Law, land & family : aristocratic inheritance in England, 1300 to 1800 / Eileen Spring.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Spring, Eileen.

Series:

Studies in legal history

Studies in legal history Law, land & family

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Inheritance and succession--Great Britain--History.

Inheritance and succession.

Inheritance and succession--History--Great Britain.

Genre:

History.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (199 p. )

Other Title:

Law, land, and family.

Place of Publication:

Chapel Hill, NC : University of North Carolina Press, c1993.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Eileen Spring presents a fresh interpretation of the history of inheritance among the English gentry and aristocracy. In a work that recasts both the history of real property law and the history of the family, she finds that one of the principal and determinative features of upper-class real property inheritance was the exclusion of females. This exclusion was accomplished by a series of legal devices designed to nullify the common-law rules of inheritance under which--had they prevailed--40 percent of English land would have been inherited or held by women. Current ideas of family development portray female inheritance as increasing in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, but Spring argues that this is a misperception, resulting from an incomplete consideration of the common-law rules. Female rights actually declined, reaching their nadir in the eighteenth century. Spring shows that there was a centuries-long conflict between male and female heirs, a conflict that has not been adequately recognized until now.

Contents:

1. The heiress-at-law

2. The widow

3. Younger children

4. The pattern considered

5. The strict settlement

6. Theories of the family

7. Conclusion.

Appendixes: A. Abstract of a strict settlement by Orlando Bridgman

B. Two examples of settlements to the separate use of a married woman

C. The trust for raising portions: an example of the form usual in eighteenth-century and nineteenth-century settlements.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

ISBN:

9798890868664

9780807864708

0807864706