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any [84] dormant titles, or remote reversions of the estates of those families for whom they are concerned, their situation gives them such opportunities, as may prove to many too strong a temptation to do that for their own benefit, which an honest agent or trustee ought to do for the benefit of the family. And they will be induced to discover titles or reversions standing out, for the sake of getting them to their own use, which otherwise might never be known, or be incapable of being proved, and which therefore they will be always able to pick up for mere trifles, as in the present case, where an estate of £1500 a year, has been got in consideration of £30.

As to the objection, that the appellants ancestors Oliver and Peter Neve had long submitted to, and acquiesced under this purchase as a fair one, no argument could be drawn from any such acquiescence. Because old Norris industriously concealed to the time of his death, having obtained any conveyance from Neve the blacksmith, though called upon by the bill filed in 1684, to discover what interest had come to him, as well touching the leasehold as the inheritance; and suffered the family to believe, that the conveyance to Peter was valid. From Norris's will it took air, that he had obtained some conveyance; and Oliver first heard of it about 1709. But the descendants of old Norris constantly concealed the time when, and the circumstances under which the conveyance was made; and Oliver had then a son nearly of age, and he himself lived but two years after. That Peter Neve never knew when, or how this conveyance to Norris was obtained; and under that ignorance of the true state of the case, treated about its being produced and delivered up, but always disputed it, though he might not think it prudent to commence a suit, when it was uncertain whether the reversion would ever take effect: besides, all the parties to the transaction were dead, before it is pretended that either Oliver or Peter Neve ever heard of any conveyance having been obtained by old John Norris. That the appellants defence in the cause was very different from the equity now insisted on; the ground of that defence being, that Norris having been employed as an agent for Oliver or Peter Neve to buy out the blacksmith's right, had purchased it for himself, and therefore ought to be considered as a trustee for those whose agent he was: but the equity which the newly discovered evidence supported and verified, was neither known or in issue in the cause; and if this evidence had been discovered even before publication passed in that cause, yet it could not have been made use of at the hearing, to prove what was not put in issue; and this circumstance brings the case within the old rule of the court relating to bills of review with supplemental matter, and within a late rule concerning original bills in the nature of such bills of review; and consequently entitles the appellants to have the use and benefit of such evidence.

It has however been objected, that the evidence now produced and insisted on as a new discovery, and material to the merits of the case, is not a new discovery; but either was, or must be pre-[85]-sumed to have been known to the appellants themselves, or to their agents, in whose custody it appears to have been.

But to obviate any objection of this nature, the appellants themselves, and also their agents, have positively sworn, that they were, in fact, ignorant of this evidence till long after the former hearing and decree, and knowledge or notice is not in this case to be presumed; but on the contrary, there was much more reason to presume that the appellants and their agents were ignorant of this evidence, from its not having been mentioned or made use of in the cause, than there was to presume that they knew of it, merely because part of it was in the custody of Martin, who was never concerned for the appellants, save only upon the trial of the ejectment, and the execution of the commission for examining witnesses de bene esse in the country, which was eight years before the bill was filed upon which the present decree was made and the rather, as this evidence happened to be in his custody, not as an agent for the appellants, but, in another capacity, as executor of Peter Neve. Besides, the most material parts of this newly discovered evidence, viz. the blacksmith's answer to the bill filed in 1679, and the bill filed in 1684, together with the proceedings thereon, were not pretended to have been in Martin's custody at all, or in any degree known either to the appellants, or their agents. That a part of this new evidence happening accidentally to be in the hands of Martin, not by any delivery from the appellants, but by means of his being an executor of Peter Neve, was so far from being a circumstance to induce a presumption of the appellants having notice of that evidence, and