at st. mary's 21

in the Provincial Court in 1714, Clayland's Lessee
v. Pearce, 1 Harris & McHenry, 29, in which a
will of land executed two and a half years after
the enactment of the Statute of Frauds, 29 Charles
II, c. 3, but not in compliance witji that statute,
was upheld nevertheless because it had been exe-
cuted before publication or notice of the statute in
the province, and before the passage of an act of
assembly on the pleading of laws of England in
the probate court, "and also in the infancy of the
country, when evidences were harder to come by
than now."