"For many years past, the great danger to the balance of power appeared to come from the regular clergy, who, favoured by the success of the mendicant orders, were adding house to house and field to field. Never dying out like families, and rarely losing by forfeitures, the monasteries might well nigh calculate the time, when all the soil of England should be their own. ... Accordingly, one of the first acts of the barons under Henry III. had been to enact, that no fees should be aliened to religious persons or corporations. Edward re-enacted and strengthened this by various provisions in the famous Statute of Mortmain. The fee illegally aliened was now to be forfeited to the chief lord under the King; and if, by collusion or neglect, the lord omitted to claim his right, the crown might enter upon it. Never was statute more unpopular with the class at whom it was aimed, more ceaselessly eluded, or more effectual. ... Once the clergy seem to have meditated open resistance, for, in 1281, we find the king warning the bishops, who were then in convocation at Lambeth, as they loved their baronies, to discuss nothing that appertained to the crown, or the king's person, or his council. The warning appears to have proved effectual, and the clergy found less dangerous employment in elaborating subtle evasions of the obnoxious law. At first fictitious recoveries were practised; an abbey bringing a suit against a would-be donor, who permitted judgment against him to go by default. When this was prohibited, special charters of exemption were procured. Once an attempt was made to smuggle a dispensing bill through parliament. One politic abbot in the 15th century encouraged his friends to make bequests of land, suffered them to escheat, and then begged them back of the crown, playing on the religious feelings of Henry VI. Yet it is strong proof of the salutary terror which the Statute of Mortmain inspired that even then the abbot was not quieted, and procured an Act of Parliament to purge him from any consequences of his illegal practices. In fact, the fear, lest astute crown lawyers should involve a rich foundation in wholesale forfeitures, seems sometimes to have hampered its members in the exercise of their undoubted rights as citizens." _C. H. Pearson, History of England during the Early and Middle Ages, volume 2, chapter 9._ ALSO IN: _E. F. Henderson, Select Historical Documents._ _K. E. Digby, Law of Real Property (4th edition)._ ENGLAND: A. D. 1282-1284. Subjugation of Wales. See WALES: A. D. 1282-1284. ENGLAND: A. D. 1290-1305. Conquest of Scotland by Edward I. See SCOTLAND: A. D. 1290-1305. ENGLAND: 14th Century. Immigration of Flemish artisans. The founding of English manufactures. See FLANDERS: A. D. 1335-1337.