Mortmain synonyms

This was St Bernard's College, founded by Chicheley under licence in mortmain in 1437 for Cistercian monks, on the model of Gloucester Hall and Durham College for the southern and northern Benedictines.

With regard to the land and the services due therefrom a beginning was made of the policy which culminated in the statutes of Mortmain and of Quia Emptores.

In the early middle ages the term was applied to representatives of a count administering justice for him in the country or small towns and dealing with unimportant cases, levying taxes, &c. Monasteries and religious houses often employed a vicar to answer to their feudal lords for those of their lands which did not pass into mortmain.

The province declined in wealth and population during the 18th and 19th centuries, a result due less to the want of activity on the part of the inhabitants than to the oppressive manorial and feudal rights and the strict laws of entail and mortmain, which acted as barriers to progress.