Mortification (2), in Scotch law, is a term used to denote lands given for charitable or other public uses. When lands are so given, they are in general formally conveyed to the trustees of the charity, to be held blench, or in feu. When mortifications are given in general to the poor, without naming particular trustees, they fall under the administration of the Court of Ses- sion. By the statute of 1633, c. 6, it was declared unlaw- ful to alter any mortifications, and the managers were rendered liable to ije called to account for malversation. Any person entitled to the benefit of the fund can pur- sue actions of this kind. — Chambers, Cyclopcedia, s. v.
MORTIMER
602
MORTMAIN
Mortimer, John Hamilton, an English artist of liigh repute in his tlay. who gave himself largely to ecclesiastical and Biblical subjects, was born in 1741 of humble parentage, and was the youngest of four chil- dren. Having acquired a taste for drawing from an uncle who was an itinerant portrait-painter, he was at about the age of eighteen jjlaced under Hudson, who had been the instructor of Keynolds. With him, however, he did not continue long ; but, after having studied a while in the gallery of the duke of Kichmond, Mortimer be- gan to make himself known by his productions. One of his earliest works, founded on an incident in the life of luhvard the Confessor, painted in competition with Komney, obtained from the Society for the Encourage- ment of Arts a premium of fifty guineas, and another, presenting St. Paul preachiiif/ to tke Britons, one hun- dred guineas. He was further distinguished by the notice and friendship of Keynolds. wliirh friendship has been attributed, not to the synipailiy, ijut to the oppo- sition of their tastes in art. Mortimer was no colorist, and but an indifferent portrait-painter, although he pro- duced many admirable heads and likenesses in black and white chalk. His talent laj^ in design, and in wild and fantastic quite as much as in historical subjects. He designed 77te Brazen Serpent in the great window of Salisbury Cathedral, and the cartoons for that in Brazenose College. He died Feb. 4, 1779, and was buried in the church at High Wj'combe, near the altar, where is his painting of St. Paid pi-eachinff to the Brit- ons. Sec Engl. Cyclop, s. v. ; Spooner, Diet, of the Fine A rts, s. V.
Mortimer, Thomas, D.D., an English divine, who was born near the opening of our century, flourished at London as minister of Gray's Inn, .and died in 1849. He published Lectures on the Injbtenre of the lluli/ Spirit (Lond. 1824, 8vo), which Bickerstel h pronounces " evan- gelical, practical, and edifying," and several series of his Sermons (Lond. 1822, 8vo; 1825, 8vo).— Allibone, Did. of Brit, and A mer. A uth. s. v.
Mortmain (from French mort, " dead," and main, " hand," which in turn from Latin viortua manu, i. e. in the dead hand) is the technical term of a series of An- glican statutes dealing with the lands of corporate bod- ies, especially ecclesiastical. The most probable origin of the term is that given by Coke, that " the lands were said to come to dead hands as to the lords, for that by alienation in mortmain tliey lost wholly their escheats, and in effect their knights' services, for the defence of the realm, wards, marriages, reliefs, and the like, and therefore was called a dead hand, for that a dead hand yieldeth no service." In the latter part of the Middle Ages the Koman Catholic Church, which had acquired a strong hold in England, came to own very largely the real estate of the country, until at one time it owned fully one third of all the English landed estate, which thus paid no taxes. By 1215 it had obtained so large a part of the real estate that it practically disabled the government from raising the necessary means to pay its expenses. To put a stop to this evil, a clause was in- troduced into tlie Magna Charta forbidding gifts of land to religious houses. This was the first statute of mortmain, and declares "that if any one shall give land to a religious house, the grant shall be void, and the land forfeited to the lord of the fee." But when the Eomish Church, which had no interest in state affairs, saw itself thus suddenly cut short in its expansion of power and wealth, it found a way to evade the law by taking, instead of a fee-simple title to the land, leases for a thousand j'ears. To meet this evasion of the intent of the law, the state, in the reign of Edward I, passed the statute I)e Religiosis, which restrained peoiile at the time of tlieir death, or otherwise, from giving or making over any lands or rents to churdies or religious houses witlunit the king's leave being first obtained. This was rendered extremely necessary by the fact that the king's exchequer had been impoverished to the utmost by the