issued the statute of Acton Burnell of
1283, which provided a better way of recovering merchants' debts, and
the statute of Rhuddlan of 1284 for the regulation of the king's
exchequer. The king's full activity as a lawgiver was renewed after the
settlement of his conquest by the statute of Wales of 1284, and the
legislation of his early years culminated in the two great acts of
1285, the statute of Westminster the Second, and the statute of
Winchester. That year, which also witnessed the passing of the
_Circumspecte agatis_, stands out as the most fruitful in lawmaking in
the whole of Edward's reign.

The second statute of Westminster, passed in the spring parliament,
partook of the comprehensive character of the first statute of that
name. There were clauses by which, as the Canon of Oseney puts it,
"Edward revived the ancient laws which had slumbered through the
disturbance of the realm: some corrupted by abuse he restored to their
proper form: some less evident and apparent he declared: some new ones,
useful and honourable, he added". Among the more conspicuous
innovations of the second statute of Westminster was the famous clause
De _donis conditionalibus_, which forms a landmark in the law of real
property. It facilitated the creation of entailed estates by providing
that the rights of an heir of an estate, granted upon conditions, were
not to be barred on account of the alienation of such an estate by its
previous tenant. Thus arose those estates for life, which in later ages
became a special feature of the English land system, and which, by
restricting the control of the actual possessor of a property over his
land, did much to perpetuate the worst features of medieval
land-holding. It is a modern error to regard the legitimation of
estates in tail as a triumph of reactionary feudalism over the will of
Edward. Apart from the fact that there is not a tittle of contemporary
evidence to justify such a view, it is manifest that the interest of
the king was in this case exactly the same as that of each individual
lord of a manor. The greater prospect of reversion to the donor, and
the other features of the system of entails, which commended them to
the petty baron, were still more attractive to the king, the greatest
proprietor as well as the ultimate landlord of all the realm. Other
articles of the Westminster statute were only less important than the
clause _De donis_, notable among them being the institution of ju