Page:The English Reports v1 1900.pdf/1326
tained would have been good, notwithstanding the subsequent act of 2d Ann, which, as to purchases and settlements made by Papists, looks to futurity only. If therefore the power of revocation was not well executed in point of law, or if the execution of it was obtained by imposition upon Sarah French, or misrepresentation to her, or if she was totally mistaken in what she was then doing, from being ignorant of her situation; a court of equity should consider the deed of 1702 as still existing, and not revoked by that of 1710. That the reversion in fee expectant upon the particular estates limited by the deed of 1702, was in Sarah French; and upon her eldest son James Farrel's conformity, she, by the Popery acts, became but tenant for life thereof; it being immaterial whether the Popish parents estate be in possession or reversion, the law is the same in both. By the power reserved to her, she must not only revoke the old uses, but limit new; for a bare revocation, without limiting new uses, would have been void; but after her son's conformity, she could no longer meddle with the fee, by limiting new uses thereout; to a stranger she could not limit a new use, as that would have been divesting out of her son an estate, which the act of parliament had absolutely vested in him; and to the son himself she could not limit the fee by the deed of 1710, because he had the reversion in fee already, as a purchaser under the set, and consequently her power was extinguished, the estate to which it was annexed being gone. If therefore this last deed could not operate as a limitation of a new use in fee to the son, neither could it operate as a revocation of the old uses limited by the deed of 1702; a void limitation being the same as no limi-[266]-tation at all, and the consequence was plain, that the limitations in the deed of 1702 were unrevoked, and must take place. That the deed of 1710 was not only attended with very suspicious circumstances, but was evidently grounded on a mistake in Sarah French, and a total ignorance of the situation of herself and her younger children. Her husband, though a party to the deed of 1702, and, on account of the life estate thereby limited to her, interested in its continuing unrevoked, was no party to that of 1710; and yet his wife was then parting with that estate to take back a new life estate, which, as a Papist, she was absolutely disabled from holding. A daughter married and provided for, was recited to be unmarried, and not provided for, in order to represent the charge upon the estate to be greater than it really was; and the unhappy mother, with an avowed continuing intent of providing for her younger children out of the estate, was made to set loose the only hold they had for bread, and leave them to beggary, by creating a void charge in their favour, which she however apprehended most certainly to be good and effectual. But admitting the deed of 1702 to be well revoked, and the fee vested in James Farrel by that of 1710, still the appellants, as two of his heirs at law, were entitled to a moiety of the estate his devise to the respondents being void for want of a particular estate to support it as a remainder, and too remote, after a general failure of issue, to take place as a future or executory devise.
On the other side it was said (F. Norton, C. Yorke), that the appellants had, by their bill, made only one point, and at the bar had invented two auxiliary ones: I. That the point made by their bill was, that the settlement of 1702 became irrevocable by the Irish Popery acts of the 2d and 8th of Queen Ann, because, by the terms of the power, Sarah French could not revoke the old uses without limiting new ones by the same deed; and that the uses limited by the deed of 1710, being merely voluntary, and the act of a Papist, were prevented by the act of the 2d of Ann from taking effect; for she could not limit new uses without taking back to herself the fee which was prohibited by the act; or, if she could have done so, yet the instant she had become seised of the fee, the act had made her tenant for life only, as her eldest son was a Protestant; or, that the act of the 8th of Anu must have given the estate so resumed to a Protestant informer, and consequently the new uses limited by the deed of 1710 could not have arisen, and that therefore the old uses were not revoked. II. The first point made at the bar was, that by the deed of 1702, reasonable proportions were provided for the daughters and younger sons; and that by the deed of 1710, all the revocable portions were revoked, and in lieu of them a power only given to James Farrel and John Kelly, or the survivor, to give the three younger daughters, and to the younger sons, a sum not exceeding £1800 in the whole; and that therefore Kelly, the trustee, without the concurrence of Farrel, to whom the estate was by that deed given, could not have executed the power; that if Farrel had survived him, he alone [267] had the power to give or not to give the £1800, or any part of it, to his brothers and sisters; that a
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