x:i.] DISTRIBUTION OF LAND IN ENGLAND. 51 



evils and inconveniences were, we may learn from 

 Lord Coke, whose statements rest upon recorded 

 facts, and not like the assertions of many modern 

 writers, on preconceived opinions. 



Lord Coke observes, " When all estates were fee 

 simple, then were purchasers sure of their purchases, 

 farmers of their leases, creditors of their debts, the 

 king and lords had their escheats, forfeitures, ward- 

 ships and other profits of their seignories : and for 

 this and other like cases, by the wisdom of the 

 Common Law, all estates of inheritance were fee 

 simple ; and what contentions and mischiefs have 

 crept into the quiet of the law by these fettered 

 inheritances, daily experience teaches us." Co. 

 Lit. 19&. 



The danger to purchasers with which Lord Coke 

 heads his indictment against entails, appears to have 

 arisen in manner such as this. The descent even of 

 an unentailed estate from father to son, for some 

 generations, was, in his day, of no rare occurrence. 

 The purchaser of an estate which had so descended, 

 might believe that he was buying a fee simple, while 

 in fact, an ancient deed entailing the land in the 

 course of descent, which had alread}^ taken place, 

 had been executed and forgotten. On the existence 

 of the deed being discovered, the heir in tail of the 

 vendor might insist, that in compliance with the 

 statute, the will of the donors " according to the form 



