{"id":12241,"date":"2019-08-03T15:31:59","date_gmt":"2019-08-03T15:31:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pemberley.com\/?post_type=kbe_knowledgebase&p=12241"},"modified":"2019-08-04T16:20:59","modified_gmt":"2019-08-04T16:20:59","slug":"entail","status":"publish","type":"kbe_knowledgebase","link":"https:\/\/pemberley.com\/?kbe_knowledgebase=entail","title":{"rendered":"Entail"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

From The Jane Austen Information Page<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Entail and Inheritance<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Her husband,\nhowever, would not agree with her here; for… his cousin Charles Hayter was an\neldest son, and he saw things as an eldest son himself.”
\n— Persuasion<\/a><\/em>, Chapter 9<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Sir William\nMountague was the son of Sir Henry Mountague, who was the son of Sir John\nMountague, a descendant of Sir Christopher Mountague, who was the nephew of Sir\nEdward Mountague, whose ancestor was Sir James Mountague, a near relation of\nSir Robert Mountague, who inherited the Title & Estate from Sir Frederic\nMountague.”
\n— Sir William Mountague<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

An entail<\/em> was a legal device used to prevent a landed property from being broken up, and\/or from descending in a female line. This is a logical extension of the then-prevalent practice of leaving the bulk of one’s wealth (particularly real estate) to one’s eldest son or “heir”(thus Darcy has an income of \u00a310,000 a year, representing a wealth of about \u00a3200,000, while his sister<\/a> has \u00a330,000; similarly, Bingley has \u00a3100,000, and his two sisters \u00a320,000 apiece).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Male\nPrimogeniture Succession<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Entailed property is\nusually inherited by male primogeniture, in more or less the same way as are\nsome titles of nobility<\/a> — i.e. by the nearest male-line\ndescendant (son of son etc.) of the original owner of the estate or title,\nwhose ancestry in each generation goes through the eldest son who has left\nliving male-line descendants (thus the male-line descendants of the second son\nof an owner will not have a chance to inherit until all the male-line\ndescendants of the eldest son have died out). So, for example, Mr. Elliot is\nthe heir to Sir Walter in Persuasion<\/em>. Entailment also prevents a\nfather from disinheriting his eldest son — a factor in Lady Susan<\/a><\/em> (father to son: “You know… that it is out of my power to prevent your\ninheriting the family Estate.<\/a>“). Women generally inherit only if there are no male-line\nheirs left, and if there is more than one sister, then they are all equal\nco-heiresses, rather than only the eldest inheriting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The following diagram\nmay help illustrate the mysterious workings of such an entail; the original\npossessor of the estate is at the top of the diagram, males are denoted by\n“M”, females by “F”, the current (male) owner of the estate\nby “X”, siblings are arranged left-to-right from eldest to youngest,\nand the potential heirs to the estate upon the death of “X” are\nnumbered in the order of successsion (potential co-heiress-ships are shown by\nseveral women being given the same number):<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                                         \nM(dead)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                                            |<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                             +———–+———-+——-+<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                            \n|           |          |       |<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                          \nM(dead)      F(12)      M(7)   \nM(9)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                            \n|                      |<\/p>\n\n\n\n

        \n+————+——–+——+——+    \nM(8)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

         |            |        |     \n|      |<\/p>\n\n\n\n

         X           M(1)    F(11)  \nM(5)   F(11)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

         |            |               |<\/p>\n\n\n\n

     +——+      +—–+           M(6)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

     |      |     \n|     |<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    F(10)  F(10) \nM(2)  M(4)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                   |<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                  M(3)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Note that the technical\ninterpretation of this chart is that, given this family configuration, the\nindividual numbered (1) is the immediate heir of the man labeled “X”;\nbut if (1) died before “X”, then (2) would be X’s immediate heir; and\nif (1) and (2) died before “X”, then (3) would be X’s immediate heir,\nand so on down the line (i.e. if all individuals labelled with numbers (1)-(11)\nwere to die before “X”, then the individual numbered (12) would be\nX’s immediate heir).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The\nmotivation for entails<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The following is an\nedited version of a post to AUSTEN-L<\/a>:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Date: Sun, 22 Sep 1996\n14:23:53 -0400
\nFrom: John Hopfner<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Let me start with the\ndisclaimer that I’m neither a lawyer nor a legal historian. The following is my\nbest understanding of the facts from British history, but I almost certainly am\novergeneralizing in some cases.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In order to understand\nentails, the first thing to consider is the importance that ownership of land\nhad, both in the England of Jane Austen’s time and in England for centuries\nprevious to her day. Ownership of land wasn’t just an ornament to the family\n(in the way that a collection of paintings or a library might be considered an\nornament). Land was what made a family part of the aristocracy or gentry.\nOwnership of land produced an income that was steady, predictable, and\nrecurring. That income was what freed the family from the necessity to earn\ntheir living by daily effort. It freed them to secure and enjoy an education,\nto — as they chose — dabble in the arts and sciences, become involved in\npolitics, or lead a life of idleness and refinement. This gave ownership of\nland a cachet that went beyond ownership of cash or movable goods. A landed\nestate was The Patrimony — it conferred status in society, not just on one\nperson for one generation, but on the family so long as it lasted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This fact wasn’t lost on\nmembers of the gentry and aristocracy. Nor were they blind to two real dangers\nthat threaten a landed estate: dissipation by sale, if the head of the family\nat any point in time (a wastrel, say, or a foolish speculator) were to sell his\nland to raise funds, and then fritter away the sales proceeds; and subdivision\n(if an estate were divided equally between all sons or children over several\ngenerations, then a single Patrimony, sufficient to make its holder a gentleman\nand member of the gentry, becomes a multitude of smaller patrimonies that,\nindividually, don’t qualify his descendents for the same social status).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The result is that\nthe whole family<\/em> sinks into obscurity, which was held to be a\nbad thing. The answer to this problem is primogeniture among male heirs, which\nkeeps The Patrimony itself intact and under the control of the head of the\nfamily in each generation — though at the cost of unfairness to other\nsurviving children of the family head.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If the family head dies\nwithout sons, then by operation of common law, the estate would be inherited\nequally by all the man’s daughters. If there were several daughters, they each\nwould inherit an equal share, and the subdivision problem occurs. But even if\nthe head of the family died leaving only one daughter, the daughter almost\nsurely will marry — and at her death her heirs would be, presumably, the\nchildren she had with her husband. Which means that the “Bennet”\npatrimony ceases to exist, and becomes part of the Darcy or Bingley estates\n(for example). Nobody in the Bennet line would consider the prospect of this to\nbe a good thing, and so the answer was to make provision to extend\nprimogeniture to the entire male line, not just to the male sons of a given\nholder of a landed estate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Legal\naspects of entails<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The law behind entails\nshowed the usual British legal tendency to accumulation of complexity over\ntime, so that only a true expert could explain all the arcane ramifications\n(for example, in Jane Austen’s period what was called an “entail” was\ntechnically a “strict settlement”), but it may be mentioned that\nentails had to be periodically renewed, and could be “broken” with\nthe consent of a heir who has come of age (cf. Chapter 50: “When\nfirst Mr. Bennet had married, economy was held to be perfectly useless; for, of\ncourse, they were to have a son. This son was to join in cutting off\nthe entail<\/strong>, as soon as he should be of age, and the widow and younger\nchildren would by that means be provided for”).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If Mr. Collins were to\nleave only daughters on his death, and there were no further patrilineal heirs\nlurking in the wings behind Mr. Collins, I don’t know whether Longbourn would\nthen actually revert to the Bennet daughters upon the death of Mr. Bennet and\nMr. Collins (as would be predicted by strict application of the principle of\nseniority); it’s certainly an intriguing possibility (though if the entail were\nconsidered to have come to an end with the death of the last male-line heir,\nthen the estate would be divided among Mr. Collins’s daughters by the normal\noperation of common law).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

From The Jane Austen Information Page Entail and Inheritance “Her husband, however, would not agree with her here; for… his cousin Charles Hayter was an eldest son, and he saw things as an eldest son himself.” — Persuasion, Chapter 9 “Sir … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","kbe_taxonomy":[254,274,268,263],"kbe_tags":[470,354],"class_list":["post-12241","kbe_knowledgebase","type-kbe_knowledgebase","status-publish","hentry","kbe_taxonomy-land-estates","kbe_taxonomy-law","kbe_taxonomy-pride-prejudice","kbe_taxonomy-wealth","kbe_tags-entail","kbe_tags-inheritance"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pemberley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/kbe_knowledgebase\/12241","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pemberley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/kbe_knowledgebase"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pemberley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/kbe_knowledgebase"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pemberley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pemberley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12241"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/pemberley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/kbe_knowledgebase\/12241\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12351,"href":"https:\/\/pemberley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/kbe_knowledgebase\/12241\/revisions\/12351"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pemberley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12241"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"kbe_taxonomy","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pemberley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fkbe_taxonomy&post=12241"},{"taxonomy":"kbe_tags","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pemberley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fkbe_tags&post=12241"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}