Bylciffe versus Transome

Lawsuit instituted by Maurice Christian Bycliffe, Esther Lyon's father, to obtain possession of the Transome estate. John Justus Transome in 1729 had made a settlement of his estates entailing them on his son Thomas and his heirs-male, with remainder to the Bycliffes in fee. Thomas, a prodigal, had sold his own and his descendants' rights to a lawyer-cousin named Durfey, whose descendants, the Durfey-Transomes (the Transomes of the story), are the rightful holders of the estate as long as there exists a male descendant of Thomas Transome. In the absence of such male descendant the right to the estate would pass to the Bycliffes. The complicated legal plot of the story rests upon this Durfey-Transome-Bycliffe situation and the fact that Esther Lyon's claim (as the last Bycliffe) becomes valid on the death of old Tommy Trounsem, the last descendant of Thomas Transome. In order to be sure that she was right in her handling of a plot based upon a question of law, George Eliot consulted Frederic Harrison, who suggested the legal scheme of the story and wrote the lawyer's "opinion on the case", which was incorporated in the novel. Frederic Harrison said later: "I remember telling her, when she inserted these lines in the book, that I had written at least a sentence which was embodied in English literature." (See Harrison, Studies in Early Victorian Literature, p. 218; also his Memories and Thoughts, p. 137-140; also Cross, George Eliot's Life, vol. 2, p. 420, 423.)

<em>Felix Holt, the Radical</em>

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