ABSTRACT
This chapter surveys the influence of the Christian religion on the historical development of the English common law of real and personal property. The subject has scarcely been touched by legal historians. The chapter demonstrates that between 1500 and 1700 English lawyers made regular use of religious ideas in at least four ways: (1) as a source of workable jurisdictional rules, as in disputes involving property devised in last wills and testaments; (2) as a means of interpretation where the canon law itself had itself shaped property rights, as in the law of marriage and divorce; (3) as a source of moral and equitable principles that shaped property rights, as in determining the validity of equitable and future interests; and (4) as justification for efforts to eliminate superstitious uses from the law of post-Reformation England, as in dealing with title to land once held by monastic houses.
