I INFLUENCE OF LAND LAWS 11 



became the practice to evade the statute by the means of a 

 collusive action termed a common recovery, which was 

 confirmed by the decision of the judges in the case of 

 Taltarum, 12 Edward IV, while in the reigns of Henry YII 

 and Henry VIII a still more simple process termed levy- 

 ing a fine was invented. Finally in the year 1833 any 

 tenant in tail was allowed to break the entail by a simple 

 deed enrolled in the Court of Chancery. 1 

 I From the middle of the fifteenth century, therefore, it 

 / became impossible for any person to tie up lands for ever 

 I in any family. Each successive tenant in tail could, by 

 suffering a common recovery, or later by levying a fine, 

 convert his estate into a fee simple absolute and dispose of 

 it at discretion. Henceforth the law of England has 

 always opposed such grants in perpetuity by forbidding 

 any person to create more than one contingent remainder ; 

 that is to say, he may grant as many estates for life in 

 remainder as he likes, but only one remainder to an unborn 

 person. Thus an estate can be given to an unborn person 

 for life or in tail, but a further remainder granted to that 

 unborn person's unborn son is void in law. It should, 

 however, be mentioned that estates tail granted by the 

 Crown for public services, such as Blenheim Park, cannot 

 be barred so long as the reversion remains in the Crown, 

 nor any entails which have been specially created by Act 

 of Parliament. 2 



It appears then, that with these exceptions, which are 

 not numerous, the law of England so far from facilitating 

 the perpetual tying up of estates in one family distinctly 

 forbids it, and that, though the law of primogeniture is 

 the rule of intestate succession, the law can easily be 



1 For a description of these methods cf. Williams, Law of Real 

 Property, pp. 42 ff. 



2 Williams, Real Property, pp. 264, 305. 



