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TESSIER v. WYSE. 45
tions respectively are seized, extended, sold or disposed of for the
satisfaction of debts.' (s)
This British statute was first introduced, used and practised un-
der here about the year 1140, and has been continued in full force
ever since, (y) The previous English statutes which gave the
right to have lands taken in execution and delivered to the creditor
at an extended annual value until the debt was paid, if not vir-
tually repealed by this act, yet having given a remedy so inferior,
or comparatively so ineffectual, were never resorted to after the in-
troduction of this statute; no previous legislative enactment had
expressly authorized a creditor to have his debtor's lands taken in
execution and soldi for the payment of the debt; although it is said
that the Court of Chancery would, under some circumstances, accele-
rate the payment of the debt by ordering a sale of a moiety, or so
much as might have been extended at law. (z) This statute re-
moved all difficulty, in that respect, by putting simple contract and
bond creditors upon the same footing, and by allowing the real es-
tate to be seized and sold for the satisfaction of debt in like manner
as personal estate.
Under this law it seems, however, to have been always con-
sidered here, that an heir should not be held liable to an action at
common law by a simple contract creditor, merely in respect of
the real estate descended, (a) and therefore, as the statute had ex-
pressly declared, that the real estate should be liable to all debts in
like manner as real estates were by the law of England liable to
the satisfaction of debts due by bond, it necessarily followed, that
simple contract creditors could only obtain satisfaction from the
real estate of their debtor, in the hands of his heirs or devisees, by
a creditor's bill in Chancery, governed by rules here, similar to
those by which a creditor's bill by a bond creditor in England were
regulated, and as this statute was avowedly made for the benefit of
creditors, to enlarge, not to narrow their remedy, it must have left
their title and their right to enforce payment, at their election, from
the real or the personal estate, unimpaired and unprejudiced by
any equity which then existed only between the real and personal
representatives of the deceased; or which arose only out of the
mode of administering the estate for the benefit of the heirs
(x) 5 Geo. 2, e. 7.—(y) Davidson's Lessee v. Beatty, 3 H. & McH, 612.—(z) Stile-
man v. Ashdown, 2 Atk. 609; S. C, Amb, 16.—(s) Lodge v. Murray,1 H, & J.
499; Gist v. Cockey, 7 H. & J. 140.
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