, some founders of corporations had
made statutes in derogation of the common law, making very frequently
the unanimous assent of the society to be necessary to any corporate
act; (which king Henry VIII found to be a great obstruction to his
projected scheme of obtaining a surrender of the lands of
ecclesiastical corporations) it was therefore enacted by statute 33
Hen. VIII. c. 27. that all private statutes shall be utterly void,
whereby any grant or election, made by the head, with the concurrence
of the major part of the body, is liable to be obstructed by any one
or more, being the minority: but this statute extends not to any
negative or necessary voice, given by the founder to the head of any
such society.

[Footnote n: Co. Litt. 46.]

[Footnote o: Lord Raym. 8.]

[Footnote p: Co. Litt. 263, 264.]

[Footnote q: 10 Rep. 30.]

[Footnote r: Bro. _Abr. tit. Corporation._ 31, 34.]

[Footnote s: _Ff._ 3. 4. 3.]

WE before observed that it was incident to every corporation, to have
a capacity to purchase lands for themselves and successors: and this
is regularly true at the common law[t]. But they are excepted out of
the statute of wills[u]; so that no devise of lands to a corporation
by will is good: except for charitable uses, by statute 43 Eliz. c.
4[w]. And also, by a great variety of statutes[x], their privilege
even of purchasing from any living grantor is greatly abridged; so
that now a corporation, either ecclesiastical or lay, must have a
licence from the king to purchase[y], before they can exert that
capacity which is vested in them by the common law: nor is even this
in all cases sufficient. These statutes are generally called the
statutes of _mortmain_; all purchases made by corporate bodies being
said to be purchases in mortmain, _in mortua manu_: for the reason of
which appellation sir Edward Coke[z] offers many conjectures; but
there is one which seems more probable than any that he has given us:
viz. that these purchases being usually made by ecclesiastical bodies,
the members of which (being professed) were reckoned dead persons in
law, land therefore, holden by them, might with great propriety be
said to be held _in mortua manu_.

[Footnote t: 10 Rep. 30.]

[Footnote u: 34 Hen. VIII. c. 5.]

[Footnote w: Hob. 136.]

[Footnote x: From _magna carta_, 9 Hen. III. c. 36. to 9 Geo. II. c.
36.]

[Footnote y: By the civil law a corporation was incapable of taking
lands, unless by special pri