Language In Clarissa, Evelina And Pride And Prejudice

the ability to gain title or a seat in the House, landed
families had to devise a stronger and narrower practice
of inheritance that would not come under the jurisdiction
of common law and that could stand on its own regulation.
Strict settlement, or the practice of attaching a
rigid, unchangeable succession of male heirs to an
estate, was designed exclusively to keep large estates in
the hands of male inheritors and free from the
jurisdiction of common law. A strict settlement was not
a will. Strict settlement was a practice separate from
other inheritance practices. Thus, the eldest male and
estate owner could not only rely on strict settlement to
formulate the passing of the family estate, but he could
also write personal wills in order to provide for
specific family members, willing away specific
personalty, or "ephemeral" property as he wished. Thus,
while a will could be contested through the common law
courts, the transition of land through strict settlement
could not.
John Habbakuk tells us that the legal act of
according inherited property to an eldest son, or in the
absence of a son, to the next legal living male member of
a family was the basis for strict settlement and prior to
its inception, the intrinsic foundation of primogeniture