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subject to further order; and the several defendants who had obtained judgments at law, or who had not as yet obtained any judgment or decree, were injoined from proceeding at law against the respondent Katherine, for recovery of the debts to them respectively due from the said Humphry Morice; and all parties were at liberty to apply to the Court for further directions, and were to be paid their costs, to be taxed by the Master, out of the testator's personal estate.

From this decree four several appeals were brought the first by the Governor and Company of the Bank of England, who insisted (J. Strange, J. Pauncfort), that their demands were before, and at the death of Humphry Morice, legal demands, and recoverable by the ordinary proceedings in the courts of law. That they accordingly pursued such legal method, and obtained a verdict and judgment against the respondent Katherine for £28,993 8s. 1d. and not having, by any act of theirs, forfeited or abused their legal remedy, they ought not to be restrained by a Court of Equity from taking out execution on the said judgment, when it manifestly appeared, that the decrees of the 25th of January, and 2d of February 1731, were obtained by the assistance of, and in collusion with the respondent Katherine, who immediately came into a Court of Equity, in order to be protected for so doing. That by this decree of the 6th of November 1736, the appellants were not only restrained from going on at law, but must also wait for satisfaction until all the several accounts thereby directed were fully settled, which, in the present case, there was very little prospect would ever be done; nor was there any prospect of there being any thing remaining for the judgment creditors, after the decree creditors were satisfied their principal and interest. And should it once be established as a rule in a Court of Equity, (which it was apprehended was never till now attempted,) that a voluntary decree, submitted to by an executor in favour of some of the cre-[475]-ditors of the testator, should be a sufficient ground to draw all the other creditors into equity, and prevent their going to law, the plain and natural consequence would be, that such other creditors could never be sure of obtaining satisfaction for their demands in a legal way; but would be in danger of being involved in tedious and expensive suits, as the appellants had been in the present case. And for this reason, bills filed by executors to have the assets brought into and distributed by a Court of Equity, have been discountenanced; though not done with a design to favour any of the creditors, or prefer them to the others. That the decrees of the 25th of January, and 2d of February 1731, were submitted to by the respondent Katherine, with an apparent intent to apply all the assets in satisfying the plaintiffs in those suits, to the entire exclusion of the rest of the testator's creditors. But it was conceived, that a Court of Equity ought not to give any assistance or protection to the respondent Katherine, contrary to that known maxim, that equality is equity, much less did she merit such assistance; having, by her answers in those suits, admitted more money to be due than really was so; and having put in a false plea to the appellants action at law, and also submitted to the decree of the 2d of February 1731, after she had consented not to acknowledge any judgment in the Court of King's Bench, or any other court, for a demand of the like kind with the appellants; as the demands of the decree creditors were, being all upon simple contract. That decrees in equity, especially those obtained only upon the admission of executors, and without any manner of proof, ought not to be esteemed equal to judgments obtained at law, and much less when such decrees were obtained for greater sums than were really due, as in the present case; and particularly as to the demands of the respondents Ann, Judith, and Elizabeth Morice, which, by the decree of the 25th of January 1731, were ascertained at £27,376 11s. 5d. which far exceeded the monies really due to them; and still less were the plaintiffs in that decree, entitled to interest at £5 per cent. for the principal sums admitted by the respondent Katherine to be due to them, as it must swallow up all the testator's assets. That supposing (but not admitting) there was any foundation for an executrix, who finds judgments and decrees against her testator in his life-time, to come into a Court of Equity for directions in the application of his assets; yet an executrix, not left under that difficulty, but who had voluntarily brought it upon herself, was not equally the object of relief in a Court of Equity. That the judgment obtained by the appellants, ought to have been decreed to have been paid, not only before any of the demands of the respondents under the said voluntary decrees, but even before such of the respondents as had obtained judg-