(1) Mortal, immortality, mortify, postmortem, mortgage, morgue; (2) mortmain, moribund, À la mort.

So enormous and scandalous was the wealth of the clergy, that as early as 1279, under Edward I., Parliament passed a statute of mortmain, forbidding religious bodies to receive bequests without the King's license.

immunity, exemption; emancipation &c (liberation) 750; enfranchisement, affranchisement^. free land, freehold; allodium^; frankalmoigne [Fr.], mortmain

unforfeited^, undeprived, undisposed, uncommunicated. incommunicable, inalienable; in mortmain

The Laity suspect their greatness, witness those statutes of mortmain.

Right of Mortmain.

Right of Mortmain.

] Mortmain consisted of the privation of the right of freely disposing of one's person or goods.

He who had not the power of going where he would, of giving or selling, of leaving by will or transferring his property, fixed or movable, as he thought best, was called a man of mortmain.

It was also nearly in this sense, that men of the Church were also called men of mortmain, because they were equally forbidden to dispose, either in life, or by will after death, of anything belonging to them.

There were two kinds of mortmain: real and personal; one concerning land, and the other concerning the person; that is to say, land held in mortmain did not change quality, whatever might be the position of the person who occupied it, and a "man of mortmain" did not cease to suffer the inconveniences of his position on whatever land he went to establish himself.

There were two kinds of mortmain: real and personal; one concerning land, and the other concerning the person; that is to say, land held in mortmain did not change quality, whatever might be the position of the person who occupied it, and a "man of mortmain" did not cease to suffer the inconveniences of his position on whatever land he went to establish himself.

In fact, a mortmain person, to be free, not only required to be franchised by his own lord, but also by all the nobles on whom he was dependent, as well as by the sovereign.

Among these new taxes were those of escorte and entrée, of mortmain, of lods et ventes, of relief, the champarts, the taille, the fouage, and the various fees for wine-pressing, grinding, baking, &c., all of which were payable without prejudice to the tithes due to the King and the Church.

Moreover there was always her family to cope with, dyed in the wool New Englanders at that, no doubt with the heavy Puritan mortmain upon them, narrow as a shoe string, circumscribed as a duck pond, walled in by ghastly respectability.

Two things, he said, in the future of America, seemed to him ominous of evil: the condition of our civil service, and the amount of our Western lands going into mortmain through the gifts to the great railway systems.

In a final unaccented syllable, it sometimes preserves the first sound of a; as in chilblain, mortmain: but oftener takes the sound of close or short i; as in certain, curtain, mountain, villain.

After the Conquest, Roger, Earl of Mortmain and Cornwall, half-brother of the Conqueror, built the Norman building whose shattered walls are to be seen to-day.

He had considerably increased the percentage to be paid on real property acquired by the Church (called possessions in mortmain), by way of compensation for the mutation-dues which their fixity caused the State to lose.

He was grateful to M. Necker for the courageous suppressions he had accomplished, and for the useful reforms whereof the honor was to remain inseparable from his name; it was at M. Necker's advice that he had abolished mortmain in his dominions.

One of em started up tother Day in some Confusion, and said, Now I think on't, I'm to meet Mr. Mortmain the Attorney about some Business, but whether it is to Day or to Morrow, faith, I can't tell.

The Statute of Mortmain, aimed at the holding of land in large quantities by religious corporations, was a true constructive statute, and the principle it establishes has grown ever since.

They developed in England first out of the guild or out of the monastery; but the religious corporation, although regarded with great jealousy in the Statutes against Mortmain, which show that from the earliest times our ancestors feared the attribute of immortality that characterizes the corporation, have never had the principle of limited, or no, personal liability.

The continuance of the Statute of Mortmain in full force, after the Church had been so terribly stripped, appeared to Her Majesty and the kingdom a very unnecessary hardship; upon which account it was at several times relaxed by the legislature.

"The statute of mortmain does not give me much uneasiness," remarked the vindictive old man with a bitter smile.