ESTHER. 



ESTOVERS. 



972 



extinct, which is where an estate is limited to A and the heirs of his 

 body to be begotten on the body of B his wife, which is called an estate 

 tail special (as distinguished from an estate tail general, i.e. to A and 

 the heirs of his body, without specifying the woman from whom they 

 must spring). If B dies without children, A is no longer tenant in tail, 

 but tenant in tail after possibility of issue extinct, and is regarded by 

 the law, as to the duration of his estate, as simple tenant for life. 

 As to tenant by courtesy and tenant in dower, see COURTESY and 

 DOWER. 



Of estates lees than freehold there arc three kinds estates for years, 

 at will, and by sufferance. An estate for years (which includes an 

 estate from year to year) is personal property, and, like other 

 chattels [ CHATTKLS ], upon the death of the owner, without hav- 

 ing disposed of it in his lifetime, devolves upon his executors or 

 administrators. An estate at will arises where a man lets lands to 

 another expressly nt the will of both parties or without limiting any 

 certain estate ; either party may put an end to the tenancy, though, 

 for the sake of general convenience, the courts strive to construe them 

 as tenancies from year to year, for the purpose of rendering a six 

 months' notice necessary to their determination. An estate by suffer- 

 ance arises where a tenant, who has entered by lawful title, continues 

 in possession after his intrest has determined : this estate may be put 

 an end to at any time by the lawful owner, though, after acceptance of 

 rent, the law would consider it as a tenancy from year to year, as in 

 the case of a tenancy at will. 



Neither of these two last estates confers any power of alienation. 

 All these estates, real and personal, freehold or less than freehold, 

 freeholds of inheritance or not of inheritance, may become subject to 

 another qualification, and be called estates upon condition, being 

 such whose existence depends upon the happening or not happening of 

 some uncertain event whereby the estate may be either originally 

 created or enlarged or finally defeated. [CONDITION ; MORTGAGE.] 

 2. Estates are either in possession or in expectancy. 

 The former kind of estate requires no explanation here. The latter, 

 involving some of the nicest and most abstruse learning in English 

 law, are divided into estates in remainder and reversion, and by 

 executory devise or bequest ; and again, remainders are divided into 

 estates in remainder vested or contingent. [REMAINDER ; REVERSION.] 

 An executory devise or bequest is such a limitation of a future estate 

 or interest in lands or chattels as the law admits in the case of a will, 

 though contrary to the rules of limitation in conveyances at common 

 law. It is only an indulgence allowed to a man's last will and testa- 

 ment, where otherwise the words of the will would be void ; for 

 wherever a future interest is so limited by a will as to fall within the 

 rules laid down for the limitation of contingent remainders, such an 

 interest is not an executory devise, but a contingent remainder. 

 [Win,.] 



8. Estates may W enjoyed in four ways; in severally, in joint 

 tenancy, in coparcenary, and in common. 



An estate in severally is when one tenant holds it in his own right 

 without any other person being joined with him. 



An estate in joint tenancy is when an estate is granted to two or 

 more persons at the same time, in which case the law construes them 

 to be joint tenants, unless the words of the grant expressly exclude 

 such construction ; they have unity of interest, of title, of time of 

 vesting, and of possession, and upon the decease of one, his whole 

 interest, unless disposed of by him in his lifetime, remains to the 

 survivor or survivors. 



; An estate in coparcenary is when an estate of inheritance descends 

 from the ancestor to two or more persons, who are called parceners, 

 and amongst parceners there is no survivorship. 



An estate in common is when two or more persons hold property, 



by distinct titles and for different interests, but by unity of possession. 



All these three last-mentioned modes of joint and undivided 



possession may be put an end to by the parties interested, either by 



prescribed modes of conveyance or by partition. [PARTITION.] 



Estates are also legal or equitable. It is a legal estate when the 

 owner is in the actual seisin or possession, and also entitled to the 

 beneficial interest himself or in trust for some other person. An 

 equitable estate is when some other person, and not the person who is 

 the actual and legal owner, is entitled to the beneficial interest of the 

 property of which that other is in possession. The power of the 

 beneficial owner over his equitable estate is as complete as if he were 

 possessed of the legal estate. [TRUST ; EQUITY.] 



ESTHER, The Book of, a canonical and historical book of the Old 

 Testament, placed after that of Nehemiah, but coming chronologically 

 between the 6th and 7th chapters of Ezra. It is thus denominated 

 from the Persian name of the Jewish woman, Hadassah, whose history 

 it relates. She was an orphan niece and adopted daughter of Mordecai 

 from a Benjamite family of the Babylonian captives of Nebuchad 

 uezzar (ii. 5-7). The scene of the narration is in the city Shuaan 

 or Susa, now Sus (not Shuster, as stated by Dr. Adam Clarke see 

 ' Trans. Oeog. Soc.,' vol. iii.), which, throughout the book, is in English 

 mistranslated Shushan the palate, though, in the Sejituagiut version 

 it is rightly iv 2o<rois TJJ Ti\tt, tliat is, " in Susa the city." Augustine 

 Epiphanius, and Isidore, supposed the author to have been Ezra 

 Eusebius assigns a later date. Some writers have attributed it to 

 the high-priest Joachim ; others believe it to have been composed b; 



he Jewish synagogue, to whom Esther and Mordecai wrote (ix. 20-29) ; 

 but by the greater number Mordecai himself is thought to be the 

 author, and Elias Levita, in his 'Mass. Hamum,' asserts this t,n > :i 



act unquestionable. St. Hicronymusand several other fathers regarded 



/his book as wholly uncanonical, because the name of God or religion 



s not once mentioned or alluded to, and they have been followed l>y 

 some modern writers, as Cajetan and De Lyra ; but the Council of 



Trent pronounced it to be wholly canonical ; and while the Protestant 

 churches admit into the canon only what is found in the Hebrew 

 copies, that is, as far as to the end of the third verse of chap, x., the 



Jreek and Roman churches use as canonical the Greek version and 

 itin Vulgate, which contain each ten more verses of chap. x. and six 

 additional chapters. By the Jews the book has been always considered 

 as one of the most precious of their sacred scriptures, and an a perfectly 



Authentic history of real events which took place about B.C. 519. They 



call it n 



' Megilah, that is, The Volume, and hold it in the highest 



estimation ; believing that whatever destruction may happen to the 

 other scriptures, Esther and the Pentateuch will always be preserved 

 >y a particular Providence. Copies exist in the Hebrew, Syriac, 



'haMaii', Greek, and Latin, each of which widely differs from the 

 others, and all, especially the Greek and Chaldaic, are greatly different 

 rom the Hebrew. The Chaldaic text contains five times more than 

 ;he Hebrew, and a notice of the various readings would fill a large 

 volume. (See the London Polyglot Bible.) Commentators differ 

 much in determining to which of the Persian and Median kings belongs 

 ,he name of Ahasuerus, whose kingdom extended from India to 

 Ethiopia over 127 provinces (i. 1). Some suppose him to be Darius 

 Systaspes, Scaliger and Jahn say Xerxes. By Capellus he is identified 

 with Ochus, and by Archbishop Usher with Darius the son of 

 Elystaspes. Dean Prideaux and Dr. Adam Clarke with greater proba- 

 jility take him to be Artaxerxes, who received the cognomen of 

 Jongimanus, or Longhanded. To the objections that have been made 

 ;hat the book is a fiction, Eichhorn has satisfactorily replied, proving 

 that it rests upon an historical basis ; and as to its not being included in 

 some lists of the canonical books of the Hebrews, that may have arisen 

 rom its having been joined to some other book, as that of Ruth was 

 x> Judges, Nehemiah to Ezra, and Lamentations to Jeremiah. The 

 author of the second book of Maccabees recognises its authority by 

 lying the day for the deliverance of the Jews from the Syrian on the 

 day before Mardocheus' day ; and Josephus says that the feast of 

 Esther was celebrated by the Jews throughout the habitable world. 



This signal revenge of Hainan's intended destruction of the Jews in 

 Persia has ever since been commemorated (ix. 21-28) on the 14th and 

 L5th days of the month Adar, in the Jewish ' Feast of Purirn,' that 



s, in Persian, the lots ; with reference to those which, on this occasion, 

 were cast before Haman (ch. iii. 7 ; ix. 26). It is here, worthy of 

 remark, that the word which in the authorised version is repeatedly 

 translated gallows, should properly be cross or tree. Hence it was that 

 in the first ages of Christianity, the Jews, when celebrating this feast 

 of Purim, were accused of deriding the Christian crucifixion, in abusing 

 and setting fire to an effigy of Haman affixed to a lofty wooden crass ; 

 a custom which, on this account, was abolished in the Roman Empire 

 by the decrees of Justinian and Theodosius. That the names of God 

 or Lord are not mentioned in the book, is certainly a singular fact, 

 but the whole tendency of the book is pious ; it shows the continued 

 action of the Divine Providence in preserving a race from whom the 

 Messiah was to spring ; and, though not mentioned, the presence and 

 the intervention of God is throughout made to be felt. 



ESTOPPEL, an impediment or bar to a right of action, arising from 

 a man's own act, or the act of some person through whom he claims. 

 There are three kinds of estoppel. 1. By matter of record, as letters 

 patent, pleading, &c. Thus in an action against a patentee by his 

 assignee, the patentee is estopped from pleading that the patent is 

 invalid. 



2. By matter of writing, as by deed, &c., parties and privies are 

 estopped from alleging any thing contrary to the deed. 



3. By matter in fail (in the country), that is, transactions between 

 the parties not evidenced by record or writing, as livery, entry, accept- 

 ance of rent, &c. Thus after acceptance of rent a landlord cannot treat 

 his lessee as a trespasser. 



ESTOVERS. Spelman, in his Law Glossary, says that this word 

 is derived from the French etoffe, and that from etuffer, which is to 

 supply with necessaries, and is of the same signification as the Saxon 

 word bate. In legal phraseology it is the liberty which the owm-r <>t 

 an estate for life as well as a tenant for years (in the absence of any 

 stipulation to the contrary) possesses of taking a reasonable and 

 sary supply of wood from the estate for the use or furniture of his 

 house or farm, and this, according to the use to which it was applied, 

 was either called house bote, plough bote, cart bote, or hedge bote. 

 House bote is a sufficient allowance of wood to build or repair the house, 

 or to burn in it, which latter is also sometimes called fire-bole ; plough- 

 bole or cart bote is the wood employed in the making or repairing all 

 instruments of husbandry, as carts and ploughs, harrows, rakes, &c. ; 

 hedge bote or hay bote for repairing hedges, fences, pales, stiles, and 

 gates, and to secure inclosures. 



If a tenant takes more than is needful for these purposes he may 

 be punished for waste, as if he cuts down wood to burn when he has 



