10 INFLUENCE OF LAND LAWS 



landowners have in the course of ages died intestate. But 

 there is every reason to believe that this has rarely occurred 

 except through ' negligence or misadventure ', and that 

 therefore the law of primogeniture, dealing as it has only 

 with the intestate, cannot have had the profound influence 

 which is often ascribed to it. 



To pass to the second of our land laws that of entail. 

 This I need hardly remind my hearers was the result of 

 the statute De donis conditionalibus passed in the reign of 

 Edward I. Under that statute it was possible for any 

 owner of lands in fee simple absolute, by a grant to 

 a person and the heirs of his body, to tie up such 

 lands in one family according to the principles of primo- 

 geniture. Each successor would then only enjoy a life 

 estate, and in the event of the direct issue of the original 

 grantee dying out at any time, the lands would revert to 

 the grantor or his heirs. Although it should be remembered 

 that this statute was only an enabling one and left land- 

 owners to dispose of their lands otherwise if they so wished, 

 it is true that for some 160 years it was very generally taken 

 advantage of and that in this way, when once the entail had 

 been created, it could not be broken. 



The evil, however, of such a system was soon felt. In 

 the words of Blackstone ' children grew disobedient when 

 they knew they could not be set aside, farmers were ousted 

 of their leases made by tenants in tail (because the leases 

 became void on the death of the tenant in tail), creditors 

 were defrauded of their debts (because the lands of 

 a tenant in tail were not chargeable for his debts after 

 his death), innumerable latent entails were produced to 

 deprive purchasers of lands they had fairly bought, and 

 treasons were encouraged, as estates tail were not liable to 

 forfeiture to the Crown longer than for the tenant's life, 

 although they did escheat to the lord. Accordingly it soon 



.A 



