Fraud, Trusts and Trusting: Enforcing Crown Forfeitures in Equity, c.1570–1620
The Journal of Legal History Forthcoming
Faculty of Laws University College London Law Research Paper No. 18/2023
36 Pages Posted: 12 Oct 2023
Date Written: October 11, 2023
Abstract
Conveyances with informal agreements to hold for the benefit of the transferor initially proved efficacious in avoiding statutory forfeiture provisions. In the late sixteenth century, the equity side of the Exchequer developed a capacious doctrine of revenue fraud designed to capture such informal arrangements and to subject the transferor to liability for crown forfeitures. Initially drawing inspiration from the ‘badges of fraud’ in the Statute of Fraudulent Conveyances 1571, the Exchequer quickly lowered the evidentiary threshold required to prove a conveyance fraudulent. A key badge of fraud was an ‘entrusting’ of the transferee by the transferor. The presence of a conveyance ‘in trust’ eventually became the sole evidence required to hold certain conveyances fraudulent under the statute. In the longer term, these cases became the precedential basis for holding the beneficiary’s right under a trust liable to forfeiture as a matter of doctrine.
Keywords: trust, fraud, forfeiture, crown, exchequer, equity, fraudulent conveyances, outlaws, recusants, traitors, fugitives, felons
JEL Classification: K00
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation