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.Thestatute in fact took the heart out of feudalism by preventing thecreation of new social bonds by subinfeudation, and the most significantwords of the enactment were the first: that henceforth it is to be lawfulfor each free man to sell or will his land or tenement.211 The feesimple became a straightforward unit of landed property, like the franc-fief the acquisition of which by non-nobles Philip IV once againadmitted in 1291 with a specification of extra payment if there was abridgement of services.212A private law rooted in common rules of fief-holding developed insimilar ways in the two countries, but royal legislation changed it moreobviously in the smaller country, with its stock of procedures bychancery writ and a tighter administration to apply them.The modes ofpossession and inheritance of feudal property in France were set out inthe établissements of Saint Louis, a private compilation of the early1270s (though taken for legislation and thus included in 1723 in thefirst volume of the Ordonnances des Roys de France), and inBeaumanoir s Coutumes de Beauvaisis.213 The systematic amendment ofEnglish private law was at the heart of the establishments promulgatedby Edward I in the parliaments held at Westminster in 1275 and 1285 to set to rights the state of his kingdom.Westminster I has clauses pro-hibiting magnates from impoverishing houses of religion by excessivedemands for entertainment, and on how they should exercise theirrights of wardship; a dozen chapters deal exclusively with civil pro-cedure, curbing the power of defendants to delay cases, bringingforward the dates of limitation from which plaintiffs had to prove theirright in various actions, widening the circumstances in which actions fordower and the petty assizes could be pursued and ending with a royalrequest to the bishops that assizes might be taken in Advent, on209EHD iii.360 1.210RP i.430 (no.3).211SR i.106; tr.in EHD iii.466; T.F.T.Plucknett, The Legislation of Edward I (Oxford:Clarendon Press, 1949), 102 8.212Ordonnances des Roys de France, i.323 4 (c.9).213Ibid.i.161, 200 1, 276 7 etc.; Olivier-Martin, Histoire du droit français, 117;Coutumes de Beauvaisis, chs.xiv, xlvii etc.Estates of people 235Septuagesima and in Lent.These chapters and the many strengtheninglegal process in Westminster II are of a similar sort to the orders of theparlement of Paris.But the second statute goes further in creating newgrounds of action.214The first chapter of Westminster II, De donis conditionalibus, pro-vided writs of formedon in addition to that already in common use inthe chancery to enforce the terms of an entail: that is, a gift to a couple(typically, to the donor s daughter and her husband when they married)and the heirs of their bodies, so that the donees might not alienate theproperty.If they had no heirs or (as it came to be interpreted) their linedied out in a subsequent generation, the statute decreed that the landshould revert to the donor or his heirs.215 So were laid the foundationsof the mass of law allowing conveyancers to create and to bar (orbreak) entails on which depended both the preservation and exploita-tion of blocks of landed power, and therefore the status of English land-owners, for centuries to come.The fact was registered in new meaningsof estate itself.It was a person s standing in terms of landed propertywhich was becoming definitive.Bracton has the demandant in an assizeof mort d ancestor pleading that the ancestor never withdrew fromseisin or changed his status in any way , but died seised as of fee , andasserts that the status of a minor ought not to be changed, either withregard to tenements or services and customs.216 This use of status, orrather e(s)tat in its law-French form, was appropriated by the lawyerswho compiled the reports of legal arguments in the king s courtssurviving from the later years of Edward I s reign, because they neededa word to cover the various interests in land which multiplied with thedevelopment of a law of entail.Beside the estate in fee simple , and thetemporary enjoyment of property as a lessee, doweress, or tenant atwill, there came to be recognized the estates in fee tail or cut-down fees(from Fr.tailler, to cut) of those whose right was conditional on thebirth of heirs, and the future estates or estates in expectancy of thoseto whom the settlement gave a right to the remainder or the reversionof the land according to the settlement.217 A report of the case of 1312in the Court of Common Pleas in which Chief Justice Bereford firstinterpreted the De donis prohibition of the alienation of the gift asextending beyond the original donees has the judges and pleaders argu-ing about the nature of the estate that was passed on; in 1347 theCommons maintained that it was an estate for life only and that the214SR i.26 39, 71 95: tr.in EHD iii.397 410, 428 57.215EHD iii.428 9.216Bracton on the Laws and Customs of England, tr.Thorne, iii.39, 90, 282, 290 (fos.170, 192b, 266b, 270), iv.316 17 (fo.423b); W.S.Holdsworth, A History of English Law,3rd edn.(London, 1923), ii.350 2, iii.101 ff.217T.F.T.Plucknett, Words , Cornell Law Quarterly, 14 (1929).236 Legal Ordering of the State of the Realmholder of it should therefore be liable to an action for waste if he ran itdown.The sum of a landowner s various interests in land, includingwhat he might hold as security for loans, made up his estates.218 Estate acquired a technical sense in French legal procedure also, inthe royal lettres d état protecting from law-suits the property of officialswhile they were away on the king s business and of aristocrats servingin his wars.The restoration of a person s state in terms of his propertywas a principle of canon law, also discernible in imperial acta and in theproceedings of parlement, that a disputed right should be held in statuin quo est while the suit was in progress.219 An ordinance of 1345recognized that the merchants of France were greatly damaged by theobtaining of letters of respite and state by their debtors
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