entail

entail. The growth of landed estates in England from the mid-16th cent. until the 1880s was partly a product of the system of ‘entailing’ property. Until the mid-17th cent., the available forms of entail were quite restricted, but thereafter the courts agreed to permit an owner to tie up his estate to the second and third generation, through a process of ‘contingent remainders’. The legal mechanisms were not dismantled until the 1880s and beyond. It was once held that as a result great estates were kept together, but modern research holds that the system of entailing property was introduced partly to protect the financial interests of younger children, that entailed estates could be partially or completely freed through either a common recovery or an Act of Parliament, and that the consolidation of estates was due to factors other than entail. As a result, more emphasis is now placed on the ability of landowners to borrow on the security of their property, and to service large mortgages over several generations, with entail seen as a vital element in family strategies.

John Beckett