In its original form it required that certain types of contracts, wills, and grants, and assignment or surrender of leases or interest in real property must be in writing and signed to avoid fraud on the court by perjury and the subornation of perjury.

Section 3 provides that all leases, estates, and interest in freehold or term of years assigned granted or surrendered must be by deed or note in writing signed by the grantor or his agent or by operation of law.

Section 7 provides that all conveyances in trusts of land must be in writing signed by the maker or by will.

Section 9 provides that all grants and assignments of trusts in land must be in writing signed by the grantor or by will.

However section 53(1)(a) required that interest in land be created or disposed by a signed writing, a will or operation of law.

Section 4 of the Statute of Frauds[5] originally provided that an action may not be brought on the following types of contracts unless there is a written note or memorandum signed by the party being charged or a person authorized by them: This section now provides that contracts of guarantee (surety for another's debt) are unenforceable unless evidenced in writing.

This requirement is subject to section 3 of the Mercantile Law Amendment Act 1856 (19 & 20 Vict.

Section 23 preserved the jurisdiction of ecclesiastical courts to probate wills in personal property subject to the rules of this statute.

Section 24 provided that the husband may be the administrator of the intestate estate of a married woman as before the Statute of Distribution (22 & 23 Cha.

Sections 15 was repealed by the Schedule to the Sale of Goods Act 1893, but section 26 that act continued the requirement that fieri facias or other writs of execution are effective against goods from when they are given to the sheriff and the sheriff shall endorse the writ with the date and time he received it.

Section 17 was repealed by the Schedule to the Statute Law Revision and Civil Procedure Act 1881 (44 & 45 Vict.

Section 16 provided that no contract for the sale of goods for the price of ten pounds sterling or more shall be good except if the buyer shall accept part of the goods and actually receive the same or give some thing in earnest to bind the bargain or in part of payment, or that some note or memorandum in writing of the said contract signed by the parties to be charged by such contract or their authorized agents.

Sections 18 through 20 provide rules for nuncupative (oral) wills for personal estates valued at over 30 pounds may be only made during the last illness of a testator.

Section 21 provides that a written will in personal property may not be repealed or altered orally except if it is put in writing during the life of the testator and read to him and allowed by him and proven by at least three witnesses.

Section 22 allows soldiers in actual military service and seamen at sea to dispose of their personal property as they might have done before the passage of this act.

So much of this act as related to devises or bequests of lands or tenements, or to the revocation or alteration of any devise in writing of any lands, tenements or hereditaments, or any clause thereof, or to the devise of any estate pur autre vie, or to any such estate being assets, or to nuncupative wills, or to the repeal, altering or changing of any will in writing concerning any goods or chattels or personal estate, or any clause, devise, or bequest therein was repealed by section 2 of the Wills Act 1837 (7 Will.

However section 11 of the Wills Act 1837 continues the right of Soldiers and Seamen to dispose of their personal estate as they had previously.