For many years historians have tried to find complete and satisfying explanations for the enactment of De viris religiosis, but without reaching incontrovertible conclusions. What is certain is that the motives were many and complicated. The statute did not burst upon late-thirteenth-century England without warning. It came as a climax to decades of anxiety expressed by vocal landlords. Yet although they were united in fearing the influence of the church and the erosion of their incomes as a result of its intrusion into their fees, they were a diverse group. Crown, magnates and lesser landlords each faced problems different in scale and nature and this divergence of interest is reflected both in the political skirmishing surrounding the mortmain issue and in the form which limitation took whenever action was achieved.

Lay agitation over the disadvantages of mortmain tenure becomes evident towards the end of the twelfth century. Emerging concepts of ownership at this time encouraged tenants to bestow their holdings as if they enjoyed full proprietorial rights, to the detriment of their overlords. As long as lords had retained genuine freedom to dispose of tenements, however hedged about by custom, it had been natural for alienees to seek their consent before making grants to the church. With weakening powers of lordship, this became less easy to enforce, although attempts were made. Limiting clauses appear in conveyances.