Fee tails were a basic building block for family landholding from the end of the thirteenth to the beginning of the twentieth century. The classic entail was an interest in land which was inalienable and could only pass at death by inheritance to the lineal heirs of the original grantee. Biancalana's study considers the origins, development and use of the entail in later medieval England, and the origins and early use of a reliable legal mechanism for the destruction of individual entails, the common recovery. He untangles the complex history surrounding medieval landholding in this detailed study of the fee tail, the product of extensive research in original sources. This book includes an extensive index of over three hundred common recoveries with discussions of their transactional contexts. A major work which will interest lawyers and historians.

'A short review cannot do justice to the scope and value of this book. … essential reading not only for those interested in land law but also for all converned with the history of English landed society.'

Source: Oxford Academic Journals

‘… any further work in this field will have to start from the information and interpretation of this magisterial monograph.’

Source: The Cambridge Law Journal

‘… an extended and engrossingly technical study of the development, from the late twelfth to the fifteenth century, of the fee tail … The text is meticulously researched and diligently footnoted, and is ample witness to the author’s long hours in the Public Record Office wrestling with the Plea Rolls of the Court of Common Pleas … Biancalana not only has taken us back to the drawing board, but has inked out what is, in many respects, a new - and immensely thought-provoking - picture.’

Source: Legal History

‘… a masterly survey of a wealth of unpublished primary materials regarding the origins and development of entails and the methods used to bar them.’

Source: Legal Studies