Maintenance and Embracery Act, 1634

None shall buy or sell or get any pretensed right or title to lands, unless the seller or grantor, or his ancestors in possession, &c. one year before.

On pain of forfeiture of the value to the King and prosecutor.

II. And over that, be it further enacted by the authority aforesaid, That no person or persons, of what estate, degree, or condition soever he or they be, shall from henceforth bargaine, buy or sell, or by any wayes or means obtaine, get, or have any pretensed rights or titles, or take, promise, grant or covenant to have any right or title of any person or persons in or to any mannors, lands, tenements or hereditaments; but if such person or persons which shall so bargaine, sell, give, grant, covenant or promise the same, their auncestors, or they by whom he or they claime the same, have been in possession of the same or of the reversion or remainder thereof, or taken the rents or profits thereof by the space of one whole yeare next before the said bargaine, covenant, grant or promise made, upon paine that he that shall make any such bargaine, sale, promise, covenant or grant, to forfeit the whole value of the lands, tenements, or hereditaments so bargained, sold, promised, covenanted, or granted contrary to the forme of this act; and the buyer or taker thereof, knowing the same, to forfeit also the value of the said lands, tenements or hereditaments so by him bought or taken, as is abovesaid; the one halfe of the said forfeitures to be to the King our Soveraign Lord, and the other halfe to the party that will sue for the same in any of the Kings courts of record, by action of debt, bill, plaint or information; in which action, bill, plaint or information, no essoyne, protection, wager of law nor injunction shall be allowed. [Rep., Stat. Law Rev. (I.) Act, 1878.]