Money lay at the heart of the Statute of Mortmain. Edward I passed the twin enactments at the close of the 13th century. His target was the Church. In medieval England, the inheritance of an estate yielded revenue for the Crown. But the Church never died. Its lands never changed hands, never generated taxes for king and country. With an eye on the royal purse strings, Edward formulated the Statute to safeguard land from Church hands.
Judy Corbalis’s second novel is set in small-town New Zealand between the dying days of the Great War and the economic slump of the Thirties. The Statute of Mortmain provides a metaphor for the white settlers’ appropriation of Maori lands. For the novel’s hero, it also symbolises the stranglehold of heredity:
The dead hand stretching from beyond the grave. The institution that never dies, but goes on living in perpetuity … Only in your case the dead hand’s your family, your name.
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