(p) Capital & Counties Bank, Ld. v. Rhodes, 1903, 1 Ch. 631, 655.

(q) Above, p. 313.

(r) See Wms. Real Prop. 118, 393, 626, 628, 19th ed. The transferee appears not to succeed to the estate or ownership of the transferor, but to have an entirely new title conferred upon him by an exercise of sovereign authority; compare the case of the purchase of a ship sold in Admiralty proceedings in rem; Wms. Pers. Prop. 46, 15th ed.

(s) See stat. 38 & 39 Vict. c. 87, ss. 29, 30.

(t) Above, pp. 22, 506 sq.

(u) Above, p. 509.

(Rule 111.) Where instruments or applications are delivered at the registry with the proper Inland Revenue and Land Registry fee stamps affixed thereto or impressed thereon {y), accompanied when necessary by the land certificate or certificate of charge (z), they shall be examined by an officer of the registry, and if certified by him as capable of registration, they shall be entered in a book (a) in the order in which they are delivered. The registration shall then be completed as of the day on which, and, in the absence of direction or inference to the contrary in or from the instruments or applications themselves, of the priority in which the instruments or applications were delivered.

Relation back of registration to the time of delivery of the application therefor.

(Rule 118.) On the delivery for registration of an instrument or application, notice of the fact shall be sent to the person by whom it purports to be executed, and, where the instrument purports to be a conveyance or transfer in exercise of a power of sale contained either in a mortgage prior to the registration of the land or in a registered charge, notice of the fact shall also be sent to the proprietor of the land and to the proprietors of all subsequent charges.

The notice shall state that the person to whom it is addressed will have three clear days from the posting of the notice within which to lodge objections. In the absence of any objection the registration may be completed at the expiration of the limited period.

(Rule 117.) The registered proprietor of land or of a charge or his solicitor, or with his consent in writing any other person or his solicitor, may lodge at the registry a notice (to be called a priority notice) in Form 19 in the First Schedule hereto reserving priority for a specified instrument or for a specified application intended to be subsequently made. The notice shall be accompanied by the land certificate or certificate of charge and shall be entered on the register and the certificate shall be endorsed accordingly. If within fourteen days from the lodging of the notice or such further time as the registrar shall think fit, the specified instrument or application is delivered for registration, it shall be registered with priority to any other instrument or application affecting the same land or charge which may have been delivered in the meantime. On the expiration of the period fixed, as aforesaid, for the operation of the notice, it may be cancelled.

Notice of application for registration to be sent to certain persons.

Priority notice.

(x) Above, pp. 373, 509, 645, 646, 648.

(y) See stat. 38 & 39 Vict. c. 87, s. 83 (7); Land Transfer Rules (1903), 123 - 125

(z) See above, p. 1062, n. (u).

(a) This is called the Application Book.

(Rule 157.) (1) Upon the joint application in writing of the registered proprietor and of an intended purchaser of part of the land comprised in a title, accompanied by an instrument of transfer (executed as or as in the nature of an escrow by all necessary parties), the intended transferee may be provisionally registered as proprietor; and in such case a land certificate may be issued to the transferor showing the intended transferee as registered proprietor of the land mentioned in the instrument of transfer; but nevertheless during a period to be specified in the application (but not exceeding twenty-one days from the date thereof) such registration shall, subject as hereinafter provided, be deemed to be provisional only, and liable to cancellation under this rule; and unless completed as hereinafter provided such registration shall not be deemed to be registration within the meaning of sections 29 and 34 of the Act of 1875.

(2) At any time before the registration has been completed, the provisional registration may be cancelled and the instrument of transfer returned to the transferor upon (i) the delivery of the land certificate to the registrar to be cancelled, and (ii) the production of a statutory declaration by the transferor to the effect that any consideration expressed to be paid or given for the transfer has not been paid or given, and (iii) the service of such notices as the registrar shall think fit.

(3) If such registration shall not have been cancelled then on the expiration of the period specified in the application (or sooner on the production of the land certificate accompanied by the written application of the transferee or any person claiming under him for the registration to be immediately completed) the registration shall be completed and take effect as of the day on which and of the priority in which the application for provisional registration was delivered to the registry, and the instrument of transfer shall be deemed to have taken effect accordingly.

(4) Pending the completion of the registration the registrar shall make such provisional entries in the books kept in the registry as he shall deem necessary.

Provisional registration.

Now it is thought that, under an open contract for the sale of registered land, the vendor can have no right to require the purchaser to pay the price at the office of the vendor's solicitors on receipt of an instrument of transfer executed by the vendor (b). Such an instrument, unless it contain words sufficiently evidencing an intention to grant the estate, as well as to execute the statutory power, vests no estate at all in the purchaser prior to his registration as proprietor of the land (c). And if between the time of payment of the purchase money and that of the delivery of his transfer for registration, application were made at the registry for the registration of some other disposition by the vendor, capable of registration, or of an inhibition or a restriction, it appears that the transfer to the purchaser would be postponed to the result of those prior applications. And this would equally be the case, although the transfer had contained a conveyance of the vendor's legal estate to the purchaser. It is thought that the vendor cannot require the purchaser to run these risks, however improbable it may be that he will incur any actual harm in the short interval between payment and registration. There appear, however, to be four ways in which the risk of adverse entries in the register, made subsequently to payment, may be avoided.