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Tenure   Listen
noun
Tenure  n.  
1.
The act or right of holding, as property, especially real estate. "That the tenure of estates might rest on equity, the Indian title to lands was in all cases to be quieted."
2.
(Eng. Law) The manner of holding lands and tenements of a superior. Note: Tenure is inseparable from the idea of property in land, according to the theory of the English law; and this idea of tenure pervades, to a considerable extent, the law of real property in the United States, where the title to land is essentially allodial, and almost all lands are held in fee simple, not of a superior, but the whole right and title to the property being vested in the owner. Tenure, in general, then, is the particular manner of holding real estate, as by exclusive title or ownership, by fee simple, by fee tail, by courtesy, in dower, by copyhold, by lease, at will, etc.
3.
The consideration, condition, or service which the occupier of land gives to his lord or superior for the use of his land.
4.
Manner of holding, in general; as, in absolute governments, men hold their rights by a precarious tenure. "All that seems thine own, Held by the tenure of his will alone."
Tenure by fee alms. (Law) See Frankalmoigne.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Tenure" Quotes from Famous Books



... beginning of things, it will rise to-morrow, for there will come a to-morrow when it will not rise. In like manner, the longest possession of our mercies is no reason for forgetting the precarious tenure on which we ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... What a wonderful dream that is and how true to reality! What numbers of young men there are, and young women too, besides: many other people, who hold their worldly happiness on this tenure, and of course ...
— From Death into Life - or, twenty years of my ministry • William Haslam

... it, and they were given up to the abbot of Whitby, who was about to make an example of them when the dying hermit summoned the abbot and the prisoners to his bedside and granted them their lives and lands. But it was done upon a peculiar tenure: upon Ascension Day at sunrise they were to come to the wood on Eskdale-side, and the abbot's officer was to deliver to each "ten stakes, eleven stout stowers, and eleven yethers, to be cut by you, or some of you, with ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook

... suppose that the mere taking off of a fellow mortal had created this uproar. The tenure of life in Smith's Pocket was vain and uncertain at the best, and as such philosophically accepted, and the blowing out of a brief candle here and there seldom left a permanent shadow with the survivors. In such instances, ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte

... man or one subject to quit-rent cannot assign his tenure of field, house and garden to his wife or daughter, nor can he assign ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1 • Various

... has subjected them to. As observed by John Bell, "The preservation of health and the attainment of long life are objects of desire to every man, no matter in what age or country his lot is cast, nor by what arbitrary tenure he holds his life. They are the wish of the master and the slave, of the illiterate and the learned, of the timid Hindoo and the warlike Arab, of the natives of New Zealand not less than of the inhabitants of New England,—an indispensable condition for the greatest and longest enjoyment of the ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino

... the back seat of the Triumphal Car, it was generally surmised that he had established his claim to the ultimate reversion of the Premiership. That reversion, as I said just now, he attained in June, 1885, and enjoyed till February, 1886—a short tenure of office, put the earnest of better and longer things ...
— Prime Ministers and Some Others - A Book of Reminiscences • George W. E. Russell

... private citizen who had risen from making Governors at Austin to take a prominent part in the making of a President in 1912. At the beginning of the Administration and throughout almost all of President Wilson's tenure of office he was the President's most influential adviser, a sort of super-Minister and Ambassador in general; and his position from the first caused a certain amount of heartburning among the politicians ...
— Woodrow Wilson's Administration and Achievements • Frank B. Lord and James William Bryan

... If we abandon these Macedonian methods for unloosing the Gordian knot of things and keep to the slow and laborious way of gradual induction, then I think it will be clear that all opinions must be held on the most provisional tenure. A vast number of problems will need to be worked out before any can be said to be established with a pretence to finality. And the course which the inductive process is taking supplies one of the chief 'grounds of hope' to those who wish to hold that middle position of which I have been speaking. ...
— The Gospels in the Second Century - An Examination of the Critical Part of a Work - Entitled 'Supernatural Religion' • William Sanday

... as well as people with brains. Besides," here his face and tone became serious, "there's one thing we've both forgotten. This matter of your false name—you can't be married as Bressant, you know: and if the tenure of your property depends, as you said, on preserving the incognito, I have reason to believe that you stand an excellent chance of losing every cent of it, the moment the minister has pronounced ...
— Bressant • Julian Hawthorne

... be than "American" chemistry or "American" physics. [Applause.] Finally, gentlemen, we should a little distrust the selection by Congress of a professor of ethics. [Laughter.] Of course, we should feel no doubt in regard to the tenure of office of the professors being entirely suitable, it being the well-known practice of both branches of Congress to select men solely for fitness, without regard to locality, and to keep them in office as long as they are competent ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various

... The life-tenure of the marriage-contract contributes equally to the *happiness of the conjugal relation*, in the aggregate. There are, no doubt, individual cases of hardship, in which an utter and irremediable incompatibility of temper and character makes married life a burden and a weariness ...
— A Manual of Moral Philosophy • Andrew Preston Peabody

... Fair death shall be my doom, and foul life his. Till when, we'll live as free in this green forest As yonder deer, who roam unfearing treason: Who seem the Aborigines of this place, Or Sherwood theirs by tenure. ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb

... must of necessity owe the secure enjoyment of indispensable outlets for its own productions, to the weight, influence, and the future maritime strength of the Atlantic side of the Union, directed by an indissoluble community of interest as one nation. Any other tenure by which the West can hold this essential advantage, whether derived from its own separate strength or from an apostate and unnatural connection with any foreign power, must ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing

... where I stayed two months: then I went to Thouars in Brittany, where the duke of Tremouille hath his best house. Thouars is looked upon as one of the best manors in all France, not so much for profit (a great extent of land there sometimes affording not much rent), but for greatness of tenure; five hundred gentlemen, it is said, holding their lands from it. Going to wait on the duke, I found him very kind when I told him my country, the late earl of Derby having married his sister. [1] He commanded me to dine with him, and the next time mounted me upon ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 29. August, 1873. • Various

... which all the cultivators are considered as proprietors—at least but few in our Nerbudda territories; and these will almost invariably be found of a caste of Brahmans or a caste of Rajputs, descended from a common ancestor, to whom the estate was originally given in rent-free tenure, or at a quit-rent, by the existing Government for his prayers as a priest, or his services as a soldier. Subsequent Governments, which resumed unceremoniously the estates of others, were deterred from resuming these by a dread of ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman

... overwhelmed with debt—debt for the new quays, debt for the new bridge, debt for the public works of the corporation, which has struggled to improve the city under the incubus of this alien power, contending with debt, want of tenure, and other difficulties, which would all have been avoided if the city had the lands which these Londoners hold in their possession and use as their own pleasure dictates, half the revenues ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin

... divided the domain of their sovereign, as if it were his personal property, and without the consent of parliament, when a court of this colony decided that all such titles were void in law, whether acquired by purchase or under the old quit-rent tenure.[92] ...
— The History of Tasmania, Volume I (of 2) • John West

... Seward, but the best defence in this case is little better than an impeachment. As for Mr. Johnson, he had held the weapon of the most relentless of the 'Parcae' so long that his suddenly clipping the thread of a foreign minister's tenure of office in a fit of jealous anger is not ...
— Memoir of John Lothrop Motley, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... before he had time to turn the corner of the house—and, making that one discovery, might have altered the whole course of events, not in her coming life only, but in the coming lives of others. So do we shape our own destinies, blindfold. So do we hold our poor little tenure of happiness at the capricious mercy of Chance. It is surely a blessed delusion which persuades us that we are the highest product of the great scheme of creation, and sets us doubting whether other planets are inhabited, because other planets ...
— Man and Wife • Wilkie Collins

... so much accepted, that the long tenure of a fief ended by ennobling the commoner. Subsequently, by a sort of compensation which naturally followed, lands on which rent had hitherto been paid became free and noble on passing to the possession of a noble. At last, however, the contrary rule prevailed, which caused the lands ...
— Manners, Custom and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period • Paul Lacroix

... proof, and previous attempts to work out the problem have done little more than demonstrate the fact.[3] It is quite possible that here, or indeed in any province, other forms of estates and of land tenure may have existed beside the predominant villa.[4] The one thing needed is evidence. And in any case the net result appears fairly certain. The bulk of British local government must have been carried on through Roman municipalities, through imperial estates, and still more through ...
— The Romanization of Roman Britain • F. Haverfield

... is precisely on such a point that the judgment of an educated Chinaman will carry most weight. Other internal evidence is not far to seek. Thus in XIII. ss. 1, there is an unmistakable allusion to the ancient system of land-tenure which had already passed away by the time of Mencius, who was anxious to see it revived in a modified form. [30] The only warfare Sun Tzu knows is that carried on between the various feudal princes, in which armored chariots play a large part. Their use seems ...
— The Art of War • Sun Tzu

... may advance, for some time, in this course with apparent profit: these accommodations, by zealous encouragement, may be attained: and still the Peasant or Artisan, their master, be a slave in mind; a slave rendered even more abject by the very tenure under which these possessions are held: and—if they veil from us this fact, or reconcile us to it—they are worse than worthless. The springs of emotion may be relaxed or destroyed within him; he may have little thought of the past, and less interest in the future.—The great end ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth

... the settlement of the estate of which the reader has heard. The settlement was natural enough. It simply entailed the property on the male heir of the family in the second generation. It deprived the eldest son of nothing that would be his in accordance with the usual tenure of English primogeniture. Had he married and become the father of a family, his eldest son would have been the heir. But heretofore there had been no such entails in the Newton family; or, at least, ...
— Ralph the Heir • Anthony Trollope

... do to improve the produce of the land is to abolish all restrictive laws, and to make the general tenure of land such that every piece of land shall fall into the hands of that man who is able to make the most of it. The National Rate Book now suggested is designed to accomplish this end. We will subsequently consider how it might assist public ...
— Speculations from Political Economy • C. B. Clarke

... la tenure la fixite c'est l'astre de vos reves, Que Rory des Collines vit et que les landgrabbers crevent Moi, je suis vieux, mais dans l'ombre je vois clair, Bientot serez-vous maitres de vos bonnes pommes de terre. C'est le brave Biggar, le T.P. O'Connor et les autres Qui ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell

... was held at the same time as the consulship, and on to December, A.D. 101, an unusual length of tenure. H. F. Stobbe, however, makes the trial of Classicus, on which the last date depends, extend from September 99 to July 100 A.D. ...
— The Student's Companion to Latin Authors • George Middleton

... a question with respect to an ancient tenure in Dorsetshire, recorded by Blount, edit. 1679, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 69, February 22, 1851 • Various

... Marriage Question were the 'very hee-haw of nonsense.' They were not the hee-haw; in fact, viewing the host of marriages, they were for discussion; there was no bray about them. He could not feel them to be absurd while Mrs. Burman's tenure of existence barred the ceremony. Anything for a phrase! he murmured of Fenellan's talk; calling him, Dear old boy, to ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... his private property; he was admitted to the table of his former lord; and the apostate Greek blessed the hour of his captivity, since it had been the introduction to a happy and independent state, which he held by the honorable tenure of ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 4 • Various

... Be they of much import? Val. The tenure of them doth but signifie My health, and happy being at ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare

... by Edgar Poe, has rare beauty of thought and expression. John Quincy Adams, sixth President of the United States (1825-29), was a man of culture and of literary tastes. He published his lectures on rhetoric delivered during his tenure of the Boylston Professorship at Harvard in 1806-09; he left a voluminous diary, which has been edited since his death in 1848; and among his experiments in poetry is one of considerable merit, entitled the Wants of Man, an ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers

... rejects decorum as degeneracy, mistakes rusticity for independence, ascertains his courage by leaping over gates and ditches, and founds his triumph on feats of drinking; who holds his estate by a factious tenure, professes himself the blind slave of a party, without knowing the principles that gave it birth, or the motives by which it is actuated, and thinks that all patriotism consists in railing indiscriminately ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett

... extreme republican opinions on the tenure of kings, holding that they might be deposed by ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude

... singular, that while so much is said of the Inca sovereign, so little should be said of the Inca nobility, of their estates, or the tenure by which they held them. Their historian tells us, that they had the best of the lands, wherever they resided, besides the interest which they had in those of the Sun and the Inca, as children of the one, and kinsmen of the ...
— The History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William H. Prescott

... pleaded for Catholic emancipation in parliament, and on the formation of Earl Grey's administration in November 1830, he again became lord-lieutenant of Ireland. The times were changed; the act of emancipation had been passed, and the task of viceroy in his second tenure of office was to resist the agitation for repeal of the union carried on by O'Connell. He felt it his duty now to demand Coercion Acts for the security of the public peace; his popularity was diminished, differences appeared in the cabinet on the difficult subject, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 2, Part 1, Slice 1 • Various

... such a government held their own funds by a precarious tenure, and were to lend to those whose substance was still more precarious, to the natural hardness and austerity of that race of men had additional motives to extortion, and made their terms accordingly. And what were the ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. X. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... Bentley's tenure of office, to erect a suitable building for the books, establishing it by Act of Parliament. But nothing was done, and in the course of nineteen years the collection was four times removed. In 1712 it migrated from the much abused quarters at St. James's ...
— Studies from Court and Cloister • J.M. Stone

... with it for the sake of the seat. There had been many contests, many petitions, many void elections, many members, but, through it all, Sir Henry had kept his seat, if not with permanence, yet with a fixity of tenure next door to permanence. I fancy that with a little management between the parties the borough might at this time have returned a member of each colour quietly; but there were spirits there who did not love political ...
— Autobiography of Anthony Trollope • Anthony Trollope

... hand, an argument to show the undesirableness, for Ireland as well as England, of separation between the countries, and on the other, a proposal for settling the land question by giving to the existing tenants a permanent tenure, at a fixed rent, to be assessed after ...
— Autobiography • John Stuart Mill

... Dr. Cosmo Innes, "the privilege the abbot most valued (and intrinsically the most valuable) was the tenure of all his lands, 'in free regality,' i.e. with sovereign power over his people, and the unlimited emoluments of criminal jurisdiction.... Even after the Reformation had passed over abbot and monk, the lord of regality had ...
— Scottish Cathedrals and Abbeys • Dugald Butler and Herbert Story

... LAW,[60] or that of the tenure of property, first determines what every individual possesses by right, and secures it to him; and what he possesses by wrong, and deprives him of it. But it has a far higher provisory function: it determines what every man should possess, and puts it within his reach on ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin

... the close of the brief tenure of the Coalition, his Majesty held aloof from his Ministers; and it was not till the opening of the Session, on the 11th of November, that an opportunity was presented for acting effectively upon his determination to get rid of them as soon as he could. During the interval that had ...
— Memoirs of the Courts and Cabinets of George the Third - From the Original Family Documents, Volume 1 (of 2) • The Duke of Buckingham and Chandos

... but—well, there's no knowing. I think it very likely this will be the end of Mr Fadge's tenure of office. Rackett, the proprietor, only wants a plausible excuse for making a change. The paper has been going downhill for the last year; I know of two publishing houses who have withdrawn their advertising from it, and who never send their books for review. Everyone foresaw ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing

... within. "I will not believe it; it were against all gratitude! all honor! all heart-truth! No, I will not believe it; and if I did, Hortensia, by all the Gods, I had rather live without love, than hold it on so vile a tenure of deceit. What, treasure up the secrets of your soul from your soul's lord? No! no! I would as soon conceal my devotion from the powers of heaven, as my affections from their rightful master. I, for one, never will believe that all men are ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert

... The tenure of conflicts, the feeble thriving, Are lore of the past. Now the giant peaks May sleep and sleep. Their watch is ended. The beacon towers may crumble and fall. So well have my people defended— So well have they prospered through striving— Today her triumph New England speaks ...
— The New York Times Current History: the European War, February, 1915 • Various

... of apprenticeship, or of fifteen at farthest, full wages could be paid to the enfranchised negro race, to the double advantage of both master and man. This is just; for we now hold the slaves of Louisiana by the same tenure that the State can alone claim them, viz: by the original right of conquest. We have so far conquered them that a proclamation setting them free, coupled with offers of protection, would devastate every ...
— The Black Phalanx - African American soldiers in the War of Independence, the - War of 1812, and the Civil War • Joseph T. Wilson

... dependent on popular favor for their retention of office. But such proposals have no chance of prevailing in a sensible democracy. A democracy is justified in refusing to bestow permanent political power upon individuals, because such permanent tenure of office relaxes oftener than it stimulates the efficiency of the favored individual, and makes him attach excessive importance to mere independence. The official leaders of a democracy should, indeed, hold their offices under conditions which will enable them to act and think independently; but ...
— The Promise Of American Life • Herbert David Croly

... plea, you will understand that no money-lender in London will advance a farthing on such unstable security. Even though I am acting in your interests, I could not take the responsibility of advising any capitalist to advance money on such uncertain tenure." ...
— The O'Ruddy - A Romance • Stephen Crane

... dependents about him—partly in order that he might be near his old friend, Dr. Garden, who was established in the neighbourhood, and whose society and advice were necessary to Mr. Strange's life. That life was, it appeared, held by this suffering gentleman on a precarious tenure. It was ebbing away fast with each passing hour. The servant already spoke of his master in the past tense, describing him to me as a young gentleman not more than five-and-thirty years of age, with a young face, as far as the features and build of it went, but with an expression ...
— Mugby Junction • Charles Dickens

... is of opinion that Domesday-Book was made soon after our ancestors had agreed to tenures, i.e. the feodal system of tenure, for the purpose of ascertaining each man's fee; and he supposes that as soon as the survey was completed, the great landholders of the kingdom were summoned to London and Sarum to do homage to the king for their landed possessions. Now it may be presumed, ...
— John Keble's Parishes • Charlotte M Yonge

... they see them with their own eyes. Such poets and artists never have the fear of "anachronisms" before them. This, indeed, is plain to the critics themselves, for they, detect anachronisms as to land tenure, burial, the construction of houses, marriage customs, weapons, and armour in the Iliad and Odyssey. These supposed anachronisms we examine later: if they really exist they show that the poets ...
— Homer and His Age • Andrew Lang

... hints upon the land question. There is no private tenure; at least it is not general, for when one speaks of a continent with two hundred and fifty millions of people possessed of different customs it is unsafe to say that anything does not exist. Speaking generally, the land of India belongs to village communities in which every ...
— Round the World • Andrew Carnegie

... occupies a unique position in Kumaon. Having repurchased his right to the tenure of land in the Askote Pargana as late as 1855, he now possesses the right of zamindar (translated literally, landed proprietor), and he is the only person to whom has been granted to retain this privilege in the Kumaon Division. Jagat Sing Pal, the Rajiwar's nephew, assured me that the ...
— In the Forbidden Land • Arnold Henry Savage Landor

... When Jeff married his fourth wife—Zulena Spivey, a powerful, vital, affluent creature, of an unusual type for the mountains,—and the children (there were nine of them by this time) went to live with their step-mother, whose physique and disposition promised a longer tenure than any of her predecessors, Pap and Aunt Cornelia sat upon the lonely hearth and assured each other with tears that never again would they take into their home and their lives, as their very own, any children upon whom they could have no ...
— Southern Lights and Shadows • Edited by William Dean Howells & Henry Mills Alden

... groups were common in Holland in the seventeenth century. The towns were proud of their newly won liberties, and the town dignitaries liked to see themselves painted in a group to perpetuate remembrance of their tenure of office. But Rembrandt knew that it was inartistic to give each and every person in a large group an equal or nearly equal prominence, although such was the custom to which even Franz Hals' brush had yielded full compliance. For his magnificent picture of the City Guard, Rembrandt chose ...
— The Book of Art for Young People • Agnes Conway

... St. Ledger, and vague whisperings passed back and forth between certain bleached out, flat-chested virgins, whose forgotten youth and beauty were things long past, but whose tenure upon society was as firm and unassailable as Plymouth Rock and the silver leg of Peter ...
— The Promise - A Tale of the Great Northwest • James B. Hendryx

... once for all put a stop to all danger of an independent lordship by forcing those who had already received grants of land from the native chiefs to surrender them into his hands, and to receive them back direct from himself, according to the ordinary terms of feudal tenure. ...
— The Story Of Ireland • Emily Lawless

... whole land desolate. It is, therefore, no longer a matter of astonishment that the present plain of Newera Ellia should have received its appellation of the "Royal Plain." In those days there was no very secure tenure to the throne, and by force alone could a king retain it. The more bloodthirsty and barbarous the tyrant, the more was he dreaded by the awe-stricken and trembling population. The power of such a weapon of annihilation as the command of the waters may be easily conceived ...
— Eight Years' Wandering in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker

... therefore, took steps to let his house (which he held under lease at one hundred and five pounds per annum) by advertising it, and putting a bill in the window to that effect. To his surprise he received a notice from his landlord informing him that by the tenure of his lease, to which he was referred, he would find that he could not sub-let. Finding this to be the case, he went to the owner of the property, and expressed a desire to be released from his occupancy ...
— Recollections of Old Liverpool • A Nonagenarian

... slow to announce upon his arrival in Heart's Desire. Perhaps from this arose the local custom of calling him Judge, and perhaps from his wearing the latter title arose the supposition that he really was a judge. The records are quite silent as to the origin of his tenure of office. The office itself, as has been intimated, had hitherto been one purely without care. At every little shooting scrape or other playfulness of the male population Blackman, Justice of the Peace, became inflated with importance and looked monstrous grave. But nothing ever ...
— Heart's Desire • Emerson Hough

... 1610); neither is there any allusion to burning in the Parliamentary journals, nor in the letters relating to the subject in Winwood's Memorials. The contemporary evidence of the fact is, however, supplied by Sir H. Spelman, who says in his Glossarium (under the word "Tenure") that Cowell's book was publicly burnt. Otherwise, James's proclamations were not always attended to (by one, for instance, he prohibited hunting); and Roger Coke says that the books being out, "the proclamation could not call them in, but only served to make ...
— Books Condemned to be Burnt • James Anson Farrer

... dream from which she would have been glad to have awakened, and to have found herself in her former humble home. She could not but fear that all her father possessed was held upon a very uncertain tenure, and, what was worse, that it was obtained by dishonourable means. This idea was strengthened when the gala evening arrived, and our heroine was introduced to her father's principal patron, a vain and weak-minded man, ...
— Tales for Young and Old • Various

... tax are great and far-reaching, its complete application could hardly, in most communities, amount to less than a practical revolution. Striking as it does at the whole received theory of land tenure, as sanctioned throughout the civilized world by the practice of many centuries, it arrays against itself the prejudices of the most influential classes in every long-established community, and its introduction is necessarily surrounded by difficulties ...
— The Arena - Volume 18, No. 92, July, 1897 • Various

... she exacted that his service should be personally rendered to her. He understood the conditions of his tenure of influence, and generally fulfilled them faithfully. She knew, and he knew, that he was selected for gifts which made him a valuable servant of the State, as impersonated in its chief. Yet it is not strange that, in an age of coarse feeling, ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing

... achieve prominence in Russia, and in France the ancient Salic law did not allow women to ascend the throne; so that, all in all, by this process of exclusion, it is easy to see that in Spain alone the conditions have been favorable for woman's tenure of royal office. A scrutiny of the list of Spanish monarchs reveals the fact that in all the long line there are no names more worthy of honor than those of Berenguela and Isabella the Catholic, and that, irrespective ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger

... a black, bronzed hunter, pressing to the front, 'that what I hold of thee, King William, on tenure of homage, and of two good horses and staunch hounds yearly, I yield to no English mongrel churl, who ...
— More Bywords • Charlotte M. Yonge

... saddened, but not disillusioned. When he had been Secretary of State two months he said that he would not have taken office "if I thought there was to be a war during my tenure." "I believe," he added, "there will be no war while I am Secretary of State, and I believe there will be no war so long as I live." It has not come out that way; it might have so easily come out that way if only Germany had signed that treaty of his! ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 4, July, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various

... Israel. From that pattern our forefathers copied all the grand features of our glorious republic—the equitable distribution of the land, in fee-simple, among the people; securing them, by the jubilee, against the introduction of feudal tenure, and landlordism; the abolition of a standing army, and the defense of the country by the militia; the election of all officers, civil and military, from the town constable, and the justice of the peace, up to the ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson

... happy prisoner at large, in this nutshell of a house at the Hills, which you have never seen since it has become the family mansion. I am now in the actual tenure and occupation of the little room, commonly called Rosamond's room, bounded on the N. E. W. and S. by blank—[N.B. a very dangerous practice of leaving blanks for your boundaries in your leases, as an eminent attorney ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. VII - Patronage • Maria Edgeworth

... beautiful but impracticable fantasies which had fascinated him when he was a student, or they were attempts at improving, rectifying the economic position in which Europe was placed, with which the system of land tenure in Russia had nothing in common. Political economy told him that the laws by which the wealth of Europe had been developed, and was developing, were universal and unvarying. Socialism told him that development along these ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy

... the day after the taking of the Bastille; it is only for us to decide whether or no we shall name another. We are of opinion that the nation should do every thing by itself or by agents removable by her. We think, that the more important an employ, the more temporary should be its tenure. We think that royalty, and especially hereditary royalty, is incompatible with liberty; we anticipate the crowd of opponents such a declaration will create, but has not the declaration of rights produced as many? In leaving his post the king virtually ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine

... be a great satisfaction to me to hear of your perfect recovery; and that my foster-brother is out of danger. But why, said I, out of danger?—When can this be justly said of creatures, who hold by so uncertain a tenure? This is one of those forms of common speech, that proves the frailty and the presumption of poor ...
— Clarissa, Volume 7 • Samuel Richardson

... opportunities to the dissolute, and occasioned frequent instances of serious disorders, till the king was urged to interfere: the number of these fete-days was then very much reduced, to the great benefit of the colony. The feudal system of tenure also operated most unfavorably upon the development of agricultural resources, and the forced partition of lands tended to reduce all the landholders to a fraternity of pauperism. The court of France ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton

... moreover, is, Pitt has become King of England; so lucky has poor England, in its hour of crisis, again been. And the difference between an England guided by some kind of Friedrich (temporary Friedrich, absolute, though of insecure tenure), and by a Newcastle and the Clack of Tongues, is very great! But for Pitt, there had been no Wolfe, no Amherst; Duke Ferdinand had been the Royal Highness of Cumberland,—and all things going round him in St. Vitus, at their old rate. This man is a King, for the time being,—King ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... wholly on what passed between the men. She knew that Whaley was trying to reestablish over the other the mental dominance he had always held. It was a frail enough tenure, no doubt, likely to be upset at any moment by vanity, suspicion, or heady gusts of passion. In it, such as it was, lay a hope. Watching the gambler's cold, impassive face, the stony look in the poker eyes, she judged him tenacious and strong-willed. For reasons ...
— Man Size • William MacLeod Raine

... Five to One. They were disarmed, it is true, but I was not equally sure that they had Reason to be reconciled. As they were not admitted to realize their Fortune, it consisted of ready Money, and that gave ready Power. As they were not permitted to purchase, or accept a Tenure of any valuable Length, Loyalty, perhaps, might induce them to fight for their King; but where was the Stake to impel them to fight for a Country in which they had no Inheritance? Without an Interest in Lands, they had little to lose by any Change of ...
— An Essay on the Antient and Modern State of Ireland • Henry Brooke

... commonalty into the peerage, but which once formed a distinguished peculiarity in the aristocracy of England—families of ancient birth, immense possessions, at once noble and untitled—held his estates by no other tenure than his own caprice. Though he professed to like Philip, yet he saw but little of him. When the news of the illicit connection his nephew was reported to have formed reached him, he at first resolved to break it off; ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 1 • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... but it leaves the aggrieved owner to bring suit against them, and recover damages, if he can. This may be right enough in itself; but I think, then, that all property should be defended by civil suit, and should become public after forty-two years of private tenure. The Constitution guarantees us all equality before the law, but the law-makers seem to have forgotten this in the case of our infant literary industry. So long as this remains the case, we cannot expect the best business talent to go into literature, ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... warm regard was James Craggs, Addison's successor as Secretary of State, who died whilst under suspicion of peculation in the South Sea business (1721). The Whig connexion might have been turned to account. Craggs during his brief tenure of office offered Pope a pension of 300l. a year (from the secret service money), which Pope declined, whilst saying that, if in want of money, he would apply to Craggs as a friend. A negotiation of the same kind took ...
— Alexander Pope - English Men of Letters Series • Leslie Stephen

... the Whig ranks should not get whatever was going. Lincoln's attitude in the matter may be of interest. To take an example, he writes to the President, about the postmastership in some place, that he does not know whether the President desires to change the tenure of such offices on party grounds, and offers no advice; that A is a Whig whose appointment is much desired by the local Whigs, and a most respectable man; that B, also a Whig, would in Lincoln's judgment be a somewhat better but not so popular subject ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood

... and who were impressed with all its horrors, and who knew well the tenure of danger and terror on which they held all the blessings of the world, turned their attention to the study of the heavenly bodies, and sought to understand the source of the calamity which had so recently overwhelmed the world. Hence they "marked," as far as they were able, "the positions ...
— Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel • Ignatius Donnelly

... of a land-tenure existing chiefly in Kent; from 16th century often used to denote custom of dividing a deceased man's property ...
— Epicoene - Or, The Silent Woman • Ben Jonson

... always seated at the head of the table, and, she supposed, considered it beneath his dignity to have his chair tied; but this world is all made up of compromises and compensations—if the captain preserved his dignity, he lost his balance. A surge came, "his fixity of tenure was gone in a moment, and this solid dignitary was shot forth, chair and all, and rolled against the bulkhead. Every body ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various

... documents, that nothing can be more unjust than the exaggerated charges brought against the present Irish landlords as regards the exorbitance of their rents, and nothing more fallacious than to attribute the misery of the people to the want of tenure, or due security in the occupation of their lands. The last census, taken by the police under the direction of government, gives us the actual rental of Ireland as returned by the occupiers themselves. This information ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 343, May 1844 • Various

... tempted, perhaps," said Jekyl, "in my present circumstances; but if they were what they have been, I should despise an estate that was to be held by petticoat tenure, especially when the lady of the manor was a sickly fantastic girl, that hated me, as this Miss Mowbray has the bad taste ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott

... whereabouts of the Oldest Inhabitant was at once settled, when I looked at them. For upwards of twenty years before this epoch, the independent position of the Collector had kept the Salem Custom-House out of the whirlpool of political vicissitude, which makes the tenure of office generally so fragile. A soldier,—New England's most distinguished soldier,—he stood firmly on the pedestal of his gallant services; and, himself secure in the wise liberality of the successive administrations through which he had held office, he had been ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... remain of the keep erected here by Richard de Redvers, who died in 1137, although the castle continued to be held by his descendants until it was granted by Edward III to William de Montacute, Earl of Salisbury, who was appointed Constable, an office he held until 1405. During the tenure by the de Redvers the resident bailiff regulated the tolls, markets, and fairs at his pleasure, and he also fixed the amount of the duties to be levied on merchandise. It was not until the reign of the third Edward ...
— Bournemouth, Poole & Christchurch • Sidney Heath

... the most secure support of our foreign trade, which chiefly depends on superior skill, industry, and invention, the wages of labour being greatly against us. We shall consider by what stability of tenure we hold that advantage. ...
— An Inquiry into the Permanent Causes of the Decline and Fall of Powerful and Wealthy Nations. • William Playfair

... a pistol been within her reach, the speaker's tenure of life had been short! She was no chastened, self-restrained, forgiving saint, the poor little thing, only a hot-tempered, generous, keenly-sensitive being, well-nigh a child in years and in impulses, though with the instincts of a mother awakening ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge

... the backward-curling hyacinthine petals, and caressingly passing her finger down the pale purple shadow of the snowy folds. Directly afterward she hung them in her breezy hair, from which, by natural tenure, they were not likely to fall, bound them over her shoulders and in ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861 • Various

... bye I will tell you about the tenure of land in Egypt which people are always disputing about, as the Kadee laid it down for me. The whole land belongs to the Sultan of Turkey, the Pasha being his vakeel (representative), nominally of course as we know. Thus there are no owners, only tenants paying from ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon

... moments, but it is not for that reason an unstable or fantastic thing. Human attention inevitably flickers; we survey things in succession, and our acts of synthesis and our realization of fact are only occasional. This is the tenure of all our possessions; we are not uninterruptedly conscious of ourselves, our physical environment, our ruling passions, or our deepest conviction. What wonder, then, that we are not constantly conscious of that perfection which is the implicit ideal of all our preferences and desires? We view ...
— The Sense of Beauty - Being the Outlines of Aesthetic Theory • George Santayana

... were mainly administrative; and if Saumarez and Pellew possessed eminent capacity as general officers on the battle-field, they had not opportunity to prove it. The distinction of their careers coincides with their tenure of subordinate positions in the organisms of great fleets. With this in common, and differentiating them from Howe and Jervis, the points of contrast are marked. Saumarez preferred the ship-of-the-line, Pellew the frigate. The choice of the one led to the duties of a division ...
— Types of Naval Officers - Drawn from the History of the British Navy • A. T. Mahan

... assuredly, in spite of occasional blame, have I any reason to complain of the measure of praise—often, I fear, somewhat unmerited praise—which has been accorded to me. But I may perhaps be allowed to say what, in my own opinion, are the main objects achieved during my twenty-four-years' tenure of office. Those achievements are four in number, and let me add that they were not the results of a hand-to-mouth conduct of affairs in which the direction afforded to political events was constantly shifted, but of a deliberate plan persistently pursued with only such temporary deviations ...
— Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913 • Evelyn Baring

... of this sort left him without wants of his own; but he was always ready to render any proper service to his friends—including reminders to those among them who passed for fortunate, how brief was their tenure of what they so prided themselves upon. To all, on the other hand, who repined at poverty, resented exile, or complained of old age or bad health, he administered laughing consolation, and bade them not forget how soon their troubles would be over, the distinction between ...
— Works, V3 • Lucian of Samosata

... anything like an abandonment of that idea will not meet favor. I agree with you that it can only be done by the co-operation of Congress, and it would be a great stroke of public policy if Congress could be prevailed upon to pass a law prescribing a reasonable tenure for civil office, with such guards against arbitrary removals as would make the incumbents somewhat independent in their opinions and actions. I had a conversation with Fletcher Harper, at Long Beach, on Saturday, which leads me to think that he is anxious upon this subject and also upon ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman

... steps immediately taken by Dalhousie to carry the provisions of that despatch into execution are enumerated in the masterly Report drawn up by him on his way home in 1856, reviewing every aspect of his administration during his eight years' tenure of office—an administration which virtually closed, and not unworthily, perhaps the noblest period of British rule in India, when men of the intellectual and moral elevation of Bentinck and Munro and Metcalfe and Elphinstone ...
— India, Old and New • Sir Valentine Chirol

... of the common man is past. On the open countryside one man is as good as another, or nearly as good. The earlier aristocracy had a precarious tenure of strength and audacity. They were tempered—tempered. There were insurrections, duels, riots. The first real aristocracy, the first permanent aristocracy, came in with castles and armour, and vanished ...
— The Sleeper Awakes - A Revised Edition of When the Sleeper Wakes • H.G. Wells

... which obscures the infinite general knowledge of the soul, vedaniya karma which produces the feelings of pleasure and pain in the soul, mohaniya karma, which so infatuates souls that they fail to distinguish what is right from what is wrong, ayu karma, which determines the tenure of any particular life, nama karma which gives them personalities, gotra karma which brings about a particular kind of social surrounding for the soul and antaraya karma which tends to oppose the performance ...
— A History of Indian Philosophy, Vol. 1 • Surendranath Dasgupta



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