The Fee Tail and the Common Recovery in Medieval England
The Fee Tail and the Common Recovery in Medieval England
Fee tails were a basic building block for family landholding from the end of the thirteenth to the beginning of the twentieth century. The classic entail was an interest in land which was inalienable and could only pass at death by inheritance to the lineal heirs of the original grantee. Biancalana's study considers the origins, development and use of the entail in later medieval England, and the origins and early use of a reliable legal mechanism for the destruction of individual entails, the common recovery. He untangles the complex history surrounding medieval landholding in this detailed study of the fee tail, the product of extensive research in original sources. This book includes an extensive index of over three hundred common recoveries with discussions of their transactional contexts. A major work which will interest lawyers and historians.
- Almost entirely based on original sources
- A comprehensive history of fee tails and an explanation of the origins of the common recovery
- Includes a catalogue of more than three hundred common recoveries with discussions of their transactional contexts
Reviews & endorsements
"Joseph Biancalana's long needed work on The Fee Tail and the Common Recovery summarizes and explains the origins of fee tails, how they work, and why they continued to be used...fascinating...[This] text is easy to understand, clear, and focused. I recommend it highly to all advanced students and scholars interested in late medieval and early modern English law." Comitatus
"This book is one of the most impressive works on English land law to have appeared in recent decades." Albion
Product details
February 2007Paperback
9780521032940
520 pages
215 × 137 × 30 mm
0.67kg
Available
Table of Contents
- Acknowledgments
- List of abbreviations and abbreviated citations
- Introduction
- Part I. Fee Tails Before De Donis:
- 1. Grants in fee tail
- 2. The transformation of maritagium
- 3. Maritagium and fee tails in the King's court: the development of the formedon writs
- Part II. The Growth of the 'Perpetual' Entail:
- 4. Reading De Donis
- 5. The statutory restraint on alienation and the descender writ
- 6. The duration of entails for reversions and remainders
- Part III. Living with Entails:
- 7. The change from maritagium to jointure
- 8. The frequency and use of entails
- Part IV. Barring the Enforcement Entails other than by Common Recovery:
- 9. The doctrine of assets by descent
- 10. The doctrine of collateral warranty
- 11. Barring entails by judgment
- Part V. The Origin and Development of the Common Recovery:
- 12. The origin and growth of common recoveries
- 13. Development of procedure and doctrine
- 14. The double voucher recovery
- Part VI. The Common Recovery in Operation:
- 15. The uses of recoveries
- 16. Social acceptance of the common recovery
- Appendix to Part VI
- Bibliography
- Subject and selected persons index
- Index to persons and places in appendix to Part VI.
