“I do think it is the hardest thing in the world that your estate should be entailed away from your own children; and I am sure if I had been you, I should have tried long ago to do something or other about it.” Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
Margaret: “Why are they coming to live at Norland? They already have a house in London.”
Elinor: “Because houses go from father to son dearest, not from father to daughter. It is the law.” Emma Thompson, script of Sense and Sensibility (1995).
In January 2019, I attended the JASNA Annual General Meeting (AGM) in Williamsburg, VA. Before the AGM began, I visited a local museum and discovered that Thomas Jefferson had written a law that prohibited primogeniture and entailment, which was approved by the Virginia state legislature in October 1776. This was shortly after Virginia’s legislature had approved the Declaration of Independence, the first draft of which was written by Jefferson. Later, at the AGM, I tried to ask people a trivia question: who had written the law that banned entailment in Virginia? I couldn’t get anyone to even consider answering the question. Fair enough, attendees are busy on the first day of the AGM.
So, in honor of the upcoming 4th of July and the 249th anniversary of the deaths of both Thomas Jefferson and John Adams on the 4th of July in 1826, I thought I would post this article about Jane Austen, Thomas Jefferson, the system of entailment and how it affected the inheritance rights of English women—and younger brothers. Coincidentally, we will celebrate the 250th anniversary of the birth of Jane Austen on December 16, 2025.
In the years after 1066, the King gave large parcels of land and property to many of his followers and entailment was used as a way to ensure that those landed estates would be kept intact for a very long time—with a man always owning the property. Things began to change as the centuries passed, but under the feudal concept of inheritance, only men who could bear arms could inherit.
The severe limitations on the rights of women to inherit property are featured prominently in Jane Austen’s novels. The problems raised by entailment are major issues in Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, and Persuasion. Primogeniture and the problems caused by irresponsible older brothers are featured in Northanger Abbey, Mansfield Park, and Sense and Sensibility. Emma isn’t silent about the challenges women faced given the inheritance laws that were in place in Regency England, but the difficulties are left to secondary characters like Miss Bates and Miss Jane Fairfax.
As a new nation was being formed, Thomas Jefferson saw an opportunity to reform inheritance laws in Virginia. In a letter from Thomas Jefferson to John Adams, Jefferson wrote that:
“[A]t the first session of our legislature after the Declaration of Independence, we passed a law abolishing entails. and this was followed by one abolishing the privilege of Primogeniture, and dividing the lands of intestates equally among all their children, or other representatives. These laws, drawn by myself, laid the axe to the root of Pseudo-aristocracy.”
As a younger brother in a family that descended from King Edward I (Jefferson was a 14th great-grandson), it seems likely that Jefferson knew how entailment could affect the futures of younger brothers and their families. It’s a possible reason why some of his great-grandfathers moved from England to Virginia (circa the 1670s).
As a younger sister, Jane Austen saw one of her brothers inherit a large estate via adoption by a wealthy couple. While Jane Austen lived in Bath, England for about eight years after her father retired from his rectorship and died four years later, Jane, her mother, her sister, and a family friend were eventually able to a house in Chawton near one of her brother’s estates. This move led to a reawakening of her interest in writing.
While they were rivals in their political lives, Thomas Jefferson and John Adams wrote many letters to each other as they got older. Both sought to live long enough to be able to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence on the 4th of July, 1826. As it happens, they died within hours of each other on that day.
On the upcoming 249th Anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, I want to thank Thomas Jefferson and John and Abigail Adams for their service to this country.
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