Sir Launcelot Greaves | Page 6

horses, and clapped on all my canvas, steering to the northward, to take
possession of my--But it don't signify talking--these two old piratical--
had held a palaver with a lawyer--an attorney, Tom, d'ye mind me, an
attorney--and by his assistance hove me out of my inheritance. That is
all, brother--hove me out of five hundred pounds a year--that's
all--what signifies--but such windfalls we don't every day pick up along
shore. Fill about, brother--yes, by the L--d! those two smuggling
harridans, with the assistance of an attorney--an attorney, Tom--hove
me out of five hundred a year." "Yes, indeed, sir," added Mr. Clarke,
"those two malicious old women docked the intail, and left the estate to
an alien."
Here Mr. Ferret thought proper to intermingle in the conversation with
a "Pish, what dost talk of docking the intail? Dost not know that by the
statute Westm. 2, 13 Ed. the will and intention of the donor must be
fulfilled, and the tenant in tail shall not alien after issue had, or before."
"Give me leave, sir," replied Tom, "I presume you are a practitioner in
the law. Now, you know, that in the case of a contingent remainder, the
intail may be destroyed by levying a fine, and suffering a recovery, or
otherwise destroying the particular estate, before the contingency
happens. If feoffees, who possess an estate only during the life of a son,
where divers remainders are limited over, make a feoffment in fee to
him, by the feoffment, all the future remainders are destroyed. Indeed, a
person in remainder may have a writ of intrusion, if any do intrude after
the death of a tenant for life, and the writ ex gravi querela lies to
execute a device in remainder after the death of a tenant in tail without
issue." "Spoke like a true disciple of Geber," cries Ferret. "No, sir,"
replied Mr. Clarke, "Counsellor Caper is in the conveyancing way--I
was clerk to Serjeant Croker." "Ay, now you may set up for yourself,"
resumed the other; "for you can prate as unintelligibly as the best of
them."
"Perhaps," said Tom, "I do not make myself understood; if so be as
how that is the case, let us change the position, and suppose that this
here case is a tail after a possibility of issue extinct. If a tenant in tail

after a possibility make a feoffment of his land, he in reversion may
enter for the forfeiture. Then we must make a distinction between
general tail and special tail. It is the word body that makes the intail:
there must be a body in the tail, devised to heirs male or female,
otherwise it is a fee-simple, because it is not limited of what body.
Thus a corporation cannot be seized in tail. For example, here is a
young woman--What is your name, my dear?" "Dolly," answered the
daughter, with a curtsey. "Here's Dolly--I seize Dolly in tail--Dolly, I
seize you in tail"--"Sha't then," cried Dolly, pouting. "I am seized of
land in fee--I settle on Dolly in tail."
Dolly, who did not comprehend the nature of the illustration,
understood him in a literal sense, and, in a whimpering tone, exclaimed,
"Sha't then, I tell thee, cursed tuoad!" Tom, however, was so
transported with his subject, that he took no notice of poor Dolly's
mistake, but proceeded in his harangue upon the different kinds of tails,
remainders, and seisins, when he was interrupted by a noise that
alarmed the whole company. The rain had been succeeded by a storm
of wind that howled around the house with the most savage impetuosity,
and the heavens were overcast in such a manner that not one star
appeared, so that all without was darkness and uproar. This aggravated
the horror of divers loud screams, which even the noise of the blast
could not exclude from the ears of our astonished travellers. Captain
Crowe called out, "Avast, avast!" Tom Clarke sat silent, staring wildly,
with his mouth still open; the surgeon himself seemed startled, and
Ferret's countenance betrayed evident marks of confusion. The ostler
moved nearer the chimney, and the good woman of the house, with her
two daughters, crept closer to the company.
After some pause, the captain starting up, "These," said he, "be signals
of distress. Some poor souls in danger of foundering--let us bear up
a-head, and see if we can give them any assistance." The landlady
begged him, for Christ's sake, not to think of going out, for it was a
spirit that would lead him astray into fens and rivers, and certainly do
him a mischief. Crowe seemed to be staggered by this remonstrance,
which his nephew reinforced, observing, that it might be a stratagem of
rogues to decoy them into the fields, that they might rob them under