... by the due date and the terms of the agreement were otherwise satisfied. The common law courts construed these transactions strictly, such that if a borrower failed to repay the loan in full by an appointed date, the security was forfeit to the lender no matter what the disparity in value between the property and the debt. By the seventeenth century, the courts of equity challenged this harsh common law mechanism and recognised the purpose of the transaction as a security. They determined that the strict date was irrelevant to the transaction and that the borrower held a right to redeem his interest in the land even though they may have failed to repay on time. This was the 'Equity of Redemption'. Blackstone defined it as "the advantage, allowed to a mortgageor, of a certain or reasonable time to redeem lands mortgaged, after they have been forfeited at law by ...

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