‘For who shall interest us in contingent remainders’, wrote the young Mr Maitland in 1879, ‘…while Chinese metaphysics remain unexplored.’ It would indeed be a daunting challenge to kindle even a bare possibility of historical interest in the nooks and crannies of Fearne's elaborate learning. Yet it may be that sufficient progress has been made with Chinese metaphysics since 1879 to justify risking a brief excursion into the history of the contingent remainder. The occasion is a chance discovery in the Public Record Office which unlocks the strange story behind one of the first leading cases on the subject.

It may be recalled that during the fifteenth century the question whether contingent remainders could be legally effective was a moot point, on which the courts had neither finally pronounced nor settled any general principles, perhaps because the contingent remainder was not yet perceived as a distinct juridical entity. The furthest stage reached by 1500 was that a remainder to the heirs of a person living at the time of the grant would be effective if that person in fact died before the preceding estate ended, so that the identity of the heir was ascertained by that time, but not otherwise. A more extensive judicial acceptance of contingent remainders, albeit on terms yet to be fully worked out, is generally supposed to have occurred in the Common Pleas in 1550, when Colthirst v. ‘Bejushin’ was decided.