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others his executors £100 each, to be executors, besides several other considerable legacies given to them, their wives, and children, in all to the amount of £7000 or £8000, but made no devise or disposition of the residue of his real or personal estate; and of his said will appointed the said William Alcock, a protestant, the appellants Moore and Lattin, and Richard Leigh, papists, executors; and soon after dying without issue, the executors proved the will in common form.

The testator had only one brother of the half blood, Thomas Alcock, and two sisters of the whole blood, namely, Ann and Elizabeth; Ann married Thomas Vernon, of Tunbridge in Kent, and both she and her husband died before the testator, leaving issue the respondent Ann Robinson. Elizabeth, the other of the testator's sisters, married William Court, and had issue by him the respondent William Court, her eldest son, and four other children; and both Court and his wife also dying before the testator, the respondents Ann Robinson and William Court, as his heirs at law, became entitled to his real estate not devised by the will. And the respondent Ann became also entitled to one-third of the residue of the personal estate, undisposed of; and the respondent William Court became likewise entitled to one-fifth of another third part of such residue, according to the statute of distributions; and therefore the respondents applied to the appellants and the other executors, to deliver up to them the deeds and writings relating to the testator's real estate, and also to have a distribution of the personal estate undisposed of by his will.

[576] These demands not being complied with, the respondents, in Michaelmas term 1718, exhibited their bill in the court of Exchequer in Ireland, against the appellants and the other executors, praying a discovery of the testator's real and personal estate, and to be relieved according to the nature of their case.

The appellants and the other executors put in four several answers to this bill, and thereby they confessed assets to the amount of £10,000 and upwards, and set out a schedule of debts and legacies paid by them, to the amount of £4600 and upwards; and they discovered, that the testator died seised of several lots of ground on George's Quay and Mercer's Dock, in Dublin, by virtue of a lease for three lives renewable for ever; which, in their first answer, they swore was only a mortgage for years to him.

The appellants being of the popish persuasion, and, as such, disabled, by several statutes made in Ireland to prevent the further growth of popery, from making any purchase of lands of inheritance; in order to evade those laws, prevailed upon the testator, in his life-time, to act as a trustee for them in the purchase of several lands; and particularly for the appellant Lattin, in the purchase of the lands of Athgarett, with its several denominations, in the county of Kildare, from the Lord Fitzharding, in the year 1712, in consideration of £1360. And, to secure these lands to the appellant Lattin, so as that the same should not be liable to a discovery, the testator, on the 25th of June 1713, entered into a statute staple to the appellant Lattin for £2500. And to secure another purchase made by the testator, in trust for him, of the lands of Dowdingstown and Herbertstown, and their great tithes, and of several other lands in the said county of Kildare, the testator, on the 28th of November following, entered into another statute staple to the said appellant for £6000. And also to secure to the appellant Moore a purchase made by the testator of certain lands in the county of Meath, and a house in the town of Drogheda; he, on the 7th of November 1715, entered into a statute staple to the appellant Moore for £1500.

The appellants having thus discovered, that the lands on George's Quay were held by a lease for three lives, and the respondents being therefore entitled thereto as special occupants; they applied to the court of Exchequer, to have the lease brought into court, for the further security of their title; and the court ordered the same accordingly. Whereupon the appellant Lattin, apprehending that the respondents might be decreed to those lands, and that he would soon be turned out of possession, thought proper, in April 1721, to got the lands extended, under colour of the said statute staple for £6000; and a liberate being thereupon directed to the sheriff of Dublin, the appellant Lattin was, in pursuance thereof, put into possession of the said lands.

[577] The respondents thereupon exhibited a supplemental bill, charging, that the testator had made several purchases of lands in the counties of Kildare and Meath, in trust for the appellants, who were papists; and that the said statutes staple were entered into by him to the appellants, in order to prevent those purchases from being discovered, and as a collateral security to assure the same; this bill also charged, that