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years lease, the covenants in the lease then in being may be resumed, amounting only to a declaration, that the lease by that decree directed to be made, should be without prejudice to any claim or question, which might possibly arise upon those covenants. So that the single question was apprehended to be, whether the respondents were obliged by virtue of the covenant contained in the old lease of 1567, to grant such a lease as was prayed by the Doctors, viz. for ninety-nine years, or from forty years to forty years, till it should be made a term of ninety-nine years, for a fine of £20, and under a reserved rent of £5 8s.? Or, whether they were not disabled, and consequently discharged, by the restraining statutes, from complying with any such obligation?

That they were so discharged appeared, from the statutes themselves; by the first of which, all leases to be made for above twenty-one years, or three lives, or of houses in corporations for above forty years, were void. There follows indeed a clause in the 13 Eliz. by the first part of which it is provided, that this act shall not extend to any lease hereafter to be made, upon the surrender of any lease heretofore made, or by reason of any covenant or condition contained in any lease heretofore made; and if the proviso had stopped here, it must be confessed, that a new lease to be made upon the surrender of a former, or in pursuance of a covenant contained in a former lease, would have been good, how long soever the term had been but then the clause goes on in these words, so that the lease to be made do not contain more years, than the residue of the years of the former lease shall be, at the time of the lease hereafter to be made. And therefore no lease exceeding the residue of the former can be good, because the whole clause taken together makes good nothing but such new leases made on the surrender of old ones, or in pursuance of covenants or conditons con-[247]-tained in old ones, as do not exceed the number of years remaining of the former.

But it may be objected, that this is a superfluous clause, inadvertently thrown into the statute, and therefore no stress is to be laid upon it; for to what purpose should they give leave to make new leases on the surrender of old ones, or in pursuance of covenants contained in old ones, for the remainder of the term of the old ones, and no longer? And why might not the tenants as well keep their old leases?

To this it may be answered, that the Legislature considered, that many of the old leases which had been made for a valuable consideration, might be defective; that if the lessees had occasion to sell them, the purchasers might be desirous, or obliged by clauses in the old leases, to take new ones in their own names, or for other reasons it might be proper to renew them before they were expired: in which cases, the lessors, however willing, could not have granted new leases to continue for the remainder of the old ones, upon a surrender of them; nor have been compelled to do it, if unwilling, by virtue of any covenant or condition for that purpose contained in the old one, if they exceeded the term limited by this act; but the new lease would have been void by the enacting part of the statute. The Legislature therefore had such regard to leases, which were actually executed before the making of this set, that they not only took care to prevent such leases from being affected by the enacting part, but added this clause on purpose to make good such leases as the parties interested should be desirous of making, in the room of such parts of the old term as should be then unexpired. But as to leases to be made, exceeding the remainder of the old ones, though in pursuance of covenants therein contained, they thought fit, for the public good, to make all such leases void, and so discharge the covenants for granting them. Neither is this clause inadvertently drawn; for whoever considers it, will see it is penned with great care, to prevent the inconveniencies of such leases as are contended for by the present appellants. In the latter of these statutes, there is no proviso to save any such lease at all: but as all the statutes relating to ecclesiastical leases, are to be construed and explained by one another, and as this statute of the 14th, was but an appendix to that of the 13th Eliz. the omission of this proviso might not, perhaps, be thought of any weight either way. However, if the latter statute should be considered as independent of the former, yet it would be a strange inference, that because the makers of it had saved no sort of leases out of the enacting part, they therefore intended to save all. But the contrary inference seems rational enough, that they now omitted that