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According to the standard dictionary definition, a mortgage is

A temporary, conditional pledge of property to a creditor as security for performance of an obligation or repayment of a debt.

Okay.  We pretty much all surmised that without turning to our friend Webster.  But, I want to turn to another influential man, Sir Edward Coke (pronounced Cook), who coined the phrase “mortgage”.  Attempting to accurately describe the relation between creditor and lender on a piece of land, Sir Edward joined the terms mort, which is Old French, and derived from the Latin Mortuus, or “Dead”, together with gage, which means “Pledge”.

You see, it seemed to Sir Coke that if the borrower does not repay the debt on the land pledged to the lender, then it

is taken from him for ever, and so dead to him upon condition. And if he doth pay the money, then the pledge is dead as to the [mortgagee].

Thus was born the term, mortgage.

And any time you are considering taking out a loan that contains the word ‘death’ in it; well, happy times…

Or maybe it is happy times, or at the very least a good reminder to us of some of our origins in this free, capitalist society.  You see, Sir Edward Coke did a lot more than coin a ‘dead-pledge’ term that we all repeat when we buy a home or visit our lender.  He influenced the underpinnings of our American society and Constitution.

Edward Coke, born in 1552, eventually ascended to the seat of Lord Chief Justice of England by 1613.  Sir Coke was a very well-renowned justice and practitioner of common law – in fact his writings and court decisions were a principle manuscript of common law studied in universities until the late 18^th century, both in England and here in the US.

Here’s where we come in.

As a judge and then a member of Parliament, Sir Coke supported individual liberty, opposing arbitrary government power and sought to ensure that the king’s authority was circumscribed by law.  This became an important foundation stone in the thought, writings and actions of several of the Founding Fathers of the United States of America, including John Adams, who based his ideas of our inviolable civil liberties on the writings of Sir Edward Coke.  And on that thought alone one could write a tome on the origins and consequences of the current mortgage crisis.  Ah, but for another day.

So, there you have it.  Either a brief insight into our history, seen through a mortgage lender’s eyes; or proof positive that mortgage lenders are, in fact, descended from true patriots!