Marriage Settlements in the Eighteenth Century

Abstract

In the early eighteenth century, the arrangements by which the English aristocracy and gentry commonly provided for their families conformed to a standard pattern, the strict settlement, in which the essential questions were settled at the marriage of the eldest son. Not only was his immediate maintenance fixed and his wife's jointure, but the provision for the children of the marriage—how much they were to receive, in what form and when—was decided at the same time. In its essentials, the marriage settlement first secured that the family estate should in each generation descend to the eldest son. It did this by limiting the interest in the estate of the father of the husband and, after him, of the husband himself, to that of a life-tenant, and entailing the estate on the eldest son to be born of the marriage. Secondly, the marriage settlement empowered both the father and husband to raise jointures for their respective wives and portions, i.e. capital sums, for their daughters and younger sons when they married or came of age; sometimes rent charges were provided for younger sons.