Mortmain
A Dictionary of Law · Henry Campbell Black · 1891
A Dictionary of Law
A term applied to denote the alienation of lands or tenements to any corporation, sole or aggregate, ecclesiastical or temporal. These purchases having been chiefly made by religious houses, in conse quence of which lands became perpetually inherent in one dead hand, this has occasioned the general appellation of “mortmain” to be applied to such alienations.
2 BI. Comm. 268; Co. Litt. 26.