Fee taile

is a way of holding land such that there are restrictions on who may obtain the land. Most land is held in fee taile and cannot be sold or inherited without the consent of the  (or granter) because most or all land in a feudal kingdom really belongs to the. It is unlike, which is a manner of holding land whereby the may be disposed of without any particular restrictions and/or without the consent of the local lord.

Overview
In English, fee taile or is a form of  established by deed or settlement which restricts the sale or  of an  in  and prevents the property from being sold, devised by , or otherwise  by the tenant-in-possession, and instead causes it to pass automatically by  to an heir determined by the settlement deed. The term fee taile is from feodum talliatum, which means “cut(-short) ” and is in contrast to “” where no such restriction exists and where the possessor has an absolute title (although subject to the  of the monarch) in the property which he can bequeath or otherwise dispose of as he wishes. Equivalent legal concepts exist or formerly existed in many other European countries and elsewhere.

Purpose
The fee taile allowed a patriarch to perpetuate his blood-line, family-name, honour and armorials in the persons of a series of powerful and wealthy male descendants. By keeping his estate intact in the hands of one heir alone, in an ideally indefinite and pre-ordained chain of succession, his own wealth, power and family honour would not be dissipated amongst several male lines, as became the case for example in Napoleonic France by operation of the which gave each child the legal right to inherit an equal share of the patrimony, where a formerly great landowning family could be reduced in a few generations to a series of small-holders or peasant farmers. It therefore approaches the true which is a legal body or person which does not die and continues in existence and can hold wealth indefinitely. Indeed, as a form of trust, whilst the individual trustees may die, replacements are appointed and the trust itself continues, ideally indefinitely. In England almost seamless successions were made from patriarch to patriarch, the smoothness of which were often enhanced by baptising the eldest son and heir with his father’s Christian name for several generations, for example the, all named Fulk. Such indefinite inalienable land-holdings were soon seen as restrictive on the optimum productive ability of land, which was often converted to deer-parks or pleasure grounds by the wealthy tenant-in-possession, which was damaging to the nation as a whole, and thus laws against perpetuities were enacted, which restricted entails to a maximum number of lives.

An entail also had the effect of disallowing from inheriting. It created complications for many propertied families, especially from about the late 17th to the early 19th century, leaving many individuals wealthy in land but heavily in, often due to annuities chargeable on the estate payable to the patriarch’s widow and younger children, where the patriarch was swayed by sentiment not to establish a strict concentration of all his wealth in his heir leaving his other beloved relatives destitute. Frequently in such cases the generosity of the settlor left the entailed estate as an uneconomical enterprise, especially during times when the estate’s fluctuating agricultural income had to provide for fixed sum annuities. Such impoverished tenants-in-possession were unable to realise in cash any part of their land or even to offer the property as security for a loan, to pay such annuities, unless sanctioned by private Act of Parliament allowing such sale, which expensive and time-consuming mechanism was frequently resorted to. The beneficial owner (or tenant-in-possession) of the property in fact had only a passing intact to the next  or  in law; any purported bequest of the land by the tenant-in-possession was ineffective.

History
Fee tail was established during times by  to attempt to ensure that the high social standing of the family, as represented by a single patriarch, continued indefinitely. The concentration of the family’s wealth into the hands of a single representative was essential to support this process. Unless the heir had himself inherited the personal and intellectual strengths of the original great patriarch, often a great warrior, which alone had brought him from obscurity to greatness, he would soon sink again into obscurity, and required wealth to maintain his social standing. This feature of English gentry and aristocracy differs from the aristocracy which existed in pre- France, where all sons of a nobleman inherited his title and were thus inescapably members of a separate noble caste in society. In England, provided that an estate would be inherited entirely by the first-born legitimate son of a nobleman and that, accordingly, subsequent sons were born as mere gentlemen and. Without the support of wealth, these younger sons might quickly descend into obscurity, and often did. On this eldest son was concentrated the honour of the family, and to him alone was granted all its wealth to support his role in that regard, by the process of the fee tail.

The effects of English primogeniture and entail have been significant plot details or themes in a number of notable works of English literature. (See some examples cited below.)

Statute of Westminster 1285
The, passed in 1285, created and fixed the form of this estate. The new law was also formally called the statute  (Concerning Conditional Gifts).

Opponents
Fee tail was never popular with the monarchy, the merchant class and many holders of entailed estates themselves who wished to sell or divide their land.

Abolition
Fee tail as a legal in England was abolished by the.

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