"Fief" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... confine? To the next realm she stretch'd her sway, For Painture near adjoining lay, A plenteous province, and alluring prey. A Chamber of Dependencies was framed, (As conquerors will never want pretence, When arm'd, to justify the offence) And the whole fief, in right of poetry, she claim'd. The ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol II - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... Nawab Faiz Muhammad Khan of Jhajjar was deeply implicated in this murder, though no proof of it could be found. He died soon after the execution of Shams-ud-din, and was succeeded in his fief by his eldest son, Faiz Ali Khan.[21] This fief was bestowed on the father of the deceased, whose name was Najabat Ali Khan, by Lord Lake, on the termination of the war in 1805, for the aid he had given to the retreating army under ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... he, "your reply is just. But you are ignorant that Belle-Isle is a fief of M. Fouquet's, and the ancient kings gave the right to the seigneurs of Belle-Isle to ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... warfare drove the ceorl, the free tiller of the soil, to seek protection more and more from the thegn beside him. The freeman "commended" himself to a lord who promised aid, and as the price of this shelter he surrendered his freehold to receive it back as a fief laden with conditions of military service. The principle of personal allegiance which was embodied in the very notion of thegnhood, itself tended to widen into a theory of general dependence. From AElfred's day it was assumed that no man could exist without ...
— History of the English People, Volume I (of 8) - Early England, 449-1071; Foreign Kings, 1071-1204; The Charter, 1204-1216 • John Richard Green
... by the three sons of his elder brother Gruffydd—Owain the Red, Llywelyn, and David. For some years they held together, because Henry III. opposed the accession of any of them, claiming the Principality as a lapsed fief under a treaty made with the last prince, David ap Llywelyn. But after a time the king accepted the homage and recognised the rights of the sons of Gruffydd. Being thus freed from direct hostility of the English king, the joint rulers soon quarrelled, and came to open ...
— Mediaeval Wales - Chiefly in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries: Six Popular Lectures • A. G. Little
... will bore the poor wretch to death by quoting his worst lines at him. As for Warner there is no question that he writes even better than before he went to the dogs, and that, to my mind, is proof that he holds his gifts in fief from the ...
— The Gorgeous Isle - A Romance; Scene: Nevis, B.W.I. 1842 • Gertrude Atherton
... Ganelon Who rose and stood before the King, and spake Bold words and haughty:—"Put not faith in fools, Nor me nor others; follow your own rede! Since King Marsile makes offer to become Your man, with hands joined; furthermore will hold Spain as a fief from you; yea, will receive Our law as his law, he who counsel gives Such proffer to reject, cares not a whit What death we die. No counsel take of pride; Let pass the fools and listen to ...
— La Chanson de Roland • Lon Gautier
... them. "Certainly it is not impossible that your Majesty may succeed," he said, "although very problematical; and in case your Majesty does succeed in that which we all desire and are struggling for, Mayenne not only demands the second place in the kingdom for himself, but the fief of some great ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... state of Florence, already quoted more than once, contains a curious aristocratic comment upon the shop-life of illustrious Florentine citizens. See Appendix ii. Even Piero de' Medici refused a Neapolitan fief on the ground that he was ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... faith with Stephen. Such, however, were the difficulties of the English king, that, in spite of his crushing defeat, David reaped the advantages of victory. Peace was made in April, 1139, by the Treaty of Durham, which secured to Prince Henry the earldom of Northumberland, as an English fief. The Scottish border line, which had successively enclosed Strathclyde and part of Cumberland, and the Lothians, now extended to the Tees. David gave Stephen some assistance in 1139, but on the victory of ...
— An Outline of the Relations between England and Scotland (500-1707) • Robert S. Rait
... true sons of their house — grafts of the parent stock. The Gascon peasants looked at them with pride, and murmured that the day would come when they would show the world the mettle of which they were made. Those were stirring times for Gascony — when Gascony was a fief of the English Crown, sorely coveted by the French monarch, but tenaciously held on to by the "Roy Outremer," as the great Edward was called; the King who, as was rumoured, was claiming as his own the whole realm of France. And Gascony, it must be remembered, ...
— In the Days of Chivalry • Evelyn Everett-Green
... ordained her to deliver the government of the realm to Charles of Valois, as His deputy. The words in which she gave utterance to this idea are reported by too many persons strangers one to another for us to doubt her having spoken them. "The King shall hold the kingdom as a fief (en commande); the King of France is the lieutenant of the King of Heaven." These are her own words and she did actually say to the Dauphin: "Make a gift of your realm to the King of Heaven."[2238] But we are bound to admit that at ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... henchman dug at dawn a grave Beneath the hemlocks brown, And to the desert's keeping gave The lord of fief ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... housetops of Roche-Corbon came in sight he had ordered the Sire de Montsoreau to seek a little retirement in his own country, which the young Gauttier did, knowing the ways of the lord. The seneschal put in the place of the said Gauttier the son of the Sire de Jallanges, whose fief was held from Roche-Corbon. He was a young boy named Rene, approaching fourteen years, and he made him a page, awaiting the time when he should be old enough to be an equerry, and gave the command of his men to an old cripple, ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 1 • Honore de Balzac
... does not tell us whether he was punished or rebuked by the Senate for this outrage at the time of its commission. He seems, indeed, to have been afterwards at peace with the church, for we find him ambassador at Rome, and invested with the fief of Val di Marino, in the march of Treviso, and with the title of count, by Lorenzo, Count-bishop of Ceneda. For these facts my authorities are Sanuto, Vettor Sandi,[363] Andrea Navagero,[364] and the account of the siege ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... stile, and title, of Baron Nelson of the Nile, and of Hilborough in the county of Norfolk, with remainders: and the second, that Lord Viscount Nelson had been permitted, by his Majesty's warrant, dated 7th January 1801, to adopt, for himself and heirs, the title of Duke of Bronte, with the fief of the Dutchy annexed thereto; and, also, to receive the Great Cross of the Order of St. Ferdinand and of Merit, all conferred on him by Ferdinand IV. King of ...
— The Life of the Right Honourable Horatio Lord Viscount Nelson, Vol. II (of 2) • James Harrison
... great king, like that of France or England, went to war, he summoned all his crown vassals to attend him, with the number of armed men corresponding to his fief, as it was called, that is, territory which had been granted to each of them. The prince, duke, or earl, in order to obey the summons, called upon all the gentlemen to whom he had given estates, to attend his standard with their followers ...
— Composition-Rhetoric • Stratton D. Brooks
... him all the ocean coast, from Michael Mount to Eure, And Gille, my child, shall be his bride, to bind him fast and sure: Let him but kiss the Christian cross, and sheathe the heathen sword, And hold the lands I cannot keep, a fief from Charles his lord." Forth went the pastors of the Church, the Shepherd's work to do, And wrap the golden fleece around the tiger ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... wife of a knight was often herself a warrior. Fair ladies have donned armour and followed their lords to the Crusades; and often during her lord's absence at the wars in France, or Scotland, or the Holy Land, the wife would defend his fief and castle, and sometimes was called upon to withstand a siege, when some neighbouring lord coveted the fair estates of the absent warrior, and sought to obtain them ...
— English Villages • P. H. Ditchfield
... the purse or the sword, compared to that of the spirit, is poor and contemptible. As to lands, you may have agrarian laws, and equal partition. But a man's intellect is all his own, held direct from God, an inalienable fief. It is the most potent of weapons in the hands of a paladin. If the people comprehend Force in the physical sense, how much more do they reverence the intellectual! Ask Hildebrand, or Luther, or Loyola. They fall prostrate before ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... natural son of Pope Paul III., who figures in Benvenuto Cellini's Life; received in fief from the Papal See various estates, including the dukedom of Parma; he ill requited his father's trust and affection by a life of debauchery and finally suffered ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... sensible of the enormity to give its sanction, he (Hildebrand) overbore the wavering Pope and forced him to bless the enterprise; and, when he had in his turn mounted the Papal throne, he vehemently claimed that his action had made England a fief for ever of the Holy See! Gregory VII and Innocent III are the two greatest and most sincerely religions of the medieval Popes, and they carried the power of the Papacy to a height which excites the amazement of the modern historian. But they were at the same ...
— The War and the Churches • Joseph McCabe
... had also both of us the pleasure of being acquainted with some highly-cultured people, the families of the physician, of the minister, and of the schoolmaster in the neighbouring Protestant village, which was as yet still a fief of the Empire.[25] My friend the tutor was a young man quite out of the common, with an actively inquiring mind; especially fond of making plans for wide-stretching travel, and comprehensive schemes of education. Our intercourse and our life together ...
— Autobiography of Friedrich Froebel • Friedrich Froebel
... words which are the very key to the understanding of the Middle Ages, is often itself wrapt in obscurity. On 'fief' and 'feudal' how much has been disputed. [Footnote: Stubbs, Constitutional History of England, vol. i. p. 251.] 'Morganatic' marriages are recognized by the public law of Germany, but why called 'morganatic' is unsettled still. [Footnote: [There is no mystery ...
— On the Study of Words • Richard C Trench
... he said. "With Robert the rebel, Robert the would-be king, the daring opposer of my sovereign, Gloucester can have naught in common. My liege, as a knight and gentleman, I have done my duty fearlessly, openly; as fearlessly, as openly, as your grace's loyal liegeman, fief, and subject, in the camp and in the court, in victory or defeat, against all manner or ranks of men, be they friends or foes; to my secret heart I am thine, and thine alone. In proof of which submission, my royal liege, lest still in your grace's ...
— The Days of Bruce Vol 1 - A Story from Scottish History • Grace Aguilar
... Modena's bold land. And his redoubted valour lend such light, The willing people call him to command. Sixth of the name, his Azo rears upright The church's banner in his noble hand: Fair Adria's fief to him in dower shall bring The child of second Charles, ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... of the Bakufu party was a man of iron and fertile resources, Ii Kamon No Kami. He was the Daimio of Hikone, a castled town and fief on Lake Biwa, in Mino. His revenue was small, being only three hundred and fifty thousand koku. But in position and power none in the empire could rival him. He was the head of the Fudai Daimios. His family was called the Dodai or foundation-stone of the power of the Tokugawa dynasty. ...
— The Constitutional Development of Japan 1863-1881 • Toyokichi Iyenaga
... advantage to parcel them out among vassals who agreed to accompany him to war, attend his court, guard his castle upon occasion, and assist him when he was put to any unusually great expense. Land granted upon the terms mentioned was said to be "infeudated" and was called a fief. One who held a fief might himself become a lord by granting a portion of his fief to a vassal upon terms similar to those upon which he held of his lord or suzerain.[66] This was called subinfeudation, and the vassal of a vassal was called ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson
... hereditaments; corporeal hereditaments, incorporeal hereditaments; acres; ground &c (earth) 342; acquest^, messuage, toft^. territory, state, kingdom, principality, realm, empire, protectorate, sphere of influence. manor, honor, domain, demesne; farm, plantation, hacienda; allodium &c (free) 748 [Obs.]; fief, fieff^, feoff^, feud, zemindary^, dependency; arado^, merestead^, ranch. free lease-holds, copy lease-holds; folkland^; chattels real; fixtures, plant, heirloom; easement; right of common, right of user. personal ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... despair, to be ready against the bloodthirsty, and yet blood-drunken ruffians who were pouring along the road from smoking Beziers, to do to Carcassonne as they had done there. Pedro, king of Aragon, interfered; he appeared as mediator in the camp of the Crusaders. Carcassonne was held as a fief under him as lord paramount. He pleaded the youth of the viscount, asserted his fidelity to the Church, his abhorrence of the Albigensian heresy; it was no fault of his, he argued, that his subjects had lapsed into error, and he declared that the Viscount had authorised him to place his submission ...
— In Troubadour-Land - A Ramble in Provence and Languedoc • S. Baring-Gould
... cart was brought to the door, drawn by two black horses with long tails and hairy feet, a tram one and a leader. Though the job shook my nerves, I could not refuse to give them a hand down the stair with the coffin, which had a fief-like smell of death and saw-dust; and we got it fairly landed in the cart, among clean straw. I saw the clodhapper of a ploughman aye dighting his een with ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - tailor in Dalkeith • D. M. Moir
... in arms has attacked me, and done his best to slay me or deliver me over to the English. He fell yesterday by my hand at Stirling, and I hereby declare forfeit the land which he held in the county of Lanark, part of which he wrongfully took from Sir William Forbes, and his own fief adjoining. Other broad lands he owns in Ayrshire, but these I will not now touch; but the lands in Lanark, both his own fief and that of the Forbeses, I, as Warden of Scotland, hereby declare forfeit and confiscated, and bestow them upon my good friend, Sir Archie Forbes. Sir John Grahame, ...
— In Freedom's Cause • G. A. Henty
... Successor, not usurper. I am dead. My throne stood empty; he was heir to it. Ay, but who hewed his kingdom from the waste, Cleared, inch by inch, the acres for his sowing, Won back for man that ancient fief o' the Church, His body? Who flung Galen from his seat, And founded the great dynasty of truth In ...
— Artemis to Actaeon and Other Worlds • Edith Wharton
... in his gloomy castle at Rouen—which his great-grandfather, Richard the Fearless, had built nearly a hundred years before—new trouble threatened him, as word came that King Henry of France, the "suzerain," or overlord of Normandy, deeming his authority not sufficiently honored in his Norman fief, had invaded the boy's territories, and with a strong force was besieging the border castle of Tillieres,[H] scarce ...
— Historic Boys - Their Endeavours, Their Achievements, and Their Times • Elbridge Streeter Brooks
... to restore his fief of Ivanhoe," said De Bracy, who, having discharged his part honourably in the tournament, had laid his shield and helmet aside, and again mingled ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... into Castile, from Catalonia. (Instituciones, p. 96.) The twenty-sixth title, part. 4, of Alfonso X.'s code, (Siete Partidas,) treats exclusively of them. (De los Feudos.) The laws 2, 4, 5, are expressly devoted to a brief exposition of the nature of a fief, the ceremonies of investiture, and the reciprocal obligations of lord and vassal. Those of the latter consisted in keeping his lord's counsel, maintaining his interest, and aiding him in war. With all this, there ...
— History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella V1 • William H. Prescott
... him; and he even aided the French on one occasion by a scheme to capture the place and oust the intruders. This—it is a cruel story—was when he summoned its governor, his own half-brother, Sir Pierre Arnaut, to Orthez, under pretense of desiring a visit. Sir Pierre was holding Lourde stoutly in fief for the English prince, and was in considerable doubt about going, for he knew his man and had suspicions; however, "all thynges consydred, he sayd he wolde go, bycause in no wyse he wolde displease the erle." He left the ...
— A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees • Edwin Asa Dix
... time the most powerful state in the north; when the Teutonic knights, the conquerors of Prussia, were compelled to acknowledge its protection; and when not only were Livonia and Courland, the one a component part of the Polish kingdom, and the other a Polish fief, but even the ancient Smolensk and the venerable Kief, the royal seat of Vladimir, and the Russian provinces adjacent to Galicia, all were subjugated by Poland. We speak of this kingdom as it was at the time of its first partition between Russia, ...
— Historical View of the Languages and Literature of the Slavic - Nations • Therese Albertine Louise von Jacob Robinson
... kingdom, cited by Imbert, in his Judicial Practice; all those cited by Monstrelet, in 1459, against the witches of Artois; the decrees of the same parliament, of the 13th of October 1573, against Mary Le Fief, native of Saumur; of the 21st of October 1596, against the Sieur de Beaumont, who pleaded, in his defence, that he had only sought the aid of the devil for the purpose of unbewitching the afflicted and of curing diseases; of the ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... Stephen, in spite of the victory gained for him, found himself obliged to buy peace at a heavy price. He agreed that David's son, Henry, should hold Northumberland, with the exception of the fortresses of Bamborough and of Newcastle, as a fief of the English Crown. David himself was also allowed to keep ...
— A Student's History of England, v. 1 (of 3) - From the earliest times to the Death of King Edward VII • Samuel Rawson Gardiner
... private property, after the death of the owner, fall egalement a tous les jeunes travailleurs. The practical consequences of this system may now be seen in Turkey. There, the principal military fiefs are held in this way. Hence it is, that the Turkish owner of such a fief builds as little as possible. When one of his walls threatens to fall, it is kept standing by means of props. If it falls in fact, the only consequence is that there are fewer rooms in the house, and the ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... Paramara clan of Rajputs who from the 9th to the 13th century, when they were driven out by the Mahommedans, had ruled over Malwa from their capital at Dhar. In 1742 Anand Rao received Dhar as a fief from Baji Rao, the peshwa, the victory of the Mahrattas thus restoring the sovereign power to the family which seven centuries before had been expelled from this very city and country. Towards the close of the 18th and in the early part of the 19th century, the state was ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 3 - "Destructors" to "Diameter" • Various
... Major, 215th Indurgurh [Todd's] Rajputs, now at Lyndhurst, Hampshire, England, this letter is sent to Madhu Singh, Sawant, Risaldar Major [retired] 146th [Dublana] Horse, on his fief which he holds under the Thakore Sahib of Pech at Bukani by the River, near Chiturkaira, Kotah, Rajputana, written in the fifth month of ...
— The Eyes of Asia • Rudyard Kipling
... alliance with the Susianians and Chaldaeans. Susiana was the last country which Assyria had conquered, and could remember the pleasures of independence. Chaldaea, though it had been now for above half a century an Assyrian fief, and had borne the yoke with scarcely a murmur during that period, could never wholly forget its old glories, or the long resistance which it had made before submitting to its northern neighbor. The overtures of the Median monarch seem ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 3. (of 7): Media • George Rawlinson
... Royalty. Great excuses are to be made for this, the last male descendant, whose father in his youth had been an Imperial page, and who had been nursed in the conception that Italy (or at least Lombardy) was a natural fief of Austria, allied by instinct and by interest to the holders of the Alps. Count Serabiglione mixed little with his countrymen,—the statement might be inversed,—but when, perchance, he was among them, he talked willingly of the Tedeschi, and voluntarily declared them to be gross, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... his power, As judge supreme within our Canton here. "Who is the owner of this house?" he asked, With mischief in his thoughts, for well he knew. With prompt decision, thus I answered him: "The Emperor, your grace—my lord and yours, And held by me in fief." On this he answered, "I am the Emperor's vice-regent here, And will not that each peasant churl should build At his own pleasure, bearing him as freely As though he were the master in the land. I shall make bold ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. III • Kuno Francke (Editor-in-Chief)
... gallery at Tappington. The features are handsome, but shrewdish, betraying, as it were, a touch of the old Baron's temperament; but we never could learn that she actually kicked her husband. She brought him a very pretty fortune in chains, watches, and Saracen ear-rings; the barony, being a male fief, reverted ...
— Half-Hours with Great Story-Tellers • Various
... which would have disappeared with their conversion to Christianity. The original Rajput clan may perhaps have lived round the chiefs castle or headquarters and been supported by the produce of his private fief or demesne. The regular Brahman gotras are also few in number, possibly because they were limited by the paucity of eponymous saints of the first rank. The word gotra means a stall or cow-pen, and would thus originally ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India—Volume I (of IV) • R.V. Russell
... western shires, Trust those who baffled Spain; We'll be hardy like our sires. Down, Pope, again! Off, off with sneak and thief! We'll have an honest chief. England is no Popish fief; Free kings shall reign. ...
— Ionica • William Cory (AKA William Johnson)
... at a swinging pace, and we soon reached Sinopoli—new Sinopoli; the older settlement lies at a considerable distance. Midday was past, and the long main street of the town—a former fief of the terrible Ruffo family—stood deserted in the trembling heat. None the less there was sufficient liveliness within the houses; the whole place seemed in a state of jollification. It was Sunday, the orphan explained; the country was ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... the leader; and these estates, as it is said, were not even forfeitable, no, not for felony, as if that were in some sort the necessary consequence of an inheritable estate. So far were they from resembling a fief. But there were other possessions which bore a nearer resemblance to fiefs, at least in their first feeble and infantile state of the tenure, than, those inheritances which were held by an absolute right in the proprietor. The great officers who attended ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... the fair; how often fief and fain * My palming felt the finger ends that bear the varied stain! And tickled pouting breasts that stand firm as pomegranates twain * And bit the apple of her cheek kissed o'er ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 7 • Richard F. Burton
... Duke of Touraine, as a reward, it is said, for the valour he displayed in the battle of Poictiers. The county of Burgundy, generally known as Franche-Comte, was not included in this donation, for it was an imperial fief; and it fell by inheritance in the female line to Margaret, dowager Countess of Flanders, widow of Count Louis II, who was killed at Crecy. The duchy and the county were soon, however, to be re-united, for Philip married Margaret, daughter and heiress of Louis ...
— History of Holland • George Edmundson
... and examine this paper attentively, you will find there precisely the contrary of all you have advanced.' 'Willingly,' replied Alfonso, without hesitating; 'the decision depends on this question—whether the fief were granted under the law of Lombardy, or under the French Law.' The paper being examined, it was found that the Grand Duke's advocate was in the right. 'Yes,' said Alfonso, holding the paper in his hand, 'I am wrong, I have been mistaken.' A discovery so unexpected, and the fear of being ...
— Apologia Pro Vita Sua • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... Yen," he replied, "in a city of a thousand families, or in a secondary fief, [11] he might be charged with the governorship; but I cannot answer for ...
— Chinese Literature • Anonymous
... acclamation to conquer and administer China in 1122, an obscure political worthy from these eastern parts placed his services as adviser and organizer at the command of the new Chou Emperor, in return for which important help he received the fief of Ts'i. Although obscure, this man traced his descent back to the times when (2300 B.C.) his ancestors received fiefs from the most ancient Emperors. From that time down to the year 1122 B.C., and onwards to the events ...
— Ancient China Simplified • Edward Harper Parker
... spoke Charlemagne, "bear this message to Marsile. He must become my vassal and receive holy baptism. Half of Spain shall be his fief; the other half is for Count Roland. If Marsile does not accept these terms I will besiege Saragossa, capture the town, and lead Marsile prisoner to Aix, where he shall die in shame and torment. Take this ...
— Hero-Myths & Legends of the British Race • Maud Isabel Ebbutt
... be provided with arms and ammunition for defence as well as with utensils for cultivation, they adopted the pernicious resolution of introducing such tenures for holding lands as were most favourable to a military establishment. Each tract granted, was considered as a military fief, for which the possessor was to appear in arms, and take the field, when required for the public defence. The grants were in tail male; and, on the termination of the estate, the lands were to revert to the trust, to be re-granted to such persons as ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 1 (of 5) • John Marshall
... question, but belief in it seems to have grown in strength until after the thirteenth century. Leo IX., who was a strong believer in its genuineness, granted in 1054 to the Normans their conquests in Sicily and Calabria, to be held as a fief of the Roman see. (Muratori, Annali d' Italia, tom. vi. pt. ii. p. 245.) It was next used to sustain the papal claim to suzerainty over the island of Corsica. A century later John of Salisbury maintained the right of the pope to dispose "of all islands on which Christ, the Sun of righteousness, ...
— The Discovery of America Vol. 1 (of 2) - with some account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest • John Fiske
... claim to this territory, the indivisibility of which had been guaranteed by solemn treaties; and the Emperor, who seemed disposed to enter upon it as a vacant fief, might be considered as the ninth. Four of these, the Elector of Brandenburg, the Count Palatine of Neuburg, the Count Palatine of Deux Ponts, and the Margrave of Burgau, an Austrian prince, claimed it as a female fief in name of four princesses, sisters of the late duke. Two others, the Elector ...
— The History of the Thirty Years' War • Friedrich Schiller, Translated by Rev. A. J. W. Morrison, M.A.
... liberation, served to increase the wistful pity with which he was regarded. And when, in defiance of all contemporary virtue, and against express pledges, the English carried war into their prisoner's fief, not only France, but all thinking men in Christendom, were roused to indignation against the oppressors, and sympathy with the victim. It was little wonder if he came to bulk somewhat largely in the imagination of the best of those at home. Charles le Boutteillier, when (as the story ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson
... deserted fief in possession for one year, shall be considered as having gained it by prescriptive right, and shall be defended in its possession against the previous owner who has ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 5, November, 1863 • Various
... the French kingdom, the archbishopric of Rheims. The young Count Herbert, driven from his county, commended himself to William. He became his man; he agreed to hold his dominions of him, and to marry one of his daughters. If he died childless, his father-in-law was to take the fief into his own hands. But to unite the old and new dynasties, Herbert's youngest sister Margaret was to marry William's eldest son Robert. If female descent went for anything, it is not clear why Herbert passed by the rights of his two elder sisters, Gersendis, wife of Azo Marquess of ...
— William the Conqueror • E. A. Freeman
... Cleves died a few months before, "leaving all the world his heirs"—to use Henry's own phrase—the Emperor had stepped in, and over-riding the rights of certain German princes had bestowed the fief upon his own nephew, the Archduke Leopold. Now this was an arrangement that did not suit Henry's policy at all, and being then—as the result of a wise husbanding of resources—the most powerful prince ...
— The Historical Nights Entertainment, Second Series • Rafael Sabatini
... had fallen to the Lacies and the De Courcies, had been wholly recovered by the Irish. The Lacies had become extinct. The De Courcies, once Earls of Ulster, had migrated to the south, and were reduced to the petty fief of Kinsale, which they held under the Desmonds. The Celtic chieftains had returned from the mountains to which they had been driven, bringing back with them, more intensely than ever, the Irish habits and traditions. Old men, who were alive in 1533, remembered a time when the Norman ...
— History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. Vol. II. • James Anthony Froude
... this fortress one could formerly see all the surrounding country. It was called the Fox's tower, without any one knowing exactly why; and from this appellation, no doubt, had come the name Renardet, borne by the owners of this fief, which had remained in the same family, it was said, for more than two hundred years. For the Renardets formed part of the upper middle class, all but noble, to be met with so often in the province before ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... Minister of Prussia, he commenced those reforms which the illustrious Hardenberg perfected. For upwards of five centuries the family of Stein have retained their territorial possessions in the valley of the Lahn. Their family castle, at present a ruin, and formerly a fief of the House of Nassau, is now only a picturesque object in the ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... Paris, January 24th, 1732. He was the son of a watchmaker, and learned his father's trade. He invented a new escapement, and was allowed to call himself "Clockmaker to the King"—Louis XV. At twenty-four he married a widow, and took the name of Beaumarchais from a small fief belonging to her. Within a year his wife died. Being a fine musician, he was appointed instructor of the King's daughters; and he was quick to turn to good account the influence thus acquired. In 1764 he made a sudden ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... and long after the earldom was founded his descendants continued to bear on their coat of arms the six horse-shoes indicative of their origin.[19] William also gave the town of Northampton, with the hundred of Fackley, as a fief to Simon St. Liz, in consideration of his providing shoes for his horses.[20] But though the practice of horse-shoeing is said to have been introduced to this country at the time of the Conquest, it is probably of an earlier ...
— Industrial Biography - Iron Workers and Tool Makers • Samuel Smiles
... Italy, and took possession of Apulia. A league formed against them by the Greek and German Emperors and the Pope ended in the utter defeat of the Papal and German army by three thousand Normans, and they afterward received and held Apulia as a Papal fief. In 1060 Robert Guiscard became Duke of Apulia and Calabria, and at last of the whole kingdom of Naples. Sicily was conquered by his brother, Count Roger, who, with a few Northmen, routed vast numbers of the Saracens and completed the ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke
... form of Anversa, Antwerp. All versions that I have seen call Gautier Comte d'Angers or Angiers, the translators, who forgot or were unaware that Antwerp, as part of Flanders, was then a fief of the French crown, apparently taking it for granted that the mention of the latter city was in error and substituting the name of the ancient capital of Anjou on ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... the popes to be no more than the exarchs of the emperor. In the more equitable view of Mosheim, (Institut. Hist. Eccles. p. 264, 265,) they held Rome under the empire as the most honorable species of fief or benefice—premuntur ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... defrauded, and conscious of his inability to rescue the crown from the united forces of the Hungarian partisans of Stephen, and from the Turks, condescended also to send a message to the sultan, offering to hold the crown as his fief and to pay to the Porte the same tribute which John had paid, if the sultan would support his claim. The imperious Turk, knowing that he could depose the baby king at his pleasure, insultingly rejected the ...
— The Empire of Austria; Its Rise and Present Power • John S. C. Abbott
... country, the land was divided and subdivided into lots—some as small as fifty acres—and each proprietor held his share—as their descendants do to this day—by udal right; that is, not as a fief of the Crown, or of any superior lord, but in absolute, inalienable possession, by the same udal right as the kings wore their crowns, to be transmitted, under the same title, to their descendants ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)
... institutions, and to make the descent of land hereditary, instead of being divisible among all the sons of the former owner. Nor need I relate how they won and held the fair provinces of northern France—whether as a fief of the French Crown or not, is an open question. But I should wish you to bear in mind their affinity to the ANGLO-SAXONs, to the Danes, and to the Norwegians, the family of Sea Robbers, whose ravages extended ...
— Landholding In England • Joseph Fisher
... Honourable Jacob Botcher, who had made a trip to Ripton and had cited that very decided earthquake shock of the Pingsquit bill, had been ridiculed for his pains, and had gone away again comforted by communion with a strong man. The Honourable Jacob had felt little shocks in his fief: Mr. Tooting had visited it, sitting with his feet on the tables of hotel waiting-rooms, holding private intercourse with gentlemen who had been disappointed in office. Mr. Tooting had likewise been a sojourner ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... the {148} hands of the Pope's legate (A.D. 1213), and receiving it again at the end of three days as a tributary vassal of the Roman see, caused England to be looked upon for some years as only a fief ...
— A Key to the Knowledge of Church History (Ancient) • John Henry Blunt
... the seven B's," from the houses of Benso, Balbo, Balbiani, Biscaretti, Buschetti, Bertone, and Broglie, which took their origin from it, six of which became notable in their own country and one in France. The Bensos acquired possession of the fief of Santena and of the old fastness of Cavour in the province of Pignerolo. This castle has remained a ruin since it was destroyed by Catinat, but in the last century Charles Emmanuel III. conferred the title ...
— Cavour • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... holds fast this privilege, and that man am I, my brave champion! What you did for your Emperor and his best work, the peace of the country, deserves a rich reward and, thanks to the saints, I have something which will discharge my debt. The Swabian fief of Reichenbach became vacant. It has a strong citadel, from which we command you to maintain the peace of the country and overthrow robber knights. This fief shall be yours. You can enjoy it with your dear wife. It must belong to your children and children's children ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... and the castle of Fosdinovo stand upon a mountain-spur above Sarzana, commanding the valley of the Magra and the plains of Luni. This is an ancient fief of the Malaspina House, and still in the possession of the Marquis ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... mean aspect, and there are scarcely two to be found alike, either in size, shape, color, or materials.—The records of Gournay begin in the reign of Rollo. That prince gave the town, together with the Norman portion of the Pays de Bray, to Eudes[19], a nobleman of his own nation, to be held as a fief of the duchy, under the usual military tenure. In one of the earliest rolls of Norman chieftains[20], the Lord of Gournay is bound, in case of war, to supply the duke with twelve soldiers from among his vassals, and to arm his dependants ...
— Account of a Tour in Normandy, Vol. II. (of 2) • Dawson Turner
... poisoning, secret assassination, or open war, to deprive all the Italian noblemen of their property, in order that he might convert their castles and domains into principalities for his illegitimates. He began with the weakest, and had despatched this little army to eject Malatesta from his fief of Rimini. Faustus and the Devil, riding along the road, perceived upon an eminence contiguous to the papal camp two men, magnificently dressed, engaged in a furious combat. Moved by curiosity, Faustus advanced to the spot; the fiend followed him; ...
— Faustus - his Life, Death, and Doom • Friedrich Maximilian von Klinger
... endeavor to induce the king to resume the province of Pennsylvania as his own. A clause in the charter had reserved this right, which could be exercised on payment of a certain sum of money. The colonists now preferred to be an appanage of the crown rather than a fief of the Penns. Oddly enough, some of the provincial governors were suggesting the like measure concerning other provinces; but from widely different motives. The colonists thought a monarch better than private individuals, as a master; while the ...
— Benjamin Franklin • John Torrey Morse, Jr.
... shall hold the rushing water in check and make dry land of the tide-swept area. Mephistopheles enters readily into his plans. They help the Emperor to win a critical battle, and by way of reward Faust receives a vast tract of swampy sea-shore as his fief. ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... been asserted by Henry as early as 1524; Scotland was only to be included in the peace negotiations of that year as "a fief of the King of England"; it was to be recognised that supremum ejus dominium belonged to Henry, as did the guardianship of James and government of the kingdom during his minority (Sp. Cal., ii., 680). For ...
— Henry VIII. • A. F. Pollard
... hour of noon prayer, and knocked at the door. The doorkeeper opened and said to her, "What dost thou want?" Quoth she, "I am a poor pious woman, whom the time of noon prayer hath overtaken, and fief would I pray in this blessed place." Answered the porter, "O old woman, this is no mosque nor oratory, but the house of Ni'amah son of al Rabi'a." She replied, "I know there is neither cathedral-mosque ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 4 • Richard F. Burton
... who introduced this modified form of the feudal system into Canada, when he constituted, in 1627, the whole of the colony as a fief of the great fur-trading company of the Hundred Associates on the sole condition of its paying fealty and homage to the Crown. It had the right of establishing seigniories as a part of its undertaking to bring four thousand ...
— Lord Elgin • John George Bourinot
... twenty-five. His mother was my sister. She married his father when she was seventeen. He was twenty years older than she, but they were awfully happy. The blood's pure English, although the title's Italian. The fief of the duchy goes with it. They were given to Piers' great-grandfather—he was a diplomat—for services rendered. A recent attempt to dispossess the boy mercifully failed." She looked round about her. "By the way, I thought there were six of you. Piers gave ...
— Jonah and Co. • Dornford Yates
... of a Norman family dating from the crusade of Philippe Auguste, but which had fallen into obscurity by the end of the eighteenth century; he owned a small fief between Caen and Saint-Lo. M. le Chantre de la Chanterie had amassed in the neighborhood of three hundred thousand crowns by supplying the royal armies during the Hanoverian war. He died during the Revolution, but before the Terror. [The Seamy ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe
... landright, very different from the copyhold so frequent in England. Every alienation or sale of landed property must be made in the shape of a feudal conveyance, and the party who acquires it holds thereby an absolute and perfect right of property in the fief, while he discharges the stipulations of the vassal, and, above all, pays the feu-duties. The vassal or tenant of the site of the smallest cottage holds his possession as absolutely as the proprietor, of whose large estate it is ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... organisation, tribe, guild, and religious fraternity, was conceived of under a similitude of it. Feudalism converted the village community, based on a real or assumed consanguinity of its members, into the fief in which the relations of tenant and lord were those of contract, while those of the unfree tenant rested on status. In his Early Law and Custom he pursues much the same theme by an examination of Hindu Law as presenting ...
— Ancient Law - Its Connection to the History of Early Society • Sir Henry James Sumner Maine
... be planted and inhabited within twenty-one years. The political jurisdiction of the area was still under the Virginia government. The laws of the colony were to remain operative, and in effect the grant was "to create a subordinate fief or proprietorship within Virginia." But considerable confusion prevailed over the retroactive recognition of grants, and many landholders sought confirmation of their ownership. "Besides there are many other grants," stated Governor William Berkeley, "in ...
— Mother Earth - Land Grants in Virginia 1607-1699 • W. Stitt Robinson, Jr.
... 'for this is the message I would have you bear to King Marsile. If he agrees to become my vassal, and to receive Holy Baptism, I will give him half of Spain as a fief. The other half will be held by Roland, my nephew. If these terms do not please King Marsile, I will myself besiege Saragossa, and will take him and bind him in chains. Then he shall be brought to Aix, where he shall be put to a shameful death. So take this letter which ...
— The Book of Romance • Various
... advent of the despots. It has been stripped of all its tarsia-work and sculpture. Only here and there a Fe.D., with the cupping-glass of Federigo di Montefeltro, remains to show that Gubbio once became the fairest fief of the Urbino duchy. S. Ubaldo, who gave his name to this duke's son, was the patron of Gubbio, and to him the cathedral is dedicated—one low enormous vault, like a cellar or feudal banqueting hall, ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... as appears but one voice was raised for a more liberal policy. Mr. Y. Kamada maintained that "patriotism in Japan was the outcome of foreign intercourse. Patriotism, that is to say, love of country—not merely of fief—and readiness to sacrifice everything for its sake, was a product of ...
— Evolution Of The Japanese, Social And Psychic • Sidney L. Gulick
... acquaintance with the laws or customs of Scotland, I endeavoured to consider your question upon general principles, and found nothing of much validity that I could oppose to this position: "He who inherits a fief unlimited by his ancestors, inherits the power of limiting it according to his own judgement or opinion." If this be true, you may join ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... William Rous and bequath hem to the Dean and Chapitre of the forseide Chirche Collegiall under condicon that the seid maister John beynge priest shulde have hem for his special edificacon duryng his fief. And after his decees to remayne and to be for ever to the seide Dean and Chapitre as it appereth by endentures thereof made whereof one party leveth with the Dean and Chapitre. That is to say i book quem composuit ffrater Antoninus ...
— Old English Libraries, The Making, Collection, and Use of Books • Ernest A. Savage
... Athenian republic is more striking than any similar contrast which history can supply. It has been truly remarked, that, in estimating mere areas, Attica, containing on its whole surface only seven hundred square miles, shrinks into insignificance if compared with many a baronial fief of the Middle Ages, or many a colonial allotment of modern times. Its antagonist, the Persian empire, comprised the whole of modern Asiatic and much of modern European Turkey, the modern kingdom of Persia, and the countries ...
— The Fifteen Decisive Battles of The World From Marathon to Waterloo • Sir Edward Creasy, M.A.
... King John, in 1213, had made peace with the Pope (who had deposed him) by consenting to hold his kingdom in fief for the Pope and to pay to him an ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume III (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland I • Francis W. Halsey
... no just argument can be deduced for the settlement of this question from the exercise of the rights of sovereignty over the fief of Madawaska and over the ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 3: Martin Van Buren • James D. Richardson
... the kingdom of Naples accorded by his predecessors. Ferdinand was paying somewhat dearly for a simple promise; but on the keeping of this promise the legitimacy of his power wholly depended. For the kingdom of Naples was a fief of the Holy See; and to the pope alone belonged the right of pronouncing on the justice of each competitor's pretensions; the continuance of this investiture was therefore of the highest conceivable importance to Aragon just at the time when Anjou was rising up with an army at her back ...
— The Borgias - Celebrated Crimes • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... of the Northmen is well illustrated by their behavior when called to court to do homage for this new fief. Rollo was directed to place both his hands between those of the king, and take his vow of allegiance; so he submitted with indifferent grace. But when he was told that he must conclude the ceremony by kissing the monarch's foot, he obstinately ...
— Legends of the Middle Ages - Narrated with Special Reference to Literature and Art • H.A. Guerber
... laid all England under an interdict, and incited Philip, king of France, to war, offering him John's kingdom upon the very liberal condition that he go over and take it. The outcome of the matter was that John was compelled to yield to the power of the Pope. He even gave him England as a perpetual fief, and agreed to pay the Papal See the annual sum of ...
— The Revelation Explained • F. Smith
... however, for his own use the revenues! This solemn act bears the date of the year 1478, and is entitled, "Conveyance of Louis the Eleventh to the Virgin of Boulogne, of the right and title of the fief and homage of the county of Boulogne, which is held by the Count of Saint Pol, to render a faithful account before the ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... and at its end Makrisi followed the troubadour to his regranted fief of Vaquieras. This was a chill and brilliant night, swayed by a frozen moon so powerful that no stars showed in the unclouded heavens, and everywhere the bogs were curdled with thin ice. An obdurate wind swept like a knife-blade across a world which even in ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... "or I should rather say the Marchioness of Boscofolto, since the Duke has just bestowed on her the fief of that name, is impatient to make your acquaintance; and since you doubtless remember the saying of the Marquis de Montesquieu, that to know a ruler one must know his confessor and his mistress, you will perhaps be glad to ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... baccalarius was applied to the tenant of a baccalaria (from baccalia, a herd of cows, bacca being a Low Latin variant of vacca), which was presumably at first a grazing farm and was practically the same as a vaselleria, i.e. the fief of a sub-vassal. Just, however, as the character and the size of the baccalaria varied in different ages, so the word baccalarius changed its significance; thus in the 8th century it was applied to ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... kinsman Sigismondo, the tyrant of Rimini, and unable to hold Pesaro against his attack, he sold the city in 1445 for twenty thousand gold florins to Count Francesco Sforza, and the latter gave it as a fief to his brother Alessandro, the husband of a niece of Galeazzo. Sforza was the great condottiere who, after the departure of the Visconti, ascended the throne of Milan as the first duke of his house. While ...
— Lucretia Borgia - According to Original Documents and Correspondence of Her Day • Ferdinand Gregorovius
... the term chief or chieftain (Med. Lat. capitanus, O. Fr. chevetaine) is principally confined to the leader of a clan or tribe. The phrase "in chief" (Med. Lat. in capite) is used in feudal law of the tenant who holds his fief direct from the lord paramount ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... signories of Confolens, Chabanes, Chateaumorant, Lombert, ceded to a captain for a ridiculous price; now it's the fief of Fontaine Milon, of Angers, the fortress of Saint Etienne de Mer Morte acquired by Guillaume Le Ferron for a song; again it's the chateaux of Blaison and of Chemille forfeited to Guillaume de la Jumeliere who ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans
... friend; how kind to all The vassals of this ancient hall And feudal fief! To foes how stern a foe was he! And to the valiant and the ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... remplit alors de terre son sac: "J'ai encore une grace a vous demander, dit-il ensuite a son fief interlocuteur, c'est de m'aider a charger ce sac sur mon epaule." Le prince y consentit, bien qu'impatiente et pret a entrer en colere; mais lorsqu'il voulut soulever le sac plein, il s'ecria: "Je suis fou de vouloir soulever ce sac, il est trop lourd; homme ...
— French Conversation and Composition • Harry Vincent Wann
... was nominally a crown colony, it was still, with New Caledonia, practically a fief of the Hudson's Bay Company. James Douglas was governor. He was assisted in the administration by a council of three, nominated by himself—John Tod, James Cooper, and Roderick Finlayson. In 1856 a colonial legislature was elected and met at Victoria in August ...
— The Cariboo Trail - A Chronicle of the Gold-fields of British Columbia • Agnes C. Laut
... caught a glimpse of another tankette rushing up on his port side. He glanced at it, saw its graceful handcrafting, and knew it for one of the League's own. He could even see the insigne; the mailed heel trampling a stand of wheat; Harolde Dugald, of the neighboring fief. Geoffrey was on coldly polite terms with Dugald—he had no use for the other man's way of treating his serfs—and now he felt a prickle of indignant rage at this attempt to usurp a share of his glory. He saw Dugald's ...
— The Barbarians • John Sentry
... the question: she is a province of the Jacobin empire, and she must make peace or war according to the orders she receives from the Directory of Assassins. In effect and substance, her crown is a fief of Regicide. ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. V. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... same time that Lucrezia withdrew to her convent her brother Gandia was the recipient of further honours at the hands of his fond father. The Pope had raised the fief of Benevento to a dukedom, and as a dukedom conferred it upon his son, to him and to his legitimate heirs for ever. To this he added the valuable lordships of Terracina ...
— The Life of Cesare Borgia • Raphael Sabatini
... realize its importance in the Middle Ages. The castle and the adjacent land were given in the year 1003 by King Robert to his old preceptor, the learned Gerbert, who became known to posterity as Pope Sylvester II. In the eleventh century, Lescure was, therefore, a fief of the Holy See; and in the time of Simon de Montfort the inhabitants were still vassals of the Pope. In the fourteenth century they were frequently at war with the people of Albi, who eventually got the upper hand. Then Sicard, the Baron of Lescure, was so completely humiliated ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... Cambrai, a child at his father's death, is deprived of his inheritance. To make up for this he is promised, later, the first fief that falls vacant, and asserts his claim in a way that brings him into continual trouble,—a story with great opportunities for heroic contrasts and complications. The situation is well chosen; ...
— Epic and Romance - Essays on Medieval Literature • W. P. Ker
... was that all the lands belonged to the king, of whom they were held by the high chiefs in fief; i. e., on condition of rendering him tribute and military service. Each of these district chieftains divided up his territory among an inferior order of petty chiefs, who owed to him the same service and obedience that he ...
— The Hawaiian Islands • The Department of Foreign Affairs
... thy children indeed, who have sold, O golden goddess, the light of thy face for gold? Are they sons indeed of the sons of thy dayspring of hope, Whose lives are in fief of an emperor, whose souls of a Pope? Hide then thine head, O beloved; thy time is done; Thy kingdom is broken in heaven, and blind ...
— Songs before Sunrise • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... gate of the monastery, where the abbot with numerous monks and noblemen, was awaiting the princess. There were always many lay people in the cloister: land stewards, barristers and procurators. Many noblemen, even powerful wlodykas, held in fief from the monastery numerous estates; and these, as "vassals," were glad to pass their time at the court of their "suzerain," where near the main altar it was easy to obtain some gift and many benefits. Therefore the "abbas centum villarum"[27] ...
— The Knights of the Cross • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... which to gratify him I willingly acquiesced), he left at my disposal the rents of a great proportion of his estates, and especially all those, which, having belonged to your mother, reverted to him as a male fief. In this he may have thought that he was acting with extreme generosity, while, in the opinion of all impartial men, he will only be considered as having fulfilled a natural obligation, seeing that, in justice, if not in strict law, ...
— The Black Dwarf • Sir Walter Scott
... all Inheritances of Fiefs descend to the Male Issue only, and not to the Female, who are not admitted to them. And when there happens a Want of Heirs Males in that Line or Branch wherein the Fief is lodged, then the Feudum or Fief returns back to the other Stock or Branch: which was the very Case at that Time. But such Fiefs as thro' a Depravation of the Law, are convey'd down to Women, cannot properly be called Feuda, ...
— Franco-Gallia • Francis Hotoman
... partly coaxing. William had to show what he was made of. A conspiracy was formed against him in the heart of his feudal court, and almost of his family. He had given kindly welcome to his cousin Guy of Burgundy, and had even bestowed on him as a fief the countships of Vernon and Brionne. In 1044 the young duke was at Valognes; when suddenly, at midnight, one of his trustiest servants, Golet, his fool, such as the great lords of the time kept, knocked at the door of his chamber, crying, "Open, open, my lord duke: ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume I. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... it permitted for all indifferently to hunt, clergymen are decharged it, Peasants also. Its confessed also by al that Kings may discharge their subjects the pastime and pleasure of hunting, especially thess who holds their lands in fief immediatly of the King, which he called fiefs royalles, whom he may hinder to hunt in their oune ground, ower which they have ful power otherwise to sel it, woodset it, gift it, or do wt it what I please: the same power have the inferior seigneurs. Lords in giving lands to vassals, ...
— Publications of the Scottish History Society, Vol. 36 • Sir John Lauder
... true to his instinct, the poet lays his scene not in vacuo, but near his own beloved borderland. He found, in Burns' "Antiquities of Westmoreland and Cumberland" mention of a line of Rolands de Vaux, lords of Triermain, a fief of the barony of Gilsland; and this furnished him a name for his hero. He found in Hutchinson's "Excursion to the Lakes" the description of a cluster of rocks in the Vale of St. John's, which looked, at a distance, like a Gothic castle, this supplied him with a ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... German wedge split that army into broken fragments and the Germans were among them, holding dominion with the bayonet and the bullet; and finally, six weeks later, I saw how they behaved when substantially all their country, excluding a strip of seaboard, had been reduced to the state of a conquered fief held and ruled by force ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb
... George Carteret, or de Carteret, cousin and brother-in-law to the Seigneur of S. Owen, a large manor on the western side of the island. This family, distinguished in island history ever since it abandoned its fief of Carteret on the coast of Normandy to follow the fortunes of John Lackland, when the Duchy was confiscated by Philip Augustus, was by far the most powerful in the island. Its only possible rival, the house of Lempriere, of Maufant, had espoused ...
— St George's Cross • H. G. Keene
... had ridden out of Stuttgard with Ebbo had told him that it was no wonder that this had been his reception, for not only was Schlangenwald an old intimate of the Markgraf, but Swabia was claimed as a fief of Wurtemburg, so that Ebbo's direct homage to the Emperor, without the interposition of the Markgraf, had made him ...
— The Dove in the Eagle's Nest • Charlotte M. Yonge |
