The 2d and 3d Anne, c. 4, provided for the public registry of all deeds, conveyances, and wills relating to any manors, lands, tenements, or hereditaments within the West Riding of the Riding and Kingston-upon-Hull by the 6th Anne, c. 35, county of York. This statute was extended to the East and to the North Riding by 8 Geo. II., c. 16. The act of 7 Anne, c. 20, provided for the registry of deeds, conveyances, wills, and other incumbrances on lands, &c., in the county of Middlesex. The effect of the register acts is to render prior unregistered deeds fraudulent and void, as to all subsequent deeds whereof memorials have been duly registered; so that a purchaser or mortgagee can only be affected by a deed duly registered, of which he may have notice by examining the register. The registration should be made immediately after the execution of the conveyance, otherwise the delay might enable another encumbrancer to take priority. Before Lord Campbell's abolition of Arrest Act, 1 and 2 Vict., c. 110, judgments of the superior courts constituted a charge on real estates, and searches had to be made for twenty years in the several courts to ascertain whether any such charges existed. By that act the remedies of creditors was extended over the property of their debtors; but it was enacted that no judgment or decree should affect any real estate otherwise than before the act, until registered with the senior master of the Common Pleas at Westminster. And the 2d and 3d Vict., c. 11, and the 3d and 4th Vict., c. 82, provided that these judgments should be renewed every five years, or be of no effect.

But as against purchasers or mortgagees, without notice, such judgments or decrees should not bind any lands or tenements, although registered, otherwise than a judgment of the superior courts would have bound such purchaser or mortgagee before the act of the 1st and 2d Vict., c. 110.

If the purchaser or mortgagee has notice of a judgment against the vendor, the judgment creditor will take priority, but the purchaser or mortgagee is not required to search for judgments, though it is usual for solicitors, by way of precaution, to do so; and if there is an entry of a judgment within five years, the vendor will be required to remove the charge before he can call for a completion of the purchase. In the first session of Parliament of 1859 a bill passed the House of Lords to provide that no bona fide purchaser or mortgagee should be bound by any other than actual notice of any charge affecting the title to the property. It was also proposed in the House of Commons to establish a Landed Estates Court, in which the title to real property might be investigated (as in Ireland); and on due notice to all parties interested, and on satisfactory proof, the court might grant an indefeasible title; and by another bill it was proposed that such title might then be entered in a public registry, and all future dealings with the property so registered should be entered on the register of titles. These bills, on the dissolution of Parliament in April 1859, were postponed.

The system of registration in Scotland appears to secure the utmost safety that can be attained in transactions affecting heritable property. Wherever such property passes out of the hands of any individual, either voluntarily or by the act of the law, it is made the interest of the party to whom it is transferred to warn the public of the fact, by the insertion of certain instruments in a public register. If he delay to do so, it is at his own risk; for in all competitions for the property it is the date, not of the voluntary or judicial act, but of its publication in the appropriate register, which determines the preferable right. If a person wish to become the purchaser of any heritable property situated in a Scotch burgh, he may examine the burgh register, and if he find the right of the property standing unencumbered in the person with whom he proposes to transact, and find no legal interpellation in certain other registers, he may transact with perfect safety, provided he take care to publish his having done so in the burgh register immediately. The like arrangement follows in regard to heritable properties in counties, for which there are what is called the particular record for each county, and the general record applicable to them all. Thus an intending purchaser can always ascertain whether any prior disposition, or heritable bond or other burden, or adjudication by the law or other legal impediment, exist, which can prevent him in good faith from purchasing with safety. Some or all of these things may be actually in existence; but if they be not published in the manner now referred to, and if the purchaser took the precaution to have his own title timously published, they can only affect the seller personally (who is punishable for granting double dispositions) and his heirs, but the purchaser's title is the preferable one. There is a strong feeling in England against the exposure of domestic and private arrangements by such registers; but that is now satisfactorily avoided in Scotland, where, by recent improvements, the fact of the real right having passed from one person to another may be published in the shortest possible way; though, wherever burdens on property are meant to be created, these burdens must fully and distinctly appear on the record, otherwise they will not affect third parties transacting in ignorance. The statutes regulating these matters in Scotland are the acts of the Scotch Parliaments, 1698, c. 4; 1693, c. 15 & 35; 1696, c. 5 & 39; also 8 & 9 Vict., c. 31 & 35; 10 & 11 Vict., c. 48 & 50; 17 & 18 Vict., c. 62.