Entail (in English law) and tailzie (in Scottish law) were systems of hereditary landholding designed to keep estates within a family line by restricting the ability to sell, divide, or mortgage the land. They often followed strict rules about who could inherit, usually favouring the eldest male heir and limiting the freedom of current holders.
These concepts are used in the Haldimand conversation primarily as analogies. They help non-lawyers understand how a grant can be structured to protect a family or group’s long-term interest in land across generations. However, Mohawk and Loyalist contexts are different: Haldimand’s grant speaks of a nation and “posterity forever,” and Dorchester’s U.E. rule allows descent “by either sex.” So while entail and tailzie offer useful comparison points, the Haldimand framework has its own logic and must be understood on its own terms.
In Scots law, tailzie (/ˈteɪli/) is a feudal concept of the inheritance of immovable property according to an arbitrary course that has been laid out, such as in a document known as a “deed of tailzie”. It was codified by the Entail Act 1685.
Tailzie is similar to the common law concept of fee tail, as the “heir in tailzie” is entailed to the property. An “heir in tailzie” could not sell the property so inherited, except to the feu superior (that is, to the holder of the dominum directum of the feu).
The Entail Amendment Act 1848 gave all heirs in tailzie power to apply to the Court of Session to cease the deed of tailzie, compensate respective claims, thus take estate possession in fee simple. Part 5 of the Abolition of Feudal Tenure etc. (Scotland) Act 2000 disentailed all entailed land in Scotland and required the Keeper of the Registers of Scotland to close the Register of Entails.
Sc. Law: an entail, the settlement of heritable property inalienably on a specified line of heirs, not heirs at law, a practice modified by various statutes since 1685 and finally made incompetent after 1914. The form tailyie became obsol. in the mid. 18th c., the corresponding Eng. entail being substituted, and is now only in arch. use. The law books favour the spelling tailzie. Hence heir of tailyie, an heir succeeding under and enjoying rights limited by an entail. https://dsl.ac.uk/entry/snd/tailyie
