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In 1300, on the death of the king's childless cousin, Earl Edmund, the wealthy earldom of Cornwall escheated to the crown. To Edward's contemporaries the acquisition of the earldoms of Norfolk and Cornwall seemed worthy to be put alongside the conquests of Wales and Scotland. See John of London, Commendatio lamentabilis in Chron. of Edw. I. and Edw. II., ii., 8-9.
He feared that the will might contain provisions which would rouse the passions of the people. Though Caesar was not for various reasons to be pronounced a tyrant, Cicero advised that he should be buried privately, as if his name was under a cloud, and that his property should be escheated to the nation. But the humor of conciliation and the theory of "the atoning sacrifice" had caught the Senate.
As the lands at first granted did not measure the 42,000 acres, the Lord Deputy is instructed to issue a commission to measure off so much of other escheated lands adjoining "as shall be requisite to make up the full number and quantity of three seignories and a-half of tenantable land, without mountains, bogs, or barren heath; To hold for ever in fee-farm, as of the Castle of Carregroghan, in the Co. of Cork, in free soccage and not in capite."
No man before, ever gravely proposed to establish confiscation as a permanent source of revenue to the state; yet the annual product from the escheated property of slaughtered heretics was regularly relied upon, during his administration, to replenish the King's treasury, and to support the war of extermination against the King's subjects.
In some manors, if a tenant died the lord laid claim to some of his live stock as a heriot, which was forthwith seized by the bailiff of the manor; and in all manors, if a man died without heirs, his land escheated to the lord of the manor; that is, it came back to the lord who in theory was the owner of the soil.
To grant to native Potentates who were trembling in their shoes, and ready to receive the boon on any terms which you might prescribe, the reversion of States which had become vacant because you had, of your own authority and mere motion, hanged their chiefs, and declared them to be escheated, was a wise, a graceful, and under the circumstances a perfectly safe policy.
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