Page:William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England (3rd ed, 1768, vol II).djvu/284

 268 treaon. 4. Praemunire. 5. Drawing a weapon on a judge, or triking any one in the preence of the king's principal courts of jutice. 6. Popih recuancy, or non-obervance of certain laws enacted in retraint of papits. But at what time they everally commence, how far they extend, and how long they endure, will with greater propriety be reerved as the object of our future enquiries.

II. and tenements may be forfeited by alienation, or conveying them to another, contrary to law. This is either alienation in mortmain, alienation to an alien, or alienation by particular tenants; in the two former of which caes the forfeiture aries from the incapacity of the alienee to take, in the latter from the incapacity of the alienor to grant.

1. in mortmain, in mortua manu, is an alienation of lands or tenements to any corporation, ole or aggregate, eccleiatical or temporal. But thee purchaes have been chiefly made by religious houes, in conequence whereof the lands became perpetually inherent in one dead hand, this hath occaioned the general appellation of mortmain to be applied to uch alienations, and the religious houes themelves to be principally conidered in forming the tatutes of mortmain: in deducing the hitory of which tatutes, it will be matter of curioity to oberve the great addres and ubtile contrivance of the eccleiatics in eluding from time to time the laws in being, and the zeal with which ucceive parliaments have purued them through all their finees; how new remedies were till the parents of new evaions; till the legilature at lat, though with difficulty, hath obtained a deciive victory.

the common law any man might dipoe of his lands to any other private man at his own dicretion, epecially when the feodal retraints of alienation were worn away. Yet in conequence of thee it was always, and is till, neceary, for corpo- Rh