linguistic:paraphrasing
Anglo-Saxon and Anglo-Norman law

In Anglo-Saxon England, when interest loans were illegal, the main method of securing realty was by wadset (ME wedset). A wadset was a loan masked as a sale of land under right of reversion. The borrower (reverser) conveyed by charter a fee simple estate, in consideration of a loan, to the lender (wadsetter) who on redemption would reconvey the estate to the reverser by a second charter. The difficulty with this arrangement was that the wadsetter was absolute owner of the property and could sell it to a third party or refuse to reconvey it to the reverser, who was also stripped of his principal means of repayment and therefore in a weak position. In later years the practice—especially in Scotland and on the continent—was to execute together the wadset and a separate back-bond according the reverser an in personam right of reverter.