The recent
exigencies of the Welsh war had emphasised the need of strengthening
the military defences of the crown, and the new statute secured this by
preventing the further devolution of lands into the dead hand of the
Church. But all medieval laws were rather enunciations of an ideal than
measures which practical statesmen aimed at carrying out in detail. The
statute of Mortmain hardly stayed the creation of fresh monasteries and
colleges, or the further endowment of old ones. All that was necessary
for the pious founder was to obtain a royal dispensation from the
operation of the statute. There was little need to fear that the new
law would stand in the way of the power of the ecclesiastical estate.
A more distinct challenge to the Church was provoked by a further
aggression of Peckham in 1281. In that year the primate summoned a
council at Lambeth, wherein he sought to withdraw from the cognisance of
the civil courts all suits concerning patronage and the disposition of
the personal effects of ecclesiastics. To extend the jurisdiction of the
_forum ecclesiasticum_ was the surest way of exciting the hostility of
the common lawyers and the king.
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