Other Interests in Land

This chapter is concerned with the history of interests in land not already dealt with. The term of years, or leasehold, began as a chattel interest but changed character when it was used as a substitute for subinfeudation after 1290. The 1499 decision that possession could be recovered in the action of ejectment turned it into a ‘chattel real’. Villein tenure, renamed ‘copyhold’ in the fourteenth century, existed beyond the common law, in that it was regulated and protected by manorial custom; but the availability of ejectment to copyholders brought it within the common-law scheme of estates in the sixteenth century. The trust also became an ‘equitable estate’ in land, with different purposes from the medieval use. Mortgages were of considerable practical importance, though not until modern times as a device for buying property; the various forms are here outlined.