English Land and English Landlords; An Enquiry Into the Origin and Character of the English Land System, with Proposals for Its Reform. with an

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. Land Tenure and Agriculture in England during the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries. The most important events in the history of the English Land-system during the seventeenth century were the introduction of modern family settlements and the abolition of military tenures. We have seen how, by the operation of recoveries and fines, the indefeasible entails of an earlier age had been rendered liable to be readily set aside, and the owner of land thus disentailed soon afterwards acquired the power of devising it freely under the Statute of Wills. In course of time, however, family pride, aided by lawyers, contrived new expedients for checking alienation by sale or subdivision by will, and placing the right of Primogeniture on a secure basis. The first of these expedients in logical, if not in chronological, order was the mere substitution of such words as first son or eldest son for heir of his body in entailing deeds. The legal effect of this was that, instead of the father taking an estate-tail under the settlement, which he might have forthwith converted into a fee simple, he took only a life-estate, and had no control over the remainder (whether for life or in tail) given by the same instrument to his eldest son. This idea was developed by conferring, as far as possible, life-estates instead of estates-tail on the whole first generation of persons included in a family settlement; so that, whereas a tenant-in-tail once in possession could not be deprived of his power to become master of the property, the acquisition of this power might be deferred to a second or even to a later generation. But, for reasons known to lawyers, that object could not have been accomplished effectually without a further expedient devised by Sir Orlando Bridgman and Sir Ge...