from the actual delivery of the writ to the sheriff; by
which the old law was, in effect, restored, which supposed the
writ to be dellvered to the sheriff immediately from the teste. (1)

The mere seizure under the fieri facias does not absolutely or
totally divest the defendant of all property in the goods taken; but
the sheriff thereby acquires only a qualified property in them; com-
mensurate, however, in all respects, to the performance of the

(l) Gilb. Execu. 14.