[1] As a method of avoiding certain common law rules, the practice arose of making feoffments to the use of, or upon trust for, persons other than those to whom the seisin or legal possession was delivered, to which the equitable jurisdiction of the chancellor gave effect.
[2] One reason for the creation of uses was a desire to avoid the strictness of certain rules of the common law, which considered seisin to be all-important.
Instead, a proprietor could enfeoff (grant) land to a proxy tenant for the friars' use as cestuis que (intended beneficiaries).
Uses served various purposes, including: The rapid development of the use was probably one of the consequences of the Black Death, during which many landowning nobility died, leaving their realty to their widows and minor orphans.
The modern position was reached by the beginning of the sixteenth century: The use could be enforced against anyone in the world acquiring an interest in the land other than a bona fide purchaser of the legal estate for value without notice of the use.
As the lord at the top of the feudal pyramid, the King suffered most from the employment of uses and evasion of tenurial incidents.