Feudal Glossary

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Feudal Glossary

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Note: We have borrowed from definitions provided by multiple sources to create this reference tool. Special thanks, as always, to Christopher Jessel as well as a number of regional auctioneers, from decades past, whose good work was quite helpful.

Abbey: monastery or nunnery, often with manorial estates attached for income

Accidental services: occasional payments to lord, such as due on death of tenant

Acknowledgement of Free Tenure: there were free as well as copyhold tenants. They merely acknowledged that they held their properties freely of the lord and paid a relief equivalent to their annual rent, instead of having to pay fines on death and transfers like copyhold tenants

Acre: an area that could be ploughed in a day. The modern statute acre is 4840 square yards, or about .4 of a hectare, while the historical acre was more fluid - subject to soil condition and other factors

Adscriptus (adscripticus) glebae: registered with the soil. The status of a colunus who could not leave his holding

Adjunct: a right automatically adjoined to a manor

Admission: this for the formal ceremony of a court baron or customary court at which the steward of the manor, or the lord in person, admitted the heir-at-law, or the devisee under a will, or a surrenderee under a surrender, to the property of which the deceased tenant, or the vendor, as the case might be, was seized at his death or at the death of the surrenderer respectively. As from 1841, admissions could be granted at out of court proceedings also

Admittance: procedure for a new copyholder to take a holding

Advowson: right to present an incumbent to a benefice - the right to appoint a parish rector or priest

Anchorage: right to put down anchor overnight in a port, right for the port owner to charge for that

Ale-conner, Aletaster: an officer appointed to see that the strength and measure of ale and beer were maintained at the approved standards (see assize of bread and beer)

Allod, allodial land: land held without a superior in tenure - often predating the feudal system as such

Amercement: derived from misericordia, this word is applied to the penalty suffered by tenants when they failed to attend the lord's courts. They were said, in the enrolled records of the courts, to be "in mercy," and they had to pay a fine of 2d., 3d., 6d., or such other sums as it was the custom of the manor that they should pay

Ancient demense: manors held by the king in 1086, the villagers of which later successfully asserted the right to special protection and privileges; a qualifying manor is today known as "held in ancient demesne"

Annexure: right that becomes attached toa manor

Annual services: regular payments to lord such as rent

Appendant right: right which may become held with a manor, eg common appendant, advowson appendant

Appropriate (rectory): rectory appropriated by a monastery which put in a vicar as incumbent

Appurtenance: right that appertains to a manor or to land, such as right of way

Arrayer: royal official responsible in later medieval and early modern England for assembling military forces

Assize: sitting, usually of a court (see: Jersey's Assize d'Heritage)

Assize of bread and beer:a grant to the lord of the right to appoint officers to see that the weight and quality of bread, and the measure and strength of beer, conformed to the approved standards. Failure to observe these standards was, by a statute of Henry III, punished by offenders being set in the pillory

Assoin: see essoin

Assurance: transfer of property by substitution

Attainder: the process followed, especially in cases of rebellion and treason, to convict high-ranking persons. The proceedings were undertaken buy Parliament, and, on conviction, the penalty was usually death, and the forfeiture of property by their heirs, who were then said to be "corrupted in blood." This debasement could be removed only by an Act of Parliament, for instance the removal of attainder, in 1660, on a Duke of Norfolk executed in 1572

Attornment: the acknowledgement, usually with nominal payment, of fealty to a new lord at his first court

Bailiff: deputy of a steward. Bailiffs collected the lord's rents, levied his fines and amercements, and effected the distraint and seizure of property on the instructions of the courts

Balk (baulk, meer, slade): space between two strips

Ballastage (ballatage, lastage, lestage): toll for providing ballast

Bare lordship: seigniory which carried no other rights

Baron (court): assembly of the free suitors or freeholders of a manor - one of two traditional manorial courts

Baron (dignity): a deeply ambiguous term depending on the circumstances but, suffice to say, the lowest rank in the peerage - distinct from a feudal barony, which is a form of land holding. A lord of the manor, especially in the 11th and 12th centuries, defined as tenant-in-chief holding an honour or capital manor in return for military service directly of the crown. Later a peer called to parliament by a writ of summons. Derived from Latin "baro."

Baronet: a hereditary knighthood

Barony: sometimes synonym for honour - a "land barony"

Bastard feudalism: later medieval version of the feudal system in which the lord rewarded his vassal with a money payment rather than a grant of land

Beastgate: holding of grazing land in common

Bend: broad diagonal line in heraldry

Benefice: position of a clergyman in a parish (or other post) understood as property. On the Continent, a distinct type of tenure

Black rent: rent payable in pepper

Boldon Book: compiled in 1183 for the Bishop of Durham

Bookland: Anglo-Saxon tenure by charter - a physical document to prove ownership versus oral tradition

Bondsman: unfree tenant bound usually to the soil, sometimes to a lord

Bordar: frequently mentioned int he Domesday survey. They were tenants who had a cottage and a small parcel of land. They had a less servile state than villeins, and Jacob (New Law of Copyholds, 1739) says that they had a feudal obligation to supply the lord with eggs and poultry

Borough English: this was a custom of descent under which, on the death of the father intestate, the youngest son succeeded to the copyhold properties of which the father died seized, instead of the eldest son, as under the Norman custom of primogeniture. This custom prevailed in many manors in Essex and Suffolk. Two theories are advanced as to the origin of this custom: one was that as, at the father's death, the youngest son might be an infant and the elder sons already advanced in life and it was only fair that he should have the home and heath to live there with his widowed mother. The other theory is connected with droit de seigneur or jus primae noctis, the suggestion being that the youngest son was more likely to be legitimate than the eldest

Bote: a profit, usually of wood

Bovate: same as yardland

Breviate: a 13th-century summary of Domesday Book, usually containing only the names of the landholder and his tenant (if any) for each manor, and its assessment to the Danegeld in terms of a carucate, hide or sulong

Burgage: form of socage found in towns

Bushelage: a toll by reference to corn weighted by the bushel

Byzantine:relating to the Byzantine (earlier the Eastern Romona) Empire ruled from Byzantium (Istanbul)

Cadet line: junior branch of a family; eg, derived from a second son

Canon law: law of the medieval Catholic Church

Capital manor: one held direct of the king with no mesne lord betwixt

Carolingian: relating to the Empire ruled by Charlemagne and his successors

Carolingian renaissance: intellectual and cultural revival of the Carolingian period

Carucate: a land measure frequently met with in the Domesday survey. Jacob's Law Dictionary gives two definitions 'as great a portion of land as may be tilled in a year and a day by one plough," and "a hundred acres"

Carriage: a toll for carrying

Castle guard: a type of military tenure

Cattlegate: holding of grazing land in common

Ceorl (churl):Anglo-Saxon free commoner

Champion (coronation): duty performed at the coronation; a service held in grand serjeanty through ownership of the Manor of Scrivelsby

Chancery: royal secretariat of late Anglo-Saxon and subsequent medieval kings

Charter: documentary grant now issued by the Privy Council

Chase: rights analogous to forest held by a subject and without forest court

Chattel: personal property. Includes goods, debts, leases

Chausses: legging made of chainmail

Cheminage: toll of way

Chief lord: the lord above the holder of the land or manor

Chief point: a location in the upper third of a shield of heraldry

Chief rent: rent due to a tenurial superior

Circuit: a group of three to six counties surveyed by one set of commissioners in the Domesday Inquest

Civil law: Roman law as understood in England

Close: cultivated enclosed piece of land usually held in severalty (individually)

Closed manor or village: under tight landowner control

Coats armour, coats of arms: insignia in heraldry, relating to a specific family or branch of a family, norne n shields or standards

Colibert: type of bondsman

Colonus: Roman tenant farmer bound to the land

Commendation: surrender of allod to new lord and taking it back in fee (in exchange for protection); the act by which a vassal acknowledged the superiority of his lord in Anglo-Saxon times; the equivalent of fealty in Norman times

Commissioners: groups of barons and royal officials sent to survey the circuits and to check the returns made by manorial officials and the juries of each hundred or wapentake

Common: the word indicates sharing but it's application may be used in many different ways. "That soil whereof the Use is common to this or that Town or Lordship," or a profit that a man has in the land of another person, usually in common with others

Common calling: services to be provided (if available) to anyone who could pay

Common calling: trade whose benefits must be made available to anyone able and willing to pay

Common field: area of agricultural system organized into strips, held distinctly by local residents, but managed as a larger whole

Common land: land subject to rights of common (for the purposes of the Commons Registration Act 1965 also includes waste of the manor)

Common Land Act: an Act of Parliament, 1965, under which all those with an interest in common land, mainly lords, should register their interests

Common law: law of whole community of England, system practiced in the English courts, as contrasted with custom, equity, statute, cannon law and civil law

Common right: right automatically attached to a land holding, such as common appendant

Commonable: land subject to mutual arrangements similar to rights of common but terminable on any strip at the will of the owner of that strip. Also right held by copyholder over lord's land. Also beast through which right of pasture may be exercised. Sometimes incorrectly used as synonym for common

Commons, House of: assembly of representatives of communities of the realm

Commot: a Welsh landholding, a division of a camtrefi (hundred), implying a superiority, but less institutionalized than those manors or lordships along the southern coast of Wales which were occupied by the Normans at an early date

Commutation: settlement of rights for a fixed money payment

Compensation agreement or deed: these were the names given to the documents entered into voluntarily between lords and tenants after 31st December, 1925, which had the same effect as the old enfranchisement deeds. They were the tenant's evidence that all manorial dues had been paid and that the properties were freehold and entirely clear of the old incidents of copyhold tenure

Compoti: accounts

Consanguinity: close family relationship forming the "forbidden degrees" within which marriage was forbidden without special permission from the Pope

Constable: officer appointed to keep the peace, sometimes of a manorial court or parish

Conversion: turning of one right or status into another, as of allod into fee or copyhold into leasehold

Conveyance: assurance of land (usually freehold) or other rights

Coparcener: meaning a joint-heir

Copyhold: manorial land held by copy of court roll. As the name suggests, this tenure was the holding of a property by "copy of Court Roll," the entry in the court rolls of the admission of the new tenant "by the rod at the will of the lord according to the custom of the manor." The copy of the court roll handed to the tenant by the steward was his only evidence of admission. A steward's copy admission to copyhold property was equivalent to a conveyance of freehold property

Copyhold, pure: land held at the will of the lord according to the custom of the manor

Corn rent: type of payment to a church

Corporeal hereditament: land

Corporal services: service due to lord by work in person

Corporation: individual or body of persons with existence either perpetual or outlasting any specific individual

Corporeal: tangible

Cotise: a narrow diagonal line in heraldry

Cottar: type of bondsman, cottager; typically holding four acres or less within a manor

Count: official of Roman Empire, companion of the emperor, later often an independent feudal aristocrat

Counter: The name given to two prisons in the City of London, Wood Street Counter & Poultry Counter

Counties of the Empire: provinces of the Carolingian Empire, usually larger than man English counties

County: on Continent, area of jurisdiction of count. In England, a shire

Court: assembly to advise a lord, make regulations and determine disputes

Court books: books in which the court proceedings were enrolled. They superseded the original parchment rolls, in most manors, early in the seventeenth century

Court baron: this court dealt with land disputes and laws regarding property specifically for the use of the free tenants of the manor

Court leet: this court dealt with the more serious offences and crimes committed within its jurisdiction such as treason and murder. Working on the same principal as our modern magistrates court it held hearings on all cases (the more serious being delivered to the assizes after the first hearing)( and administering punishments and fines for minor offences

Court rolls: rolls made of parchment "membranes," thonged together, on which the proceedings of the courts were inscribed. The use of these rolls occasionally lasted well into the eighteenth century

Covenant: formal legal agreement usually by deed

Crucks: curved vertical roof-timbers joining at the ridge of a roof

Curia Regis: a Royal Court; the royal household in its capacity as the administrative and especially judicial machinery of Anglo-Norman central government

Custom: law of uncertain and usually ancient origin; a payment of like origin

Customary court: the copyholder's court where tenants holding property by "copy of the court roll" attended their business. The court also disposed of the civil suits of the villeins

Customary freehold: land held according to the custom of the manor but not at the will of the lord

Customary land: land held by customary right, includes pure copyhold and customary freehold

Custumal: record of customary payments and services (may incidentally record customary rights). This is the name given to the list of the customs of the manor compiled from time to time by the steward. Some of them are enrolled in the court records as having been produced at a customary court and approved by the Homage as being a fair statement of the customs. Sometimes the list was in a separate document, many of which have been lost or sent for salvage during the first and second world wars
Danegeld: a tax or tribute of 1s. 0d. and later 2sx. 0d. on every hide of land, imposed to pay off the Danes when they invaded England in the time of Ethelred. After having been released by Edward the Confessor it was reimposed by William the Conqueror

Danelaw: East Anglia, the East, North Midland, Yorkshire, Cheshire, and Lancashire: the areas settled by Danes or Norsemen and under Danish law rather than the laws of Wessex or Mercia

Deed: formal legal document (formerly sealed)

Demesne: land under direct control of the lord. Derived from the Latin dominus, this term described all the land, including commons and wastes, which the lord kept in hand for his own occupation and for agricultural purposes or sport.

Demise: grant of a lease

Deodand: prerogative or franchise right to chattel which has caused an unlawful human death. A custom under which any inanimate object which caused the death of a tenant of a lord of any manor was, upon being found guilty, declared to be forfeited to the lord of the manor in which the death occurred. No lord enjoyed this "royalty" unless he had a specific grant from the King

Derelict: items (often part of a wrecked vessel) which come to shore

Dignity: incorporeal hereditament of status, as peerage or feudal dignity

Dikereeve, dykereeve: an officer appointed in a manorial court to supervise and be responsible for the maintenance of dykes and rains in fenny country

Disseizin: the dispossession of a tenant from his lands by another; to seize or deprive a tenant of his lands by another tenant

Dissolution: of the monasteries under Henry VIII; the abolition of Roman Catholicism and taking of Church land by the Crown in England

Distrain: right of tenurial superior to take and sell chattels on a holding to recover sums due

Dole: from a Saxon word meaning a part; if a meadow was divided into several shares, it was called a dole-meadow

Domesday Survey or Inquest: this was the survey carried out in 1086 by William the Conqueror which gave the names, location and extent of lands held by all his tenants-in-chief so that he could assess the number of inhabitants of the local estate providing historians with a detailed picture of social and economic conditions in feudal England

Dominium directum: ownership by superior lord

Dominium utile: ownership by person in possession (actual or notional)

Dower: see freebench

Due: a money payment owed to a person

Earl: prominent nobleman, English counterpart to count

Earldom: the territory administered by an earl, normally comprising several counties, often previously ancient kingdom, eg Mercia, Northumbria or Wessex

Easement: servitude which does not involve taking produce to servient tenement

Ejectment: procedure based on law of trespass and lease (often fictional) for recovery of land

Enclosure: land surrounded by a physical limit such as a hedge

Enfranchise: to free. Used originally of slaves, later bondsmen, then of copyholds, now of long leases

Enfranchisement: process of copyhold becoming freehold

Engrailed: with an indented edge in heraldry

Enjoyment: right to occupy land or take its fruits or revenues

Entail: means of restricting ownership of land to members of a family, usually in the senior male line

Entry fine: payment by copyholder (or lessee) on taking over a holding

Eorl: Anglo-Saxon aristocrat, predecessor to "earl"

Equity: system of law developed by chancellors to supplement the common law

Escallop: scallop-shell ornament in heraldry

Escheat: land coming back to chief lord

Escheator: a royal official administering the lands of any tenant-in-chief which were in royal custody because he was a minor

Essoin or essoign: excuse for not attending court. To make essoign was to justify the tenant's absence from the court by reason of sickness or other sufficient excuse, thus avoiding his being amerced

Estate (landed): collection of lands, usually geographically contiguous though not necessarily tenurially associated

Estreat: an exact copy

Estover: the common right to take wood from the land of another in reasonable amounts

Estray: franchise of right to unclaimed straying beasts. Any beast that is not wild, found within a lordship and is not owned. It is to be cried and proclaimed at the next two market towns, on two market days, and if not claimed within a year and a day it belongs to the lord of the liberty (Jacob)

Exception: right or land not included in grant

Exchequer: financial accounting department of Anglo-Norman central government from Henry I's reign

Exchequer Domesday: the final summary of the results of the Domesday Inquest, compiled at Winchester probably under the direction of Samson, later Bishop of Worcester, probably in 1086-1087

Exemplification: an official copy or extract by royal officials of another document

Extent: survey of manor
Fair: occasional gatherings, often once a year, for buying and selling

Faldage: see foldage

Farm: a lease, hence the land comprised in it, hence agricultural land

Fealty: duty of being faithful owed to a tenurial superior; an oath of loyalty sworn by a vassal to his lord after the lord accepted the vassal's homage

Fee: return for services, once in land, now in money. Estate held by grant of a superior lord, for which rents were paid or services performed. see fief

Fee farm: fee granted for service of a substantial money rent

Felon's Goods: the goods of felons and fugitives were forfeit to the King, who could grant the right to seize such goods to lords of the manor if they so chose

Feoffee: one to whom the possession of property has been granted by a lord, in return for rents or services

Feoffment: grant of land in fee

Feorm: Anglo-Saxon rent, usually as food

Ferry: franchise of monopoly of carrying passengers across a waterway

Feudum: fief or fee

Feudal (feodal): seventeenth-century term for the system of grant of land for service and fealty which had been current in previous centuries

Feudalism, feudal system: nineteenth-century term for the alleged medieval system of tenure

Fief: fee, land held in return for service of fealty. It is derived from the Germanic word meaning cattle or property. A manor (or manors) granted to a vassal by his lord by means of enfeoffment to be held in return for feudal service

Field: open area used for growing crops, later any agricultural enclosure

Fine (penalty): action of covenant, usually collusive as in breaking an entail or recording exchange or compromise. These were either arbitrary or certain. The former were based on not more than two years' improved value of the land after deducting quitrents; the latter was certain, such as 6d. or 8d. for the admission to each house, or for every acre of land

Fine (premium): fixed sum payable on entry to inferior tenement

Fine (proceeding): action of covenant, usually collusive as in breaking an entail or recording exchange or compromise

Flotsam: items of wreck which float ashore

Foldage, liberty of: a privilege reserved to a lord of setting up folds for his and his tenant's sheep in order to manure the land

Folio: a sheet of parchment, folded in two or four before being sewn into a gathering

Folkland: Anglo-Saxon tenure for various ancient dues to the king

Foreshore: and between high and low watermark of the tide

Forest: area under jurisdiction of forest court which limited hunting and certain other exploitation to the Crown

Franchise: grant of prerogative in hands of subject

Frankalmoign: tenure of Church lands for uncertain ecclesiastical services (prayer & services for the lord)

Franklin: a freeman or yeoman in later medieval England

Frankpledge: system of mutual responsibility of members of a tithing

Free: exempt

Freebench: right of copyholder's window to enjoy part of the holding. The widow usually took a third interest for her life as a common law, but it depended upon the custom in each particular manor. In some manors she received only a fourth part; in others she took the whole for her life

Freehold: legal estate held by a free man, hence free tenement

Freeman: before the Norman Conquest, a man who could transfer himself and his land from one lord to another by commendation: after the Norman Conquest, a man holding lands within a manor in return for rent and very light services, unlike the villager who owed regular labour service son the demesne, with access to the protection of the royal courts

Free fishery: several fishery, free from rights of the public

Free warren: franchise of right to take beasts of warren on a holder's own land without royal consent. Known also as the privilege of keeping "hares and conies, partridges and pheasants" on open land, granted by prescription or grant from the King. This was a valued privilege in the Middle Ages, when conies (rabbits) supplied fresh meat in winter when no other was available

Fundus (Roman): landed estate under Roman Empire

Fundus (sea): bed below low watermark of tides
Gathering: a group of folios sewn together before binding

Gavelkind: the custom of inheritance in equal shares by all the sons in a family when the father died intestate. Jacob says that this was the custom in Saxon times, and was retained in Kent because the Kentish men were undefeated by the Conqueror, who imposed the rule of primogeniture over most of the country

Gonfalon: banner or standard

Gothic Revival: the period of fashionable building in revival gothic style, mainly in the 19th century

Grand sergeanty: form of military tenure for highly honourable service to the king, typically at the coronation

Grant: creation of new estate or interest in land

Gross, in: right separate from land or manor

Gules: red in heraldry
Hall: place of residence of Anglo-Saxon lord

Hauberk: knee-length tunic made of chainmail

Hayward: officer responsible for hedges. His duty was "to look to the field and to impound cattle that do trespass herein; to inspect and see that no pound breaches be made, and if any be, to present them at the leet." (Jacob's Law Dictionary)

Heir: person ascertained on death of a holder of real property as entitled to succeed

Heraldry: early system of personal identification of knights by means of insignia on shields or standards in a largely illiterate society; now a well-defined social and legal tradition

Hereditament: property which passed to an heir, real property

Heriot: item (usually the best beast) due on death (usually of copyholder) to lord, either heriot service or heriot custom. Said to be derived from (here, an army, and geat), provision. It appears to have been, originally, a tribute to the lord of the horse and habiliments of the deceased tenant, in order that the military apparatus might be continued to be used for the purposes of national defense by each succeeding tenant. It gradually became commuted for a money payment. In many manors it was the custom for the best beast to be taken; in other, the only beast, if but one, or if the tenant had no beast, a chattel or sum certain

Hide: area of arable land with associated pasture sufficient for a substantial Anglo-Saxon family. Origianlly is skewed widely from 40 to 1000 acres. In Domesday a fiscal unit on which Danegeld was levied, and generally assumed to be 120 acres

Highway: public right of way for all subjects of the King

High justice: power to inflict death penalty; "pit & gallows"

Hog-reeve: an officer appointed at court leet to enforce the manorial customs regulating the time sand places during which hogs were allowed to run freely on the land. He had to ensure that hogs were ringed, so that they could not root in the soil and he could impound them, if necessary, and fin the owners

Holding: land occupied as a unit usually from one lord

Homage (ceremony): placing of hands between those of the lord and agreeing to be his 'man'

Homage (tenants): unfree tenants, subsequently copyholders of a manor, collectively. A jury in a court baron, consisting of tenants that did homage to the lord of the fee. They enquired and made presentment of defaults and deaths of tenants, admissions and surrenders in the lord's court

Honour: group of manors which devolve together

Housecarl: a member of an elite guards infantry unit serving a king or earl in Anglo-Saxon England, a professional soldier who usually fought on foot rather than mounted

Hundred: 100 hides, a subdivision of a shire. Originally part of a county containing a hundred families, or which supplied the king with a hundred able men for his wars. This division was said to have been first ordained by Alfred the Great in the ninth century. As a judicial unit the name is not referred to in Anglo-Saxon laws until the tenth century, but it is fairly probable that the division existed before this time
Impropriate: an appropriated rectory which after the Dissolution passed into lay hands

Incident: manorial rights or dues; the payments and services to be rendered by a vassal to his lord in addition to regular rent and feudal service: these usually included an inheritance tax (relief) and a death duty (heriot)

Inclosure: land (usually formerly common or commonable) held severally and able to be enclosed

Incorporeal hereditaments: intangible property including manors, franchises, servitudes, etc

Incumbent: clergyman admitted to a benefice

Incumbrance: burden on property, such as charge or easement

Infangenthef: the power of a lord to inflict capital punishment upon his tenants
Jetsam: items thrown from a vessel in danger of sinking which come to land naturally

Jurisdiction: legal power, typically exercised through a court
Keep: central tower of a Norman castle

Keyage (Quayage): toll for using a quay

Knight service: simplest form of uncertain military tenure

Knight's fee: the holding of one knight in fee; the service by which a fief or estate owed one fully equipped knight for forty days each year to the lord of the manor or the king
Lagan (ligan, ligam): items thrown out of a vessel to lighten it

Land: in general, this is self-explanatory but the term is often widened to include rights associated with land or incorporeal hereditaments

Land (Anglo-Saxon): the English precursor to manors or landed estates

Lease: contract for possession of a holding for a defined period of time, now a legal estate

Leat: artificial watercourse to take water to the top of a mill-wheel

Leaze: undefined area of or rights of property in or common rights over a field

Leet: local public court for a vill or tithing

Legal manor: manor which retains full legal status including two dependent freeholder to serve as suitors at the court baron

Legal memory: the origin of rights arising since 1189 usually had to be specifically proven by grant. A lawful origin was presumed for those shown to be older

Letters patent: royal letters conferring a privilege on an individual or corporate body, sent open with a visible seal

Liberty: private jurisdiction, free from supervision by sheriff

Lineage: authenticated genealogy or pedigree

Lion Rampant: a lion standing on its hind-quarters with its front legs in the air, in heraldry

Little Domesday: the final circuit return for East Anglia (Essex, Norfolk, Suffolk), never summarized for inclusion in the Exchequer Domesday

Livery and maintenance: arrangement in late Middle Ages for a powerful man to protect from the law those who served him and wore his uniform

Livery of seisin: ceremony whereby seisin was handed over on grant

Loadage: toll for loading

Lord: like "baron," a very ambiguous term with different definitions depending on the situation. For our use here, a feudal superior of a vassal; always a manorial lord. However, this is also the label for modern day peers

Lordship: collection of rights belonging to a lord, often a synonym for manor; the mutual loyalty and support joining lord and vassal
Mail: flexible armour made of interlocking iron rings

Manor: a landed estate, usually comprising a demesne and lands held by villagers, bordars or cottagers and sometimes also freemen, Frenchmen, riding men etc, which could vary in size from part of one village to several villages over a wide area; power over men (and women), ranging from civil to criminal jurisdiction; an estate in land giving authority and prestige; a land title giving superiority and gentility

Manorial right: right connected with manor by custom, such as revenues or minerals

Mansion: great house, typically focus of a landed estate

March: county or military district on border of a royal territory with defense needs

Margrave: count with responsibility for a march, often with jurisdiction over other border counts

Market: concourse of buyers and sellers typically on defined day of the week. Franchise of excluding right to authorize it

Marquess: English peerage introduced as equivalent to margrave but without functional responsibilities

Meer: balk

Merchet: sum payable to lord for permission to marry, usually by villeins for daughters to marry out of the manor. The right of a lord to inflict a fine on a tenant if his daughter married a man living out of the manor, because the lord lost her services at harvest and other times. It has been connected with droit de seigneur, the tenant paying a fine in consideration of the lord foregoing his rights on the marriage night (Hutchinson's History of Cumberland and Westmorland, Glossary)

Mesne tenant: the vassal of a tenant-in-chief, may be a lord or commoner

Messuage: a dwelling house with outbuildings and land attached

Metage: toll by reference to items measured

Meter or Metter: an officer appointed at a manorial court to ensure the correct weight of coal sold within the manor

Mill: building designed to grind corn

Minerals: substance naturally in the soil which can be taken out for profit

Minster: originally a monastery but by late Angl0-Saxon times often simply a large and important church

Missus Dominicus:a minster of the Carolingian Empire

Modus rent: church payment originated as substituted for another

Moiety: a half, likely of an estate

Murage: toll for cost of repairing walls
Nasal: metal nose-piece attached to a helmet

Native: peasant, hence bondsman

Nudum dominium (dominicum): bare lordship without direct rights over the land itself (most manors today)
Open field: area of strips, usually commonable but sometimes common; the major divisions, normally two or three, of the cultivated arable area of a medieval village outside the Highland Zone of England and Wales, in which one field each year in succession was left in rotation-fallow, the other one or two being communally ploughed and sown with winter and spring grains

Open manor or village: where control was weak because the tenants had free right s or there were many lords and no central control

Or: gold or yellow in heraldry

Outfangenthef: power to inflict capital punishment within the manor on non-tenants without recourse to Royal justice

Oyer and terminer: "a commission directed to the Judges and other Gentlemen of the County to which issued, by virtue of which they have power to hear and determine Treasons and all manner of Felonies and Trespasses." (Jacob) These powers were only very exceptionally granted to lords of manors; special commissions could be appointed to enquire of oppressions of Under-Sheriffs, Bailiffs, ets
Palatine: territory or honour of special liberties; English type of march

Palisade: fence of pointed stakes firmly fixed in the ground; a primitive wooden fortification commonly employed by Anglo-Saxon and, later, Norman rulers employing motte & bailey tactic

Pannage: right of common of grazing pigs in wood. The food on which hogs lived in the woods, especially beech mast and acorns. Also used for the money collected by the King's officers in royal forests for the feeding of hogs

Parcel: defined tenement or portion of tenement, hence land comprise din a grant or assurance

Parish: area of local church jurisdiction, adapted in the nineteenth century to secular local government

Park: franchise with enclosed area of land held by lord for private hunting of deer

Particulars: legal description of property, usually in sale contract

Passage (peage, payage): toll of charging persons passing over land

Pasture: profit of taking grass through the mouths of beasts. The right to graze "commonable" animals, ie, horses, oxen, cows and sheep on land held in common, which did not extend to goats, hogs and geese

Pavage: toll to recover cost of paving a way

Pedage: toll of charging persons passing on foot

Perambulation: this is the name given to the old custom of beating the bounds of the manor, conducted on the same lines a beating the bounds of a parish. It was a valuable means of detecting and preventing encroachments by the lord or tenant of adjoining manors. The steward sometimes recorded the perambulation in the court rolls as having taken place on the same day s a court was held, or he record it in a separate document which he kept with other manorial records

Personal: right which can be enforced against identifiable persons

Personal property: chattels and some intangible assets

Petty sergeanty: form of tenure, usually military, for personal services rendered. (now converted to soccage)

Piccage: toll for right to put posts in the ground to erect a market booth

Pilotage: toll for services of a pilot

Pinder or pindar: official responsible for village pound

Piscary: right of common to take fish from another man's waters

Plain: blank, uncolored space in heraldry

Plough: "there is land for 4 ploughs" means that four ploughs could be worked on the land in proportion to the areas involved. This was a guide in measuring the agricultural use of land

Plough (team): a team of six to twelve oxen, yoked in pairs, pulling a plough; in Domesday, frequently this is eight oxen

Plea de Namio Vetito: "Namio" translated means "to introduce an explanation or fuller statement of something already said," and "vetito" means "not to suffer a thing to take place." The pleas was similar to our "appeal" to higher authority or justice

Pontage: toll for use of a bridge

Portage: toll for carriage of goods

Porterage: toll for employment of a porter

Possession: originally a simple idea (as seisin). Later a right to immediate occupation or use of or income from lands (or other right)

Pound: enclosure for keeping animals found straying

Prerogative: residue of royal rights

Prescriptive right: right originating in exercise over many years, strictly since before legal memory, as distinct from grant

Priory: a monastery or nunnery dependent on an abbey or cathedral

Profit: servitude of taking a substance from the land of another

Proper: natural colors in heraldry

Property: ownership

Property Act: 1922-1925, a series of legislative measures regulating the ownership of land, including manors

Quitclaim: the formal renunciation of a claim

Quitrent: rent payable for being quit of obligation to pay or perform former rents or services

Quota: the number of knights required to serve a lord on behalf of a vassal, especially to serve the king
Real: right than can be enforced against anyone

Real estate: US term for real property

Real property: freehold land and certain incorporeal hereditaments

Reasonable: standard by which behavior or claimed rights is tested. The law will not authorize something held to be unreasonable

Record: legally recognized account admitted without special proof

Rector: incumbent of benefice that was not appropriated

Rectorial manor: either appropriated or impropriate manor held with rectory or manor held by rector

Reeve: official responsible for administration: village reeve or shire reeve (sheriff)

Reformation: the period 1529-59 in which England first rejected the religious authority of the Pope and then changed from Catholic to Protestant doctrines

Regardant (villein): villein appendant and therefore his services could not be transferred in gross

Regulated pasture: pasture subject to scheme of management, where soil belongs to stintholders but minerals belong to the lord

Relief: sum payable by an heir on entry; free tenants, unlike copyhold tenants, paid a relief equivalent to their annual rent instead of paying fines on death and transfer

Remainder: legal terminology meaning the residual interest in an estate or the right of succession to a title

Rent: sum certain payable out of a tenement, normally land. Including rent of assize, rentcharge, chief rent, fee farm rent, quitrent, rent seck

Reputed manor: manor which has ceased to be a legal manor and is one by reputation only. According to the strict legal definition of a manor which had been reduced as to have less than two freeholders - the amount required to conduct a court baron (one judge, one suitor).

Reservation: right (usually servitude) regranted to grantor of tenement

Resiant: a resident

Riding men: Anglo-Saxon free tenants rendering escort duty and messenger service for the lord

Roll: minutes of proceedings in court. Originally kept literally on a rolled-up membrane, the term later applied to bound volumes

Rolls of arms: records of the coats of arms borne by different families, especially those made by an authority in heraldry

Roman law: law devolved under the Roman Empire and later becoming the principal type of system on the Continent, contrasted with common law

Rouncey: often occurs in the Domesday survey. A carthorse (also Rowney & Runcinus)

Royal court: curt held under royal authority, particularly the three common law courts in Westminster Hall of Common Please, King's Bench and Exchequer

Royal demesne: lands held by the Crown either allodially or as freehold

Royal mine: gold and silver ore

Royalty: sum payable for exploitation of a right, as minerals, copyright

Rustic: native
Sable: black in heraldry

Saracenic: relating to the Arabs of Syria or Palestine

Satellites: records preserving copies of parts of the earlier stages of the Domesday Inquest

Scavage (shewage): toll for displaying goods as at a market

Scutage: a tax levied in place of personal military service by vassals – a cash payment

Seal: an individual or corporation's impression on a document instead of a signature

Secondary: a deputy-head, eg Secondary of the Wood Street Countery - the deputy head of a London prison

Seigniory: lordship

Seigniorial right: see manorial right

Seisin: originally like possession, this was a statement of fact. Later refined into a legal status which defined who could take certain types of proceedings to recover land. The right to possession of property; to be seized of - to have possession of

Serf: bondsman; see villein

Sergeant or Serjeant: Jabob describes it as "a word diversely used in our Law, and applied to sundry offices and Callings." Serjeants may be highly qualified legal officers, or, at the other end of the scale, tenants appointed in a manorial court to act as "serjeants to collect the lord's rents" in outlying vills of a manor

Sergeanty: tenure in exchange for services, rather than for rents.

Services: duties performed in return for grant of land, including rentservice

Servitude: right to do (or restrain doing of) something on land of another, comprising easements and profits

Servitude: slavery

Settlement (trust): arrangement for land to be passed down within a family

Settlement (village): locality occupied by permanent inhabitants under a grant

Several: private, often contrasted with common

Several fishery: private fishery in a tidal estuary

Sheriff: royal officer responsible for shire, shire-reeve; principal official administering a shire/county

Sheriff's tourn: view of frankpledge

Shewage: see scavage

Shire: division of England, the share allotted to a town

Slade: balk

Slave: human being held as chattel

Smallholder: see bordar

Socage: tenure for base or agricultural services

Socman or sokeman: a tenant who held by no servile tenure, but commonly paid rent to the lord as a "soke" or sign of freedom (Jacob)

Soc and Sac: similar to the French oyer and terminer, to hear and decide in OE, usually in the court of the local lord

Soil, right in: right of common to take minerals

Soscet: type of bondsman

Stallage: toll for right to keep a stall

Stank, stanch a staunch:a weir designed to restrict the flow of a stream

Statute: law made by Parliament or some privileged corporation

Steward: official appointed by lord over manor, president of manor court

Stint: defined proportion of common, a stinted and gated pasture was regulated

Strip: length within open field belonging to one tenant

Subinfeudation: grant of inferior common freehold before 1290

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Feudal Titles

Feudal Titles

Feudal Glossary

definitions which may prove helpful...keep scrolling!

Feudal Titles

Feudal Titles

Feudal Glossary

definitions which may prove helpful...keep scrolling!

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