The Mysteries of the Court of London — page 352: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

CHAPTER XXXIV THE LAWSUIT In those bygone days when the “‘ wisdom of our ancestors ”’ is supposed to have flourished so preéminently, many curious conditions were frequently attached to the heritage of estates, the enjoyment of real property, and the succession to testamentary bequests. In those ages when the Roman Catholic Church was dominant in England, the inheritance of a vast fortune or an immense estate was frequently made ~ conditional upon taking the oath in acknowledgment of the papal supremacy, or in confirming some monastic establish- ment in the enjoyment of certain tenures, rentals, privileges, and immunities; and, oftener still, the heir of a small property found himself obliged to make certain oblations to a particular shrine or pay for so many masses to be chanted on behalf of his predecessor’s soul. On the other hand, and in later times, when Protestantism had erected its temples upon the ruins of the papal establishments, the frantic holders of estates frequently bound their posterity, as the condition of inheritance, to make a vow abjuring the Romish doctrines altogether; and it 1s well known that many estates are inherited at the present day upon con- ditions which, though pared down into the simplest techni- cality or merest form, nevertheless originated in some such ancestral prejudices or whimsicalities as those at which we have hastily glanced. A condition of this nature was traditionary in the Mont- gomery family; and thus it arose: In the reign of Queen Elizabeth the Bellenden race was threatened with extinction, the then possessor of the marquisate being eighty years of age, childless, and without any near relatives. He accord- ingly adopted the second son of the then Earl Montgomery; a2] Eomichdooks (E(©)