Mandeville v. Parker. that the security on the administration bond had become so greatly impaired. Nor can the objection, based on the want of a petition as the foundation of the order, be sustained. The order declares that the petition was presented on the 7th day of January, 1878, and it is apparent, from the recitals of the order, that it was before the court. The petition was sworn to on the day last mentioned, and, though it appears to have been marked as having been filed on the 4th day of March, 1878, and the record shows that it was ordered by the court that it be filed as of the 7th of January in that year, it by no means follows that it was not presented to the court on the day when the order of discharge was made. On the contrary, the recital of the order in that respect, and the presumption in favor of the regularity of the proceedings, are fatal to the objection. The order will be affirmed, with costs. ABRAHAM MANDEVILLE and others, appellants, v. JANE PARKER and others, respondents. The witnesses to a will signed in a room adjoining that in which the testator lay. Between the rooms there was a door partly open, but the testator could not see them sign.-Held, not to have been a compliance with the statute which requires that the witnesses sign in the presence of the testator. On appeal from decree of Morris orphans court refusing probate of a paper writing purporting to be the last will NOTE. The rule is established in New Jersey, that the signing of the witnesses to a will must be done in the testator's presence. Den v. Allen, Pen. 35, 43; Mickle v. Matlack, 2 Harr. 86, 96, 116. The following cases show what has been deemed a sufficient signing in the presence of the testator: In Shires v. Glasscock, 2 Salk. 688, Carth. 81, the witnesses withdrew Mandeville v. Parker. and testament of Jacob G. Mandeville, deceased, late of that county. Mr. A. W. Bell and Mr. Theodore Little, for appellants. Mr. A. Mills, for respondents. THE ORDINARY. On the 14th day of March, 1874, Jacob G. Mandeville executed an instrument of writing as his last will and testament. It was drawn by Benjamin Roome, a scrivener, for whom he had sent. The testator signed it with his mark (he had, to a very great extent, lost the use of his right arm and hand, through an accident), in the presence of Mr. Roome and Mr. William D. F. Merrick, a neighbor who had been sent for to witness the will. The testator, at into a gallery and there subscribed the will. Between the gallery and the bed-chamber where the testator lay, there was a lobby with glass doors, and the glass broken in some places, and the testator could, through the broken glass, have seen the table where the witnesses signed. In Dary v. Smith, 3 Salk. 395, 12 Mod. 37, the testator lay in a bed in one room, and the witnesses went through a small passage into another room, and there, at a table opposite the door (both doors being open), wrote their signatures; it being possible for the testator to see their acts; and, semble, good, if in the same room where the testator lies, although the bed-curtains be drawn close. Ib.; also, Longford v. Eyal, 1 P. Wms. 740, and Newton v. Clarke, 2 Curteis 320. In Todd v. Winchelsea, Moo. & M. 12, 2 Car. & P. 488, 3 Russ. 441, the will was taken into an adjoining room, the door left open, and a person lying where the testator did could see a small part of the adjoining room, in which there were two tables, one commonly used as a writingtable, and generally standing out of sight as to testator's position; the other, also movable, whose position was not shown. The witnesses did not remember on which table the will was attested. Also, Percy's Case, 1 Roberts. 278. In Casson v. Dade, 1 Bro. C. C. 99, Dick. 586, the carriage of testatrix was in such a position that she might have seen, through the window of the carriage and of the office, the witnesses signing her will within the office. In Trimnell's Case, 11 Jur. (N. S.) 248, one witness signed in testator's presence, and the other, in order to sign, withdrew, at his request, into an adjacent room, and signed at a table where he could have been seen by any one sitting up in testator's bed, the testator being phys ically able to do so, and the doors of both rooms being open. Mandeville v. Parker. the time, was in his last illness. He died the next day. He lay in his house, on a bed in a small bed-room in the rear of the kitchen, and separated therefrom by a partition wall, in which was a door. The bed was in the northeast corner of the bed-room; the partition was on the south of the bedroom, and the door, at its nearest point, was about eight or nine feet distant from the head of the bed. The testator, lying in the bed, could see a person standing at the door. The door opened outwards into the kitchen. In the kitchen, standing sidewise against the partition, and entirely out of sight from the place where the bed stood, was a table, with a leaf on each side. The door was partly open. The witnesses, after the testator had signed and declared the will, took the paper out of the bed-room into the kitchen, and on that table signed their names. The paper was not afterwards taken or shown to the testator, but was In Wright v. Lewis, 5 Rich. 212, the testator, being in ordinary health, after executing his will on a piazza near a door, left his seat to be occupied by the witnesses while subscribing their names, and stepped into and remained in an adjoining room, from which he might have seen the attestation, although none of the witnesses pretended to know where he was when they signed, nor could he have seen them from the seat he was occupying when they immediately afterward went into that room. In Ray v. Hill, 3 Strobh. 297, the witnesses, when signing, were so near to the testator, a blind man, that he could have heard the scratching of their pens. In Tucker v. Oxner, 12 Rich. 141, when the witness rose from the table where he had been attesting her will, the testatrix, whom he had not noticed before, was standing in a doorway leading into another apartment, and looking towards him. [The decision, however, went off on another point.] In Bynum v. Bynum, 11 Ired. 632, the witnesses signed at a table near the head of a bed where the testatrix was lying very sick; she could see the table and their arms, but perhaps not the paper on which the will was written. In Cornelius v. Cornelius, 7 Jones 593, the table was on the testator's left side, seven or eight feet away, and a little back of where he was lying, but he could have seen the pen and paper by turning his head half over, which he was physically capable of doing-and one witness said he observed that the testator did once turn his head during the attestation. In Hill v. Burge, 12 Ala. 687, the testator was lying in bed with his head propped up and averted from the attesting witnesses, but by turning his head he could have seen them, although some of them, |