Edward the Lawgiver: The Statutes of Westminster, Gloucester and Mortmain
The Lawgiver King
Edward I has often been called ‘the English Justinian’ because his reign produced the largest body of legislation any English king had attempted. Once the Hundred Rolls had revealed how local government was failing, Edward and his Lord Chancellor Robert Burnell turned the findings into law. Between 1275 and 1290 a series of major statutes reshaped land tenure, criminal justice and the church’s relationship with the crown. These statutes were the spine of Edward’s government and many remained in force for centuries.
The four great Edwardian statutes were Westminster I (1275), Gloucester (1278), Mortmain (1279) and Westminster II (1285). Together they reformed corrupt officials, defined royal jurisdiction, restricted gifts of land to the church, and made it harder to break up family estates.
First Statute of Westminster, 1275
Issued at Edward’s first parliament in April 1275, the First Statute of Westminster bundled together fifty-one chapters of reform. It dealt with abuses uncovered by the Hundred Rolls: corrupt sheriffs, bullying of jurors, the over-use of distraint (seizing a tenant’s livestock or chattels for debt), and the exploitation of widows and minors. It also set rules for free elections to parliament, regulated the costs of legal proceedings and confirmed Magna Carta. The statute was written in French rather than Latin so that more royal officers could read it directly.
Statute of Gloucester, 1278
The Statute of Gloucester opened the Quo Warranto inquiries and gave fresh legal remedies to tenants. It allowed people who had been wrongly thrown out of their land to claim damages as well as the land itself, and it strengthened actions against lords who had carved off pieces of common land. It is often paired with the Hundred Rolls because together they were Edward’s tools for clawing back rights and curbing local oppression.
The medieval church was wealthy. Pious nobles and wealthy townsfolk often gave land to monasteries, cathedrals and friaries to win prayers for their souls. Once land was transferred to the church it was held in mortmain — the ‘dead hand’ — because the church never died, never married and never had heirs. That meant the king lost a long stream of feudal incidents (reliefs, wardships and marriages) that he could normally collect when a tenant died.
By 1279 enough land had drifted into mortmain to become a serious financial worry. The Statute of Mortmain (1279) banned all transfers of land to the church without a royal licence. The licence cost money, so Edward turned a problem into a revenue stream.
Second Statute of Westminster, 1285
The Second Statute of Westminster (1285) was the most far-reaching of all. Its first chapter, De Donis Conditionalibus (‘Concerning Conditional Gifts’), created the legal doctrine of the entail. If a parent gave land ‘to my son and the heirs of his body’, that land could no longer be sold or given away — it had to descend in the family line. This let great families lock down their estates for generations. Other chapters reformed civil procedure, expanded the writ system, and set out new rules for trespass and wrongful occupation.
A second statute of the same year had much wider effects: the Statute of Winchester, issued in October 1285, which reformed local policing. Each man between fifteen and sixty had to keep arms suitable to his rank, and the watch was organised in towns and on highways. Anyone who saw a crime had to raise the hue and cry and join the chase.
Quia Emptores, 1290
The last of the great early statutes was Quia Emptores in 1290. It allowed free tenants to sell their land outright, but the buyer would hold it from the seller’s lord, not from the seller. Over time this stopped the creation of new layers of feudal lordship and simplified the structure of land tenure across England. Together with Mortmain and Westminster II, it tightened the king’s grip on land law.
Historians like Michael Prestwich have argued that the Edwardian statutes turned England into Europe’s most law-bound kingdom. Common law — the law of the king’s courts shared across the whole country — grew under Edward into something recognisable to a modern lawyer. Many provisions of Westminster I, Mortmain and Westminster II were still being cited in English courts in the nineteenth century. Marc Morris adds a darker note: the same king who reformed law for free Englishmen presided over the brutal expulsion of the Jews in 1290, showing that ‘justice’ in this period had hard limits.
The Statute of Mortmain (1279) banned all transfers of land to the church without a royal licence. Edward wanted it because land in church hands escaped the feudal incidents he relied on for income, and the licence fees turned the problem into a profitable royal right.