In the mid-seventeenth century, conveyancers developed a form of property settlement which was rapidly adopted by most segments of English landed society. With minor modifications this conveyancing precedent, the strict family settlement executed upon the marriage of the eldest son, remained the prevailing means by which landed wealth was transmitted between the generations until the twentieth century when a changing economic and political climate rendered moribund the social structure which the settlement sought to preserve. For more than two centuries, however, much of the land in England was held under strict settlement. Particularly in pre-industrial England, where so vast a proportion of the nation's capital and human resources was invested in land and agricultural production, the restraints which the strict settlement placed upon the freedom of the tenant in possession to alienate, consolidate, or exploit his estate must have had a profound effect upon the economy.