588 DUVALL v. WATERS.

from it. After the date of the conveyance of the 17th of February,
1824 to Nathan I. Waters, the son, and Samuel Ratcliff, the son-
in-law, Nathan Waters continued to hold possession of the land,
claiming it as his own, and exercising many unequivocal acts of
ownership over it; he sold timber off it, he rented parcels of it,
and gave receipts for the rent as due to himself; and he once drove
from it his son; who, as well as Ratcliffj admitted, after the date
of the deed, that they had no right to it. There is no clear unsus-
picious proof, that either Nathan I. Waters or Samuel Ratcliff ever
paid to Nathan Waters any thing whatever for this land. The one,
as his son, and the other, as the husband of one of his daughters,
no doubt had his confidence and shared his best affections; and the
more so as they were both poor and had no way of accumulating
large sums of money.

In short, it is clear, from all the circumstances of this case, that
this deed of the 17th of February, 1824, was in truth, made, as
Nathan Waters himself declared to one of the witnesses, merely
"for the purpose of protecting his property until he could pay his
debts," and, that it was a conveyance contrived with the express
intent to defraud his creditors; or as it is declared in the strong
language of the venerable statute of 1570, "not only to the let or
hindrance of the due course and execution of law and justice, but
also to the overthrow of all true and plain dealing, bargaining and
chevisance between man and man."(r) I shall therefore pronounce
both these deeds, for the second must follow the fate ofthe first, to
be utterly void as against this plaintiff if his claim under the return
be a sound one.

The next inquiry, therefore, is, as to the validity of the plain-
tiff's claim. The property in question was sold by the sheriff
under and by virtue of a writ of fieri facias issued on a judgment
obtained in an action at common law by Samuel Peach against this
defendant Nathan Waters; and this plaintiff makes title as the
purchaser at that sale. But these defendants object, that the
description of the lands as given by the sheriff, in his return to the
fieri facias, is so vague and uncertain as to convey no valid title
to the plaintiff as purchaser. What degree of certainty in the spe-
cification of the land taken and sold is necessary to be given by
the sheriff, in his return to the fieri facias under which the levy was

(r) 13 Eliz. c. 5.