The 34th and 35th Henry VIII., cap. 5, was passed to remove some doubts
which had arisen as to the former statute; it enacts:
"That the words estates of inheritance should only mean estates in
fee-simple only, and empowers persons seized of any lands, etc., in
fee-simple solely, or in co-partnery (not having any lands holden of
knight's service), to devise the whole, except corporations. Persons
seized in fee-simple of land holden of the king by knight's service
may give or devise two thirds thereof, and of his other lands, except
corporation, such two thirds to be ascertained by the divisor or by
commission out of the Court of Ward and Liveries. The king was empowered
to take his third land descended to the heir in the first place, the
devise in gift remaining good for the two thirds; and if the land
described were insufficient to answer such third, the deficiency should
be made up out of the two thirds."
"The next attack," remarks Sir William Blackstone, vol. ii., p. 117,
"which they suffered in order of time was by the statute 32 Henry VIII.,
c. 28, whereby certain leases made by tenants in tail, which do not tend
to prejudice the issue, were allowed to be good in law and to bind the
issue in tail. But they received a more violent blow the same session
of Parliament by the construction put upon the statute of fines by the
statute 32 Henry VIII., cap. 36, which declares a fine duly levied by
tenant in tail to be a complete bar to him and his heirs and all other
persons claiming under such entail. This was evidently agreeable to the
intention of Henry VII., whose policy was (before common recovery had
obtained their full strength and authority) to lay the road as open as
possible to the alienation of landed property, in order to weaken the
overgrown power of his nobles. But as they, from the opposite reasons,
were not easily brought to consent to such a provision, it was therefore
couched in his act under covert and obscure expressions; and the judges,
though willing to construe that statute as favorably as possible for
the defeating of entailed estates, yet hesitated at giving fines so
extensive a power by mere implication when the statute DE DONIS had
expressly declared that they should not be a bar to estates-tail. But
the statute of Henry VIII., when the doctrine of alienation was better
received, and the will of the prince more implicitly obeyed than before,
avowed and established that intention."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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