judgment of the Court was supposed to be taken, as, whether certain lands were a lay fee, or held in pure and perpetual alms. After stating that issue had been joined, the judgment, or declaration, follows, in which the lands, or other possessions, are declared to belong to the party to whom the conveyance was intended to be made."
   "IV. In the fourth and last division we have the .consideration given by the other party for the matter which is conveyed, or the service by which it was to be held, with accounts of the reservations made by the party making the grant. Sometimes, in this clause of the Fine, we find [not a money payment, but lands granted by the party who had taken the other lands specified in the body of the Fine, so as to give to the transaction the character of an exchange."
    Having now deduced from Mr. Hunter's lucid observations upon these documents sufficient to make any ordinary reader master of the subject, we cannot conclude these preliminary remarks better than by citing the same learned writer's observations as to the nature and value of the information to be obtained from these Fines. "Whoever," he says, " looks herein for facts, which, singly considered, are of a striking character, will assuredly be disappointed. The subject [before us]  is the exchange of property, the passing of manors, advowsons, and lands, from hand to hand; the chief changes, in short, in respect of the possession of these things [from the reign of Richard I. downwards]. This, from its very nature, does not present single points on which the mind can rest, and discern in them matter of high importance. It is in the multitude of these facts, in the notices which the Fines contain of innumerable persons, perhaps only to be found here, in whom possession of manors or churches inhered in the earliest times;—in the notices of partitions of estates among