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66 N. Ir. Legal Q. 243 (2015)
A Defence of Estates and Feudal Tenure

handle is hein.journals/nilq66 and id is 255 raw text is: NILQ 66(3): 243-62 A defence of estates and feudal tenure GRAEME WATT Barrister of the Inn of Court of Northern Ireland Introduction n a land law consultation paper of 2009, the Northern Ireland Law Commission (NILC) made the following recommendation: 'In the light of the move towards a system of universal registration of tifle, the commission is inclined to recommend that both feudal tenure and the doctrine of estates should be abolished.'1 In its report the commission restated this recommendation.2 The purpose of this article is to suggest that the doctrine of estates and the concept of feudal tenure both have meaningful contributions to make to our understanding of land law. Also that there are certain aspects of our present law which are difficult not only to conceptualise, but in fact to accommodate outside the framework of a doctrine of estates. Furthermore, that the changes proposed by the Law Commission will, in reality, preserve the essence of both ideas while abolishing much of the assistance that they give in forming an accurate picture of what we mean by landholding or land ownership. The development of estates and feudal tenure The consultation paper itself provides a short definition of estates and tenure. Tenure governs the terms on which the landowner holds the land; the doctrine of estates determines for how long that interest is held.3 A system based on tenure is one where rights in the land are granted by (or 'held of') another. In the common law system as it currently operates in this jurisdiction and England and Wales, the highest interest in land is possessed by the Crown. The corollary of this is that absolute ownership (allodial land) is unknown to the common law of Northern Ireland. The consultation paper also gives a brief history.4 It recites the fact that the feudal system was brought to England by the Normans in 1066 and was later exported to Ireland. The fundamental principle was that the Crown had acquired title to all land and that its subjects could only hold land from a superior lord and ultimately from the Crown. * MA (Oxon). 1 NILC 2 (2009) 35. 2 NILC 8 (2010) para 2.3. 3 NILC 2 (2009) para 2.5. See also C Harpum, S Bridge and M Dixon, Megarg and Wade: The Law of RealPropervy (8th edn Sweet & Maxwell 2012) para 2-006. 4 NILC 2 (2009) paras 2.1 2.19. NILQ autumn 2015

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