Another most important measure passed during Cromwell’s ministry, was the so-called Statute of Uses[288]. It was at the same time a legal and a financial reform. In order to evade the common law, which prohibited testamentary disposition of landed property and rendered it strictly subject to primogeniture, the custom had long been prevalent that the owner should name before or at his death certain persons to whose ‘use’ his lands should be held. These persons became to all intents and purposes the true devisees; for though the trustee, or ‘feoffee to uses,’ alone was recognized by the common law, the beneficiary or ‘cestui que use’ soon began to receive strong support through the equitable jurisdiction of the Chancellor, and so was often able actually to enforce claims which originally had rested merely on moral obligation. This was the usual method of circumventing the laws of the realm, in order to make provision by will for younger children. In this particular it was perhaps legitimate, but at the same time it opened the way to a great number of abuses, which are stated at length in the preamble to the statute just mentioned. The chief of these were the extraordinary complication of titles to land, which resulted from the secret methods of devising it, and the loss to the King and the great lords of the feudal dues on successions, wardships, and marriages. Two ineffectual attempts had been made to remedy these evils in the reigns of Richard III. and Henry VII.[289], and at Cromwell’s accession to power the subject was brought up again. There is reason to think that the Statute of Uses was under consideration as early as 1531, and the main principle of it bears a close resemblance to the measure devised in the reign of Richard III. A mention of it occurs in Cromwell’s ‘remembrances’ of the year 1535[290], but it was not finally passed until 1536, probably on account of the popular opposition, which, according to Chapuys, was very pronounced. The upshot of the statute was, that all right to the estate was taken from the grantee to uses and vested in the beneficiary, and the distinction between legal and beneficial ownership was thus entirely destroyed. The ostensible tenant was made in every case the legal tenant; those entitled to the use of land became the actual holders of it. The Act further was intended to abolish the right to create further uses in the future: the power of disposing of interests in land by will was thus removed, and the King was restored to the enjoyment of his ancient feudal dues.