treaſon. 4. Praemunire. 5. Drawing a weapon on a judge, or ſtriking any one in the preſence of the king's principal courts of juſtice. 6. Popiſh recuſancy, or non-obſervance of certain laws enacted in reſtraint of papiſts. But at what time they ſeverally commence, how far they extend, and how long they endure, will with greater propriety be reſerved as the object of our future enquiries.
II. Lands 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 caſes the forfeiture ariſes from the incapacity of the alienee to take, in the latter from the incapacity of the alienor to grant.
1. Alienation in mortmain, in mortua manu, is an alienation of lands or tenements to any corporation, ſole or aggregate, eccleſiaſtical or temporal. But theſe purchaſes have been chiefly made by religious houſes, in conſequence whereof the lands became perpetually inherent in one dead hand, this hath occaſioned the general appellation of mortmain to be applied to ſuch alienations[1], and the religious houſes themſelves to be principally conſidered in forming the ſtatutes of mortmain: in deducing the hiſtory of which ſtatutes, it will be matter of curioſity to obſerve the great addreſs and ſubtile contrivance of the eccleſiaſtics in eluding from time to time the laws in being, and the zeal with which ſucceſſive parliaments have purſued them through all their fineſſes; how new remedies were ſtill the parents of new evaſions; till the legiſlature at laſt, though with difficulty, hath obtained a deciſive victory.
By the common law any man might diſpoſe of his lands to any other private man at his own diſcretion, eſpecially when the feodal reſtraints of alienation were worn away. Yet in conſequence of theſe it was always, and is ſtill, neceſſary[2], for corpo-
