Statute of Mortmain

The Statute of Mortmain refers to legislation enacted under King Edward I of England, beginning with a statute in 1279 known as De Viris Religiosis, with a further enactment in 1290, aimed at preventing land from passing permanently into the ownership of the Church. Because the Church held land as a corporation that never died and never inherited, land granted to it in mortmain, meaning dead hand, escaped the feudal dues normally owed to the Crown whenever land passed by inheritance or transfer. The 1279 statute barred religious houses from acquiring land without a license, on pain of forfeiture to the lord from whom the land was held, reviving a prohibition that had first appeared in Magna Carta. The statutes proved only partly effective, since lawyers later developed the use, a legal device recognized by ecclesiastical courts, to give the Church the practical benefit of land while avoiding the ban on formal ownership.