tenants for life hold their estates under very stringent practical restrictions. For instance, there are very few who could in any way grant a lease of a farm for fifty years, or of a house for one hundred, or receive or take a sum of money down in lieu of part of the rent reserved on a lease they could grant; and as nearly all the large landowners in England are tenants for life, it will be seen how restrained ordinary dealings with land must be. LECTURE II. Estates in tail-Their history-Recoveries-Barring entails-Rights of the owner of an estate in tail-Estate in fee simple-Its history— History of the power of alienation of land inter vivos-Of the power of devising land by will-Rights of an owner in fee-Descent of estates of inheritance-Rights of husband and wife-Marriage settlements, their object and effect. AN estate depending on the existence of a single life is not technically an estate of inheritance, although, if the owner of such an estate has it for the life of another man, it will, under certain circumstances, descend to his heirs. Estates of inheritance, or those which may be inherited, are of two sorts-estates in tail, and estates in fee simple. An estate tail is created by the grant of lands to a man and the heirs of his body. Strictly speaking, such a grant gives an estate in tail general, for the grant may be made to the heirs male, or heirs female, or the heirs by a particular wife-then the estate is said to be in tail male, or tail female, or special tail. The creation of this species of estate more than of any other is a pure matter of custom in this country. But for the practice of limiting the ownership of land by marriage settlements which is so universal, estates in tail would soon fall into disuse. It is because their incidents are so peculiarly adapted for all the purposes of settlements that they so generally exist. The history of these incidents is very curious. The absolute right of children to succeed their father was not acknowledged for very many years after the Conquest. How far it existed amongst Englishmen before the Conquerer came over it is unnecessary now to discuss. But the Norman invaders brought over with them the germs of the modern idea as to this right. In their own country these germs had become so far developed that the principle of the hereditary right of certain families to crowns was admitted, though the strict order of succession, so familiar to us, was quite unknown. In such a purely military age the accession of an infant, or an imbecile, to a place at the head of affairs was a danger too great to be risked. So we find that though the claims of families were admitted, the claims which we should consider all-powerful in individuals, according to our modern canons of descent, did not carry much weight. None of the six immediate successors of the Conqueror, for instance, would be deemed, according to our present law, the rightful occupant of the throne. As it was with the crown, so it was with dignities now hereditary, and so also, to a great extent, with land. It did not follow that an estate granted by the Conqueror to one of his followers descended to his children. They might have a claim to a grant of the land to them as an act of grace at their father's death, but it was as an act of grace only the original estate was simply one for life to the father. It is probable that from the first some estates were given which, by the terms of the original grant, descended to the donee's children; and it is clear that ere long it became customary to grant estates on such terms; but the history of this change is exceed : ingly obscure. It is certain, however, that by the time. of Henry II., grants of estates to a man and his heirs' were not only fully recognised as conveying an estate which would descend to the grantee's children, but the more technical meaning had been attached to the word 'heirs,' and, in default of children, an estate so granted would descend to the collateral relatives of the grantee. It was this extension of the original meaning of the word heirs' which led to the use of the words heirs of his body,' when it was intended to limit an estate strictly to the issue of the grantee. Originally the word 'heirs' was used in the sense of issue, and a grant of an estate to a man and his heirs. was a direct gift of an estate to the issue of the grantee. Even after the word 'heirs' had acquired so technical a meaning as to include collateral relatives, the grantee in possession had no power to dispose of the estate, so as to prevent the heirs succeeding; they were as much donees under the original grant as he himself was. It was not very long, however, before the owners in possession acquired this right, though, as is the case with most of those early changes, the steps by which they acquired it are wrapped in obscurity. We know little more than that in Henry III.'s reign it was firmly established that the possessor of an estate granted to a man and his heirs, or the heirs of hia body, could prevent any relative succeeding to it-in fact, that the employment of the words in the original limitation gave the right to a possessor to sell or give the estate away. Ever since that time the law has been unchanged in this respect with regard to estates given to a man and his heirs, that is, estates in fee simple. But a change was made as to estates in tail, or those given to a man and the heirs of his body. It was one thing to alienate or dispose of the land as against heirs, it was another to do so as against the lord of the tenant; but this power during the reign of Henry III. had also been secured. The most usual way of disposing of lands in those days was by subinfeudation, that is, by subletting the lands to other tenants; and one of the first rights which tenants acquired of alienating their lands as against their lords was that of subletting these lands, so that if their own estates came to an end, their under-tenants continued to hold the lands sublet of the superior lord. Thus the lord's chance of obtaining back an estate from a tenant on account of failure of heirs was con siderably reduced. This right was still further extended, and at length we find that in the beginning of the reign of Edward I. it was clear law that the possessor of an estate granted to a man and his heirs might at once alienate it as against his lord; and the possessor of an estate granted to a man and the heirs of his body might do so the moment he had a child born. But the great lords were not prepared to submit tamely to such encroachments on their ancient rights, and in the thirteenth year of Edward I. a famous statute was passed, called De donis conditionalibus, which enacted that the will of the donor, according to the form in the deed of gift manifestly expressed, should be from thenceforth observed, so that they to whom the tenement was given should have no power to alien it, whereby it should fail to remain to their own issue |