became a monk and made his religious profession in England was deemed civilly dead, "dead in law" ; consequently his heirs inherited his land forthwith as though he had died a natural death. Assignment of dower in his hand would nevertheless be postponed until the natural death of such a man, for only by his wife's consent could a married man be legally professed in religion, and she was not allowed by her consent to exchange her husband for dower. After the Reformation and the enactment of the English statute of 11 and 12 William III, prohibiting "papists" from inheriting or purchasing lands, a Roman Catholic widow was not held to be debarred of dower, for dower accruing by operation of law was deemed to be not within the prohibitions of the statute. By a curious disability of old English law a Jewish widow born in England would be debarred of dower in land which her husband, he having been an Englishman of the same faith and becoming converted after marriage, should purchase, if she herself remained unconverted. Morganatic marriage: a post-medieval application Some high-born persons have been prone to marry an ineligible spouse. Particularly in European countries where the equal birth of spouses (Ebenbürtigkeit) was an important condition to marriages of dynasts of reigning houses and high nobility, the old matrimonial and contractual law provision of dowering was taken into a new use by institutionalizing the morganatic marriage. Marriage being morganatical prevents the passage of the husband's titles and privileges to the wife and any children born of the marriage. Morganatic, from the Latin phrase matrimonium ad morganaticam, refers to the dower (Latin: morganaticum, German: Morgengabe, Swedish: morgongåva ). When a marriage contract is made that the bride and the children of the marriage will not receive anything else (than the dower) from the bridegroom or from his inheritance or patrimony or from his clan, that sort of marriage was dubbed as "marriage with only the dower and no other inheritance", i.e. matrimonium ad morganaticum. Neither the bride nor any children of the marriage has any right on the groom's titles, rights, or entailed property. The children are considered legitimate on other counts and the prohibition of bigamy applies. The practice of "only-doweried" is close to pre-nuptial contracts excluding the spouse from property, though children are usually not affected by prenuptials, whereas they certainly were by morganatical marriage. Morganatic