56 HISTORICAL SKETCH OF THE [XTTT. 



trammels of an entail, by means of a pretended 

 warranty and judgment thereupon. 



Taltarum's Case, decided by the Court of Common 

 Pleas, in the 12 Ed. IV., 1472, is considered to have 

 established the efficiency of such a proceeding in 

 barring an estate tail against the heir. The language 

 of the pleadings, 1 however, leads me to believe that 

 the experiment was not a novel one, and that the 

 defendant, claiming under the entail, relied on some 

 facts which distinguished his case from the simple 

 one I have described, rather than on the fact of the 

 recovery being feigned and collusive. 



As, however, this latter defence was raised by the 

 pleadings, the judgment in favour of the plaintiff 

 showed that the defence was untenable, and thus 

 established the validity of a recovery of entailed land, 

 where the ancestor of the plaintiff had also obtained 

 a judgment for recovery of an equivalent against a 

 warrantor, notwithstanding that the whole proceeding 

 was notoriously feigned and collusive. It is probable 

 that the Court was influenced, among other considera- 

 tions, by the fear of shaking titles, which depended 

 on admitting the validity of such recoveries. 



The Court was also in all probability willing to 

 favour a proceeding for converting an estate tail into 

 an estate in fee simple, for the sake of diminishing 

 the evils which were attendant on the former, and 



1 See Digby's History of the Law of Real Property, p. 220, for a 

 translation of the pleadings. 



