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The word derives from Old French demeine, ultimately from Latin dominus, "lord, master of a household" – demesne is a variant of domaine. [3] [4]The word barton, which is historically synonymous to demesne and is an element found in many place-names, can refer to a demesne farm: it derives from Old English bere and ton ().
A fief (/ f iː f /; Latin: feudum) was a central element in medieval contracts based on feudal law. It consisted of a form of property holding or other rights granted by an overlord to a vassal, who held it in fealty or "in fee" in return for a form of feudal allegiance, services or payments.
The feudal system, in which the land was owned by a monarch, who in exchange for homage and military service granted its use to tenants-in-chief, who in their turn granted its use to sub-tenants in return for further services, gave rise to several terms, particular to Britain, for subdivisions of land which are no longer in wide use.
The adjective feudal was in use by at least 1405, and the noun feudalism was in use by the end of the 18th century, [4] paralleling the French féodalité.. According to a classic definition by François Louis Ganshof (1944), [1] feudalism describes a set of reciprocal legal and military obligations of the warrior nobility that revolved around the key concepts of lords, vassals and fiefs, [1 ...
It is also frequently calqued as "lord", the analogous term in the English feudal system. The term grand seigneur has survived in English and French. Today this usually means an elegant, urbane gentleman. Some even use it in a stricter sense to refer to a man whose manners and way of life reflect his noble ancestry and great wealth.
A vassal [1] or liege subject [2] is a person regarded as having a mutual obligation to a lord or monarch, in the context of the feudal system in medieval Europe. While the subordinate party is called a vassal, the dominant party is called a suzerain .
As a feudal title 'Lord of the Manor', unlike titles of peerage, can be inherited by whomever the title holder chooses (including females), and it is the only English title that can be sold (though they rarely are), as Lordships of the manor are considered non-physical property in England and are fully enforceable in the English court system.
[citation needed] In feudal England a feoffment could only be made of a fee (or "fief"), which is an estate in land, that is to say an ownership of rights over land, rather than ownership of the land itself, the only true owner of which was the monarch under his allodial title.