It has often been stated that the purpose of the rule was to eliminate loopholes in property law that allowed possessors of land to avoid paying taxes on their property by holding it in equity. However, as a matter of realistic politics the major purpose was to facilitate the dissolution of the monasteries. In order to avoid the Statutes of Mortmain, legal title to much if not most of the lands of the monasteries was held by foeffees to use (the equivalent of the modern "trustees") for the benefit of the monasteries. The statute vested legal title in the monasteries, thus facilitating the reversion of the lands to the Crown by virtue of the statutes rendering the King head of the Church in England.
   Once the Statute had served its political purpose, the "use" was reinvented by legal sleight of hand in the form of the "trust." A grant in fee simple "unto and to the use of A in trust for B" resulted in a use for A, which was executed into a grant in fee to A in trust for B; the trust (in effect another name for a use) wasn't executed by the statute on the principle that a use upon a use was void – but was effective as a newfangled "trust." Similar reasoning enabled what are called executory interests today, which would have been void at law prior to the Statute of Uses.

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