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Mortmain   Listen
noun
Mortmain  n.  (Law) Possession of lands or tenements in, or conveyance to, dead hands, or hands that cannot alienate. Note: The term was originally applied to conveyance of land made to ecclesiastical bodies; afterward to conveyance made to any corporate body.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Mortmain" Quotes from Famous Books



... between the Court and the leaders of parties, became in many cases an accession rather to the popular than to the royal scale; and some part of that influence, which would otherwise have been possessed as in a sort of mortmain and unalienable domain, returned again to the great ocean from whence it arose, and circulated among the people. This method therefore of governing by men of great natural interest or great acquired consideration, ...
— Thoughts on the Present Discontents - and Speeches • Edmund Burke

... "deadhead," who really has nothing to do with the case. He has been spoken of as an incubus. Some people regard the free entry of the caput mortuum with a hostility like that shown by our ancestors (and to some extent ourselves) to the mortmain of the Church. ...
— Our Stage and Its Critics • "E.F.S." of "The Westminster Gazette"

... very much interested in America, and asked many questions about our politics. 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 ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume II • William James Stillman

... was unfashionable to leave the world, and not remember the Priory. Donations crowded in so fast, that the prohibiting act was forgot; so that in 1311, the brotherhood were prosecuted by the crown, for appropriating lands contrary to the act of mortmain; But these interested priests, like their sagacious brethren, knew as well how to preserve as to gain property; for upon their humble petition to the throne, Edward the Second put a stop to the judicial proceedings, and granted a ...
— An History of Birmingham (1783) • William Hutton

... that you think meet: and when you please to let me know their acceptation of my offer, I will be ready to effect it with all convenient expedition. But, for the better effecting of it, I do desire to be informed whether the University be sufficiently qualified, by licence of Mortmain, or other assurance, to receive a farther grant of any rent or annuity than they do presently enjoy. And, if any instruments be extant of the ancient donations to their former library, I would, with their good liking, ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin

... of government; an aristocratic system is better, similar to that of the Judges in Israel.[719]—Neither heirship nor popular election is sufficient for the transmission of the crown; grace is needed besides.[720]—The bequeathing to the Church of estates which will become mortmain lands is inadmissible: "No one can transmit more rights than he possesses, and no one is personally possessed of rights of civil lordship extending beyond the term of life."[721]—If the convent or the priest make a bad ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand



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