page_title: Statutes of Mortmain
section_title: Result of the Statutes of Mortmain
hierarchical_section_title: Statutes of Mortmain / Result of the Statutes of Mortmain
caption_attribution_description: English: The ruins of Hailes Abbey in Winchcombe, Gloucestershire, England.
context_page_description: The Statutes of Mortmain were two enactments, in 1279 and 1290, passed in the reign of Edward I of England, aimed at preserving the kingdom's revenues by preventing land from passing into the possession of the Church. Possession of property by a corporation, such as the Church, was known as mortmain, which literally meant "dead hand". In medieval England, feudal estates generated taxes for the King, principally on the grant or inheritance of the estate. If an estate became owned by a religious corporation which could never die, could never attain majority, and could never be attainted for treason, these taxes never became payable. It was akin to the estates being owned by the dead, hence the term.
  The Statutes of Mortmain were meant to re-establish the prohibition against donating land to the Church for the purpose of avoiding feudal services, a prohibition which had originated in the Magna Carta in 1215 and was specifically defined in the Great Charter of 1217. But King John, the author of the Magna Carta, died shortly after it was signed, and his son, Henry III, did not enforce the proscriptions and, to the contrary, showed great deference to the Church.
context_section_description: During the long reign of Henry III, the donation of land to the Church became increasingly common. A feudal tenant would typically practice collusion with the Church in order to defeat a claim by his overlord for feudal services, by donating the land to a religious foundation on condition of it granting him a fresh tenancy of that land. The Great Charter of 1217 contained the first direct provision against this practice:
  It shall not be lawful for anyone henceforth to give his land to any religious house in order to resume it again to hold of the house; nor shall it be lawful for any religious house to accept anyone's land and to return it to him from whom they received it. If anyone for the future shall give his land in this way to any religious house and be convicted thereof, the gift shall be quashed and the land forfeit to the lord of the fee.
  Several cases are recorded where the King specifically forbade the tenant from alienating a church or land held in perpetuity by the Crown, and thus presumably the equivalent of mortmain. These cases are dated 1164, 1221 and 1227. After 1217, there was a forfeiture of the land to the overlord in a case of unauthorized alienation in mortmain. However, Henry III showed conspicuous favour to the Church and left the proclamations of 1215 and 1217 made by King John largely unenforced. The proscription was reintroduced, and made more forcible, by Henry III's son, Edward I, by the Statutes of Mortmain in 1279 and 1290.
  However, all of these attempts at proscription were ineffective. Land could instead be left to the Church by the development of the new device of the cestui que use. Henry VII expended much energy in the courts trying to break the legal grip of "uses" by Church corporations. The Statute of Uses, passed three centuries after the Statutes of Mortmain, would attempt – with only partial success – to end the practice of the cestui que use. Henry VIII would resolve the problem of Church lands once and for all, in 1535, by dissolving the monasteries and confiscating all Church lands.
caption: The ruins of Hailes Abbey established about 1245 by Richard, Earl of Cornwall, the younger brother of Henry III.
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