"Fief" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... hedgerows—all tell us that it was no despicable heritage of his own to which Hugh of Avranches added his palatine earldom of Chester. And if Avranches gave a lord to one great district of England, England presently gave a lord to Avranches. The Avranchin formed part of the fief of the AEtheling Henry, the fief so often lost and won again, but where men had at least some moments of order under the stern rule of the Lion of Justice, while the rest of Normandy in the days ...
— Sketches of Travel in Normandy and Maine • Edward A. Freeman
... Innocent VIII., having quarrelled with King Ferrante, invited Charles VIII. to invade Naples, and offered him the investiture of this important fief of the Church. But at that time the French monarch had no leisure to think of a foreign expedition. He was already engaged in war with Maximilian, King of the Romans, and in a fierce quarrel with the States of Brittany over ...
— Beatrice d'Este, Duchess of Milan, 1475-1497 • Julia Mary Cartwright
... Sir, the 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 ...
— Ionica • William Cory (AKA William Johnson)
... 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 ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... 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 duller ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... interference of the Hanseatic League; and Christian I. (1448-1481) and Hans (1481-1513), whose chief merit it is to have founded the Danish fleet, were, during the greater part of their reigns, only nominally kings of Sweden. Hans also received in fief the territory of Dietmarsch from the emperor, but, in attempting to subdue the hardy Dietmarschers, suffered a crushing defeat in which the national banner called "Danebrog" fell into the enemy's hands (1500). Moreover, this defeat led to a successful ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various
... filled the land with violence and spread universal misery, from which there seemed to be no escape, as against the wrongdoers there was no redress. After the Treaty of Bretigny in 1360, Aquitaine ceased to be a French fief, and was exalted in the interests of the King of England into an independent sovereignty, together with the provinces of Poitou, the Saintonge, Aunis, Agenois, Perigord, Limousin, Quercy, Bigorre, Angoumois and Rouergue, greatly ...
— Castles and Cave Dwellings of Europe • Sabine Baring-Gould
... had 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 the assertion ...
— Henry VIII. • A. F. Pollard
... of the Arcis elections for the last twenty years. While approving the constant election of Francois Keller, he said the moment had now come to shake off the yoke of the house of Gondreville. Arcis ought to be no more a fief of the liberals than a fief of the Cinq-Cygnes. Advanced opinions were arising in France of which the Kellers were not the exponents. Charles Keller, having become a viscount, belonged to the court; he could have no independence, because, in presenting ...
— The Deputy of Arcis • Honore de Balzac
... one was plighted, Lord of fief and domain wide, Who, ere he went forth undaunted War's ...
— Indian Legends and Other Poems • Mary Gardiner Horsford
... rebellion against Rome. In the market-place at Hebron, Hadrian sold numbers of Jewish slaves after the fall of Bar-Cochba, in 135 C.E. In the twelfth century Hebron was in the hands of the Christian Crusaders. The fief of Hebron, or, as it was called, of Saint Abraham, extended southwards to Beer-sheba. A bishopric was founded there in 1169, but was ...
— The Book of Delight and Other Papers • Israel Abrahams
... 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 ...
— The Discovery of America Vol. 1 (of 2) - with some account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest • John Fiske
... corporeal hereditaments, incorporeal hereditaments; acres; ground &c. (earth) 342; acquest[obs3], messuage, toft[obs3]. territory, state, kingdom, principality, realm, empire, protectorate, sphere of influence. manor, honor, domain, demesne; farm, plantation, hacienda; allodium &c. (free) 748[obs3]; fief, fieff[obs3], feoff[obs3], feud, zemindary[obs3], dependency; arado[obs3], merestead[obs3], ranch. free lease-holds, copy lease-holds; folkland[obs3]; chattels real; fixtures, plant, heirloom; easement; right of common, right of user. personal property, personal estate, personal effects; personalty, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... ceremonies and words partly minatory and 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
... 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 ...
— William the Conqueror • E. A. Freeman
... 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 to ...
— Half-Hours with Great Story-Tellers • Various
... always something fatally defective in the vigilance of a policeman; and in the very place which perhaps Austria thought it quite needless to guard, the restless and indomitable spirit of free thought entered. It was in Tuscany, a fief of the Holy Roman Empire, reigned over by a family set on the grand-ducal throne by Austria herself, and united to her Hapsburgs by many ties of blood and affection—in Tuscany, right under both noses of the double-headed eagle, as it were, that a new literary and political life ...
— Modern Italian Poets • W. D. Howells
... earnest the assault of the citadel of Forli, which we had held in siege throughout the previous month. Little stomach had I for the business, since to my shame I was making war upon a woman. Imola which had already surrendered to us, was also her fief, but had she commanded its forces in person we would not have taken it so easily. For fighting blood ran in the veins of the Lady of Forli, she being the grand-daughter of the great condottiere Francesco Sforza. And this was not ...
— Romance of Roman Villas - (The Renaissance) • Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney
... I am told, there is actually a count at Villefranche, whose father sold macaroni in the streets. A man in this country may buy a marquisate, or a county, for the value of three or four hundred pounds sterling, and the title follows the fief; but he may purchase lettres de noblesse for about thirty or forty guineas. In Savoy, there are six hundred families of noblesse; the greater part of which have not above one hundred crowns a year to maintain their dignity. In the mountains of Piedmont, ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... Louis the Eleventh of the whole county of Boulogne, retaining, 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 image ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... Kerr twice 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
... Twice crowned Queen of France, she was the only one of her line worthy of the ducal crown. The Bishop of St. Malo was temporal lord of the town, and maintained he held it direct from the Pope, as a fief of the Church, because it was built upon land where a convent formerly stood; and consequently the Duke of Brittany had no authority over it, either spiritual or temporal. Duke John V. began to build a castle, but the Bishop opposed ...
— Brittany & Its Byways • Fanny Bury Palliser
... Ralph's mother was a daughter of Savaric FitzCana, and sister of Ralph, Gelduin, and Savaric FitzSavaric. Ralph FitzSavaric having died without heirs, on the death of his uncle Savaric, Franco, the son of Gelduin, laid claim to his vast possessions in England and the fief of Bohun in Normandy. It is believed that Gelduin had married within the forbidden degrees, without dispensation, and that this was the reason that Ralph de Arderne put forward his mother's claims. Henry II. decided in his favour at a court at Caen in 1187. But on the accession of Richard ...
— Shakespeare's Family • Mrs. C. C. Stopes
... Douglas. Neither from Flanders nor from Guienne could Edward hope to reach the heart of the French power; a third inlet now presented itself in Brittany. On the death of John III. of Brittany, in 1341, Jean de Montfort, his youngest brother, claimed the great fief, against his niece Jeanne, daughter of his elder brother Guy, Comte de Penthievre. He urged that the Salic law, which had been recognised in the case of the crown, should also apply to this great duchy, so nearly an independent sovereignty. ...
— Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois, Complete • Marguerite de Valois, Queen of Navarre
... 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 ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... original conquest, as well to all the soldiers as to 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 ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... against his 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
... in consequence of their efforts to subvert its 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 ...
— Landholding In England • Joseph Fisher
... in 1694 the son of a lawyer named Arouet. There are doubts as to the origin of the name he has made so famous; whether it was derived from a fief possessed by his mother, or from an anagram of AROUET LE JEUNE. At any rate, the name was adopted by the young poet, at his own fancy, a case not without parallel in the eighteenth century. [Footnote: As in the case of D'Alembert. For Voltaire's name, see Desnoiresterres, ...
— The Eve of the French Revolution • Edward J. Lowell
... 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
... Hideyoshi thereafter treated this noble man with the greatest consideration, but it is difficult to reconcile that account with the fact that Hideyoshi subsequently pressed Iehisa to guide the Osaka army through the mountains and rivers which constituted natural defences for the fief of Satsuma. Iehisa, of course, refused, and to Hideyoshi's credit it stands on record that he did not press the matter with any violence. This difficulty of invading an unknown country without any maps or any guides, a country celebrated for its topographical perplexities, was ultimately overcome ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... completely defeated, but 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
... 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 ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... 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 of Zara, first published by the ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... four years old, her parents betrothed her to Ferrante Francesco d'Avalos, a boy of the same age, the only son of the Marchese di Pescara. In her nineteenth year the affianced couple were married at Ischia, the fief and residence of the house of D'Avalos. Ferrante had succeeded to his father's title early in boyhood, and was destined for a brilliant military career. On the young bride's side at least it was a love-match. She was tenderly attached to her handsome ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... coming in for a week. By to-morrow night, I daresay, every rajah, prince, thakur, baron, fief, and lord in Rajputana, each with his 'tail,' horse and foot, will be camped down before the walls of Kuttarpur. You've chosen an interesting time for your visit. It'll be a sight worth seeing, when they ...
— The Bronze Bell • Louis Joseph Vance
... having the highest authority, 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
... 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 a lord. The "lordless man" became a ...
— History of the English People, Volume I (of 8) - Early England, 449-1071; Foreign Kings, 1071-1204; The Charter, 1204-1216 • John Richard Green
... 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 ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... cried hoarsely. "Leon, listen to me," he said, turning round suddenly. "Do you realize what sort of a position you are asking me to keep? Do you realize how it makes me the fief of a Rabbinate that is an anachronism, the bondman of outworn forms, the slave of the Shulcan Aruch (a book the Rabbinate would not dare publish in English), the professional panegyrist of the rich? Ours is a generation of whited sepulchres." He had no difficulty ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... this should not be allowed lest the patriotism of the children be weakened. So far 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 ...
— Evolution Of The Japanese, Social And Psychic • Sidney L. Gulick
... Communes, the Church or Finance. Intrusted in the days of yore with the keeping of a French March, the title of marquis in their family meant no shadow of imaginary office; it had been a post of honor with duties to discharge. Their fief had always been their domain. Provincial nobles were they in every sense of the word; they might boast of an unbroken line of great descent; they had been neglected by the court for two hundred years; they were lords paramount in the estates of a province where the people looked up ...
— The Collection of Antiquities • Honore de Balzac
... part, the Lothians, had undoubtedly once formed part of the Anglian kingdom of Northumbria; while its southwestern, Strathclyde or Scottish Cumbria, the population of which was in great part Celtic, had in 945 been given by the English king Edmund I. to Malcolm as a fief. The northern portion of the kingdom was purely Celtic in blood, and had at no time been subject to English influences, but though the reigning family was itself of Celtic origin, its authority hardly extended ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 1 of 8 • Various
... return!' he said, 'Let me return [3]!' But that was not to be for several years yet. In B.C. 490, accompanied, as usual, by several of his disciples, he went from Ch'an to Ts'ai, a small dependency of the great fief of Ch'u, which occupied a large part of the present provinces of Hu-nan and Hu-pei. On the way, between Ch'an and Ts'ai, their provisions became exhausted, and they were cut off somehow from obtaining a fresh supply. The disciples were quite overcome with want, and Tsze-lu said to the master, ...
— THE CHINESE CLASSICS (PROLEGOMENA) Unicode Version • James Legge
... a follower of Duke William at Hastings. His descendant, Charles Le Gardeur, came over to Canada with a large body of his vassals in 1636, having obtained from the King a grant of the lands of Tilly, on the bank of the St. Lawrence, "to hold in fief and seigniory,"—so ran the royal patent,—"with the right and jurisdiction of superior, moyenne and basse justice, and of hunting, fishing, and trading with the Indians throughout the whole of this royal concession; subject to the condition ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... pre-eminent, not only from his own abilities and good fortune, but as the founder of the only family which ever continued to enjoy, during several generations, the highest honours of the empire. He was the son of an Arnaut[6] soldier, who had settled in Anatolia, on receiving a timar or fief in the district of Amasia, near the town of Kiupri, ('the bridge:') from which (since distinguished from other places of the same name as Vizir-Kiupri) his descendants derived the surname under which they are generally mentioned in history. He commenced his career as a page ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various
... 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. ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe
... there In the vale, had been her home; the nook might hold her even yet, And the downlands were her father's fief; she still might come and go there; - So I ...
— Time's Laughingstocks and Other Verses • Thomas Hardy
... the Papacy free from lay control; he had gained for ever for the Church one of her most cherished tenets, the absolute independence of the Pope's election by the College of Cardinals; and he had even partially reduced the Western Empire into a fief of the Church itself. The former of Gregory's great objects, the freedom of election, still remains intact after an interval of more than eight hundred years; the latter attempt, though long struggled ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... who is most indebted to you 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 ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... is rather an Ephesian matron. The sagacious Lunet, whose confidante she is, suggests to her that, unless she enlists some doughty knight as her champion, the king will confiscate her fief; and that there is no champion like a husband. A very little more finesse effects the marriage, even though the lady is made aware of the identity of her new lover and her own husband's slayer. (It is of course necessary to remember that the ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury
... of the ambitious Marpha, and the patriotic associations she awakened, the Novgorodians expelled the officer of the Grand Prince; possessed themselves of some land that belonged to him in right of his fief; and, to confirm their revolt against his authority, submitted themselves, by treaty, to Casimir, Prince of Lithuania. In this position of affairs, Ivan wisely resolved to leave Vyatka to its own course, confining his attention solely to ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 8 - The Later Renaissance: From Gutenberg To The Reformation • Editor-in-Chief: Rossiter Johnson
... William took his title, a title which the events of the preceding century had made one of the most illustrious in Europe, from a city which lies on the banks of the Rhone not far from Avignon, and which, like Avignon, though inclosed on every side by the French territory, was properly a fief not of the French but of the Imperial Crown. Lewis, with that ostentatious contempt of public law which was characteristic of him, occupied Orange, dismantled the fortifications, and confiscated the revenues. William declared aloud at his table before many persons that he would make ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... of the Vale, where they rode in safety. The Duke was brought ashore and lodged at the Abbey of St. Michael.... To reward the Abbot for his hospitality and attention, he gave them all the lands within the Close of the Vale in fee to him and his successors, Abbots of St. Michael, by the title of Fief or Manor of St. Michael, with leave to extend the same without the Close of the Vale towards the north-west.... And to recompense the islanders for saving him and his fleet, upon their representing to him how they had been plundered by pirates, he determined to leave behind him two of his ...
— The Fall Of The Grand Sarrasin • William J. Ferrar
... who 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
... 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; it is better than that of the story of Glum, which is ...
— Epic and Romance - Essays on Medieval Literature • W. P. Ker
... lay abbot took his recognized rank in the feudal hierarchy, and was free to dispose of his fief as in the case of any other. The enfeoffment of abbeys differed in form and degree. Sometimes the monks were directly subject to the lay abbot; sometimes he appointed a substitute to perform the spirtual functions, ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... 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 Constitutional Development of Japan 1863-1881 • Toyokichi Iyenaga
... 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 ...
— The Cariboo Trail - A Chronicle of the Gold-fields of British Columbia • Agnes C. Laut
... 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 ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... died in 1246, leaving no descendants, and the Principality was seized 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, ...
— Mediaeval Wales - Chiefly in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries: Six Popular Lectures • A. G. Little
... Mrs. Waterbrook, "is 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 ...
— Jonah and Co. • Dornford Yates
... a valuable Extent of the Royal Revenues in Jersey drawn up in the year 1331 by Robert de Norton and William de la Rue, commissioners specially appointed for the purpose. In this Extent we find that William de Barentin held the manor and fief of Rozel by homage; that this fief owed sixty sols one denier relief; and that whenever the King of England paid a visit to this island, the seigneur of this fief was bound to meet his sovereign on horseback in ...
— The Coinages of the Channel Islands • B. Lowsley
... and southern portals, which are not especially Hers, above a door, on a capital, high in air on a pediment. The angelic salutation of art has been repeated without intermission by the painters and sculptors of every age. The cathedral of Chartres is truly the Virgin's fief. ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... 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," ...
— Mother Earth - Land Grants in Virginia 1607-1699 • W. Stitt Robinson, Jr.
... 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 owed ...
— The Hawaiian Islands • The Department of Foreign Affairs
... neighbouring and friendly kings. Some advised one thing, some another, and the end of it was hesitation and folly. Ah! had Montezuma but listened to the voice of that great man Guatemoc, Anahuac would not have been a Spanish fief to-day. For Guatemoc prayed him again and yet again to put away his fears and declare open war upon the Teules before it was too late; to cease from making gifts and sending embassies, to gather his countless armies and smite the foe in the ...
— Montezuma's Daughter • H. Rider Haggard
... 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
... 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, men who have ...
— Publications of the Scottish History Society, Vol. 36 • Sir John Lauder
... 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 ...
— The Fifteen Decisive Battles of The World From Marathon to Waterloo • Sir Edward Creasy, M.A.
... answered, "has been saved from the flames. Only a few of the outer buildings have been destroyed; but I undertake to repair the house and to redeem your fief from the creditors who claim it. As to your uncles . . . you are probably the sole heir of a name that ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... established itself in Syria. Historians have tried to establish distinctions between the feudalism of one country and that of another—between the feudalism of England, for instance, and that of France. It is generally held nowadays that they have failed to establish the distinction. A fief in England was uniform with a fief in France, as a manor in one country was uniform with manors in other countries, and a town in one country with towns in others. 'One cannot establish a line of demarcation between German and French towns,' says a famous ...
— The Unity of Civilization • Various
... and 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 ...
— In Troubadour-Land - A Ramble in Provence and Languedoc • S. Baring-Gould
... family was Anand Rao Punwar, a descendant of the great 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 ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 3 - "Destructors" to "Diameter" • Various
... of a female vassal. This may appear to exist as a contradiction both of the civil and canon laws, which declare that marriage shall be free, while the feudal or municipal jurisprudence, in case of a fief passing to a female, acknowledges an interest in the superior of the fief to dictate the choice of her companion in marriage. This is accounted for on the principle that the superior was, by his bounty, the original granter of the fief, and is still interested ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... lion for a dinner where everybody 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 devil not ...
— The Gorgeous Isle - A Romance; Scene: Nevis, B.W.I. 1842 • Gertrude Atherton
... strike trope curse ache fleece trite grope hearse bathe steer splice broke purge lathe speech stripe stroke scourge plaint sphere tithe cloak verge brain fief yield crock squeal slave field fierce block league quake thief pierce flock plead stave fiend tierce shock squeak plague ...
— McGuffey's Eclectic Spelling Book • W. H. McGuffey
... 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
... species of 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 ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... come too late. La Salle had already provided the necessary material, and a few days sufficed to complete his preparations. On the tenth of August, he embarked again for the Illinois. With him went his lieutenant, La Forest, who held of him in fief an island, then called Belle Isle, opposite Fort Frontenac. [Footnote: Robert Cavelier, Sr. de la Salle, a Francois Daupin, Sr. de la Forest, 10 Juin, 1679, MS.] A surgeon, ship-carpenters, joiners, masons, soldiers, ...
— France and England in North America, a Series of Historical Narratives, Part Third • Francis Parkman
... we claim for thee another fief, An upland where a glamour haunts the meadows, Snow peaks arise enrobed in rosy shadows, Fairer the under slopes with vine and sheaf And shimmering lea; The paradise of a simple old belief, That flourished in ...
— Lundy's Lane and Other Poems • Duncan Campbell Scott
... Ieharu, who, having been born in 1737, was twenty-three years old when he began to administer the country's affairs. One of his first acts was to appoint Tanuma Okitsugu to be prime minister, bestowing on him a fief of fifty-seven thousand koku in the province of Totomi, and ordering him to construct a fortress there. At the same time Okitsugu's son, Okitomo, received the rank of Yamato no Kami and the office of junior minister. These two men became thenceforth the central figures in an era of maladministration ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... now priest whuche were Sir 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 Rampologus de Janis 2 fo Chorinth 14. It. ...
— Old English Libraries, The Making, Collection, and Use of Books • Ernest A. Savage
... 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 property, personal estate, personal effects; personalty, chattels, goods, effects, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... in many different shires; and, because it was impossible for the barons to cultivate all their estates themselves, they let them out to subtenants, who in their turn were bound to render services to the lord of the fief. These sub-tenants were the great men in the several parishes, and became the actual lords of the manors, residing upon the manors, and having each, on their several manors, very large powers for good or evil over ...
— The Coming of the Friars • Augustus Jessopp
... seigneuries were granted, large tracts all of them. One director of the company secured the whole island of Orleans as his seigneurial estate; others took generous slices on both shores of the St Lawrence. But not one of these men lifted a finger in the way of redeeming his huge fief from the wilderness. Every one seems to have had great zeal in getting hold of these vast tracts with the hope that they would some day rise in value. As for the development of the lands, however, neither the company nor its ...
— The Seigneurs of Old Canada: - A Chronicle of New-World Feudalism • William Bennett Munro
... prepare 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 with ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... still in theory a ducal fief of the Holy Roman Empire, but had long been in fact the prize of despotic rulers who were descended from two famous families—the Visconti and the Sforza—and who combined the patronage of art with the fine political subtleties of Italian tyrants. The Visconti ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... packs and place upon them water and provisions, ready for setting out as soon as he should come up with the camels. Now this Badawi was a base born churl, a highway thief and a traitor to the friend he held most fief, a rogue in grain, past master of plots and chicane. He had no daughter and no son and was only passing through the town when, by the decree of the Decreer, he fell in with this unhappy one. And he ceased not to hold her in converse on the highway ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... land," which is the same everywhere and for all persons, is an ideal to be realised in England alone of medieval states. Elsewhere the king's law is a supplement, a postscript; the privilege of the free man is to live under the law of his province, his lord's fief or his ...
— Medieval Europe • H. W. C. Davis
... without descendants in the realm, and through other sources. Some of the kings, therefore, devised the scheme of enlisting the influential aristocracy in their service by granting them fiefs in the crown estates, with right to all the crown incomes from the fief. This plan was eagerly caught at by the aristocrats, and before long nearly all the influential people in the realm were in the service of the king. Thus the position of royal courtier, which had formerly been a mark of servitude, was now ...
— The Swedish Revolution Under Gustavus Vasa • Paul Barron Watson
... are divided into provinces, each of which is assigned as a fief or government to one of the royal family or of the nobles, who commit the management to deputies and give themselves little concern about the treatment of their subjects. The pangerans, who are the descendants of the ancient princes of the country, experience ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... produced. As 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 pleasure-grounds of the ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... a fief of the Niger, we enter a sea of grass. Paddling being no longer possible, my Bosos crew, leaning heavily upon bamboo poles, push the boat vigorously through the grass, which, parting in front, closes together behind us with loud rustling and crackling. We ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume 19 - Travel and Adventure • Various
... which would be of most benefit to the settlement. Each seigneur with his tenants under him, trained as they were in the use of arms, formed a military force exactly as they had done in the middle ages, the farmer holding his fief upon condition that he mustered when called upon to do so. Hence the old officers of the regiment of Carignan, and the more hardy of the settlers, had been placed along the line of the Richelieu, which runs at right angles to the St. Lawrence towards ...
— The Refugees • Arthur Conan Doyle
... possessions of the English crown. At length, by the efforts of the pope, a peace was agreed upon, by which France yielded all Aquitaine and the town of Calais to England as an absolute possession, and not as a fief of the crown of France; while the English king surrendered all his captures in Normandy and Brittany and abandoned his claim to the crown of France. With great efforts the French raised a portion of the ransom demanded for the king, and John returned ...
— Saint George for England • G. A. Henty
... Ferdinand sent for the Count of Poictesme, and explained to him as between old friends how the matter stood, and that afternoon the high Count was confessed and decapitated. Poictesme being now a vacant fief, King Ferdinand ennobled Manuel, and made ...
— Figures of Earth • James Branch Cabell |
