]

] No, not breaking the entail, but continuing it. Mr Bennet's estate was entailed on the male line. His son would have inherited it after his death, and would then, he presumes, looked after the female Bennets.

I think he did mean to try to break it. Entailed land was very restricted. A father and his son over age 21 could combine and go to court to end an entail:

The donee and all the other descendants who held the property held as "tenants in tail" and were not really owners, for there was a lot they could not do with the land. They could not open and operate mines, for example, and as I have said they could not sell any part of it. There were also problems with how or even if they could lease it to tenant-farmers.

In 1472, in Taltarum's Case, it was decided that an entail could be barred by going to Court and using the recently-discovered process known as a recovery. ... the usual thing was that a man and his eldest son, who had to be of legal age (21), would go to Court twice (sometimes only two cases were needed, but sometimes three separate cases) and go through a process known as suffering a recovery....