Uses, a form of equitable ownership peculiar to English law. Under the old law, if A and B were enfeoffed in land, to hold it to the use of C, A and B were legal owners, but C could bring them into a court of equity, and compel them to perform the trust. Uses were employed in various ways to evade the policy of the feudal law; parliament attacked the system more than once, and at last in 1536 the Statute of Uses provided that, where one held to the use of another, the person having the benefit of the use should also have the legal estate. The effect of this enactment was just the reverse of what parliament intended; uses were freely created, in order that the statute might operate upon them, and turn them into legal estates; equitable interests were created by the simple expedient of limiting a 'use upon a use.' Trusts (q.v.) of land and modern forms of conveyancing cannot be explained without reference to the old doctrine of uses.
See the works of Williams and Challis on Real Property. A clear account of the system is given in Bacon's famous Reading on the Statute of Uses.