Statute of Enrolments

Be it enacted . . . that from the last day of July, which shall be in the year of our Lord God a thousand five hundred and thirty-six, no manors, lands, tenements, or other hereditaments, shall pass, alter, or change from one to another, whereby any estate of inheritance or freehold shall be made or take effect in any person or persons, or any use thereof to be made, by reason only of any bargain and sale thereof, except the same bargain and sale be made by writing indented, sealed, and enrolled in one of the King's courts of record at Westminster, or else within the same county or counties where the same manors, lands, or tenements so bargained and sold lie or be, before the custos rotulorum and two justices of the peace, and the clerk of the peace of the same county . . . within six months next after the date of the same writings indented.

Editorial note. The Statute of Uses had made the bargain and sale a convenient private conveyance that operated by raising a use in the buyer, which the statute then executed into a legal estate. To prevent secret transfers of land, Parliament immediately enacted the Statute of Enrolments requiring public record of such bargains.

Editorial note. The statute's purpose is publicity: no freehold shall pass by bargain and sale without a public and enrolled instrument, so that title to land is not transferred in secret.

Editorial note. A bargain and sale of a freehold estate is ineffective to pass the freehold unless made by writing indented, sealed, and enrolled within six months in a designated court of record or with the county clerk of the peace.

Editorial note. The statute reaches only bargains and sales of estates of inheritance or freehold. It does not apply to leases for years, and its narrow scope permitted the invention of the lease-and-release conveyance, which passed the freehold without enrolment by separating the lease (a term for one year, unaffected by the statute) from the release of the reversion (which operated on a person already in privity).

Editorial note. The statute is inseparable from the Statute of Uses (1536), enacted the same session. Its scheme was received in early American jurisdictions and evolved into the state recording statutes that today govern the priority of conveyances.

Editorial note. Every American recording statute traces its doctrinal ancestry to the Statute of Enrolments. The modern grantor-grantee index and the priority rules of race, notice, and race-notice jurisdictions realize in modern form the publicity principle first codified in 1536.

Editorial note. The lease-and-release conveyance, first employed in the late sixteenth century, evaded the statute and became the standard mode of conveyance for the next two centuries. Enrolment survived chiefly for annuities, trusts, and certain settlements until abolished piecemeal in the nineteenth century.

Editorial note. Bargains and sales of freeholds must be public and of record. The statute regulates the mode of conveyance, not the substantive rights of the parties.

Editorial note. The lease-and-release device was upheld by the Court of Common Pleas in Lutwich v. Mitton, Cro. Jac. 604 (1620), which recognized that a term for years was not within the statute's language. American courts have generally treated the doctrinal principle of the statute—publicity of conveyances—as received into the common law by way of state recording statutes.

Editorial note. The direct application of the statute in the United States is now historical; the operative modern equivalents are state recording, registration, and title-transfer statutes.

Editorial note. See Statute of Uses, 27 Hen. 8, c. 10 (1536); Statute of Frauds, 29 Car. 2, c. 3 (1677); Uniform Real Property Electronic Recording Act (URPERA) (2004).

Editorial note. The statute embodies the constitutional principle that title to land is a matter of public record, a principle preserved in every modern American recording system.