A more thorough explanation:

Feigned recovery is a legal term that refers to an old legal process called common recovery. It was a complicated process that allowed a tenant in tail to disentail a fee-tail estate. The process involved legal fictions and was used to facilitate land transfer by allowing a potential transferee who was barred by law from receiving land to "recover" the land by suing the actual owner.

Here's an example of how common recovery worked:

Let's say A owned a piece of land that he wanted to sell to B. However, A couldn't sell the land to B because of the law that prevented the transfer of land to certain people. To get around this, A and B would collude to bring a legal action against each other. B would claim that he owned the land and demand recovery of it. A would respond by claiming that he had acquired the land from C and that C had warranted title to the land. When A demanded that C defend the title, C would admit falsely that he had warranted the title. C would allow B to take a default judgment against A for the recovery of the land, and A would obtain a default judgment against himself, C, for the recovery of land of equal value. The result of this legal maneuver was to leave B with title to the land in fee simple and to leave A with his judgment against C.

Feigned recovery was abolished early in the 19th century, but it was an important legal process in the past. It was originally concocted by the clergy as a way to avoid the land-conveyance restrictions imposed by mortmain acts.