ALIENATION in fee is the selling the fee-simple of
any land or other incorporeal right. All persons
who have a right to lands may generally alien them
to others: but some alienations are prohibited; such
as alienations by tenants for life, &c. whereby they
incur a forfeiture of their estate. By the statute of Ed-
ward I. a bar was put to alienations by what we call
entails, which is an expedient for procuring perpetui-
ties in families; but counter-expedients were devised
to defeat this intent, and a practice was introduced of
cutting off entails by fines, and of barring remainders
and reversions by recoveries. The statute for aliena-
tion in Henry VII.'s time had a great effect on the
constitution of this kingdom; as, among other regu-
lations of that reign, it tended to throw the balance
of power more into the hands of the people. By the
stat. 12 Car. II. cap. 24. fines for alienations are tak-
en away. Crown lands are only alienable under a
faculty of perpetual redemption. The council of La-
teran, held in 1123, forbids any clerk to alienate his
benefice, prebend, or the like. By the laws of the
ancient Jews, lands could only be alienated for the
space of 50 years. At each return of the jubilee all
returned again to the primitive owners, or their de-
scendants, to whom the lands were originally allotted
at the first distribution of Canaan.