Page:The English Reports v1 1900.pdf/608

Cuming's mortgage, and had it assigned to the respondent Edwards in trust for him.

Richard Clarke, one of the cestui que vies in Dr. Saunders's lease, and a lessee of part of the premises under Dr. Saunders, died on the 29th of January, 1729; having made his will, whereby he devised his interest in the premises to his nephew George Alcock; who, being thereby entitled to Mr. Clarke's lease, applied to Dr. Saunders for a renewal; and accordingly, on the 7th of April 1730, Dr. Saunders received a fine of £56 and granted a new lease for the lives of Joshua Parrott the son of Joshua Parrott, John Winnett, and the said George Alcock, whose life was inserted in the place of the deceased Richard Clarke.

Although Dr. Saunders renewed the lease and received the fine of his under-tenant Alcock, in about two months after the death of Clarke the cestui que vie; yet it was near three years before he applied to the respondent Griffith for a renewal, or gave him any notice of Clarke's death.

But on the 19th of February 1732, he wrote a letter, informing him that Mr. Clarke was dead, and desiring a meeting to be appointed for renewing the lease and paying the fine; and in his letter, named George Alcock as the life to be substituted in the place of Mr. Clarke. Upon the receipt of this letter, the respondent went with Mr. Anderson, his attorney, to Dr. Saunders's house in Dublin; when he proposed to renew the lease and pay the fine, for inserting the name of George Alcock in the place of Richard Clarke, and offered a banker's note as a tender of the money; and the respondent enquiring how long Clarke had been [317] dead, Dr. Saunders answered, that Clarke had been dead about twelve or thirteen months; but that he was willing to pay interest for the fine, from the time the lease ought to have been renewed: and upon further discourse, the respondent, or his agent, mentioned that they had some information that Joshua Parrott, the cestui que vie in the original lease, was dead; and having enquired whether Thomas Litchfield, the other cestui que vie, was living or not, Dr. Saunders declared, that the said Parrott was still living, and said he was a poor old man; and that about three weeks or a month before, he had seen him and given him a piece of money; he also affirmed, that Thomas Litchfield was alive, and was at that time in the country; and the Doctor then insisting upon the tender which he had made, or that the respondent should go to the banker's, who would pay down the money; the respondent and his agent, trusting to the Doctor's affirmation, that Clarke had been dead no more than twelve or thirteen months, and that Thomas Litchfield and Joshua Parrott were both living, declared they would admit the bank note as a sufficient tender, and would not take advantage of the lapse of time since the decease of Clarke, provided Dr. Saunders made it appear that Parrott and Litchfield, the other cestui que vies, were still living; but Dr. Saunders pretending he was soon to go out of town, and that his attorney was at that time in the country, it was agreed to put off the farther consideration of the affair to the next Easter term.

During this interval, the respondent found that Richard Clarke had been dead about three years, and that Dr. Saunders had renewed the lease to Clarke's executor, near three years before their last meeting. This manifest attempt to impose upon the respondent, put him upon a more strict enquiry after the other lives, and at last he discovered, that Joshua Parrott, who passed in the neighbourhood for the cestui que vie in the lease, and to whom Dr. Saunders pretended he had given a piece of money, was great grandson, and not the grandson of Joseph Parrott named in the leases of 1683 and 1710, and was at the time of this enquiry about thirty years old: he also found that Joshua Parrott, the grandson of Joseph, and Thomas Litchfield, the two real cestui que vies, had been soldiers in the service of Queen Anne; and that it was the general reputation, that the said Joshua Parrott was killed at the siege of Mercia, in the year 1705, or 1706, and was never heard of afterwards; and that Thomas Litchfield had died on shipboard in his voyage from the siege of Barcelona, in or about the same year; and that his widow had been married above twenty years to a second husband: upon these discoveries it appearing, that Dr. Saunders had been guilty of great misrepresentation and concealment of the truth, with a design to impose upon the respondent; he declined all further meetings, and gave him to understand that he should not renew the lease, which he insisted was absolutely determined upon the death of Richard Clarke.

Dr. Saunders therefore, in Trinity term 1733, filed a bill in the Court of Exchequer in Ireland, against the respondent and Francis [318] Anderson, his