La Narrativa de Henry Fielding y la Sociedad Inglesa del Siglo XVIII

La Narrativa de Henry Fielding y la Sociedad Inglesa del Siglo XVIII
“Strict settlements were “strict” in preventing alienation of the
land away from the male line. The idea was not merely to see that successive
elder sons inherited. At common law, elder sons were the preferred heirs
anyway. At common law, also, should a father not wish to risk the possibility
of a daughter's inheriting in a subsequent generation when there were no sons,
he could give land to his son not in fee simple but in fee tail male, making it
descend to sons alone. (Since the Bonnet estate in Jane Austen's Pride and
Prejudice is entailed in fee tail male, all the Bennet daughters are to be skipped
over in favor of their rather distant and absurd male relation, Mr. Collins.) But
many wealthy eighteenth-century settlors of estates were not satisfied with the
ordinary common law fee tail male. Its simplicity risked escheat or reversion to
remote reversioners in the event of a failure of male heirs, Moreover, a e
common law fee tail male permitted a son in l generation to sell the estate and
¡cave his own son and grandsons with nothing, or nothing but a title which
they would lack the material resources to support. Ordinary common law
estates in fee simple or fee tail are freehold estates, which include the right to
alienate as well as the right to enjoy
Conveyancers invented a “solution” from within their doctrine of
estates to this “problem” of the limitations of the common law fee tail male.
The key was to settle the land in such a way that the son in each generation
had a “lesser estate” than a freehold, an entitlement to enjoy the proceeds of
the estate during his life but not the right to sell it away from successive sons.
Suppose on the occasion of the marriage of Tom Jones and Sophia Western
we are not absolutely sure that Tom will never fall again into his scapegrace
ways and therefore want to protect the family by settling Paradise Hall on him
in strict settlement. Suppose also that Squire Allworthy owns the Paradise Hall
estate in fee simple. We can advise Squire Al1worthy to give Paradise Hall “to
Tom for Tom's life, remainder to trustees and their heirs for the life of Tom to
preserve contingent remainders, remainder to the heirs male of the body of
Tom in tail male, remainder to trustees and their heirs for four hundred years
from the death of Tom to raise portions for daughters and younger sons of
the body of Tom.” In the same instrument, we also settle a jointure on Sophia,
and so defeat her claims lo dower by following the elaborate rules to be
discussed in Chapter 4 1 . By the mid-eighteenth century, it was clear that this
tactic would work to defeat attempts by Tom to alienate the estate away from
his son.
1 Equitable Joincture, p. 95.