(Vol. ix., p. 75.)
I am inclined to think that MR. HALLIWELL has been misled by his old
law-books, for upon looking at the principal authorities upon this point, I
cannot find any such interpretation of the term _inheritance_ as that
quoted by him from Cowell. The words "the inheritance," in the passage
"heretofore the inheritance of William Shakspeare, Gent., deceased," would
most certainly appear to imply that Shakspeare inherited the lands as
heir-at-law to some one. But, however, it must not be concluded upon this
alone that the poet's father was a landed proprietor, as the inheritance
could proceed from any other ancestor to whom Shakspeare was by law heir.
Blackstone, in his _Commentaries_, has the following:
"Descent, or hereditary succession, is the title whereby a man on the
death of his ancestor acquires his estate by right of representation,
as his heir-at-law. An heir, therefore, is he upon whom the law casts
the estate immediately on the death of the ancestor: and an estate, so
descending to the heirs, is in Law called _the inheritance_."--Vol. ii.
p. 201.
{155} Again:
"Purchase, _perquisitio_, taken in its largest and most extensive
sense, is thus defined by Littleton; the possession of lands and
tenements which a man hath by his own act or agreement, and not by
descent from any of his ancestors or kindred. In this sense it is
contra-distinguished from acquisition by right of blood, and includes
every other method of coming to an estate, _but merely that by
inheritance_: wherein the title is vested in a person, not by his own
act or agreement, but by the single operation of law."--Vol. ii. p.
241.
Thus it is clear the possession of an estate by inheritance is created only
by a person being heir to it; and the mere purchase of it, though it vests
the fee simple in him, can but make him the _assign_ and not the _heir_.
The nomination (as it would be in the case of a purchase) of an heir to
succeed to the inheritance, has no place in the English law; the maxim
being "Solus Deus hæredem facere potest, non homo;" and all other persons,
whom a tenant in fee simple may please to appoint as his successors, are
not his heirs but his assigns. (See _Williams on the Law of Real
Property_.)