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Feudal land tenure is a system of mutual obligations under which a royal or noble personage granted a fiefdom — some degree of interest in the use or revenues of a given parcel of land — in exchange for a claim on services such as military service or simply maintenance of the land in which the lord continued to have an interest.
Under the English feudal system several different forms of land tenure existed, each effectively a contract with differing rights and duties attached thereto. Such tenures could be either free-hold if they were hereditable or perpetual or non-free if they terminated on the tenant's death or at an earlier specified period.
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.
Feudalism, also known as the feudal system, was a combination of legal, economic, military, cultural, and political customs that flourished in medieval Europe from the 9th to 15th centuries. Broadly defined, it was a way of structuring society around relationships derived from the holding of land in exchange for service or labour.
This system of feudal tenure was not always restricted to lands, as church revenues and tithes were often farmed out to secular persons as a species of ecclesiastical fief. Strictly speaking, however, a fief was usually defined as immovable property whose usufruct perpetually conceded to another under the obligation of fealty and personal homage.
At the bottom of the feudal pyramid were the tenants who lived on and worked the land (called the tenants in demesne and also the tenant paravail). In the middle were the lords who had no direct relationship with the King, or with the land in question - referred to as mesne lords. Land was granted in return for various "services" and "incidents".
This pattern of land-holding was the natural product of William the Conqueror claiming an allodial title to all the land of England following the Norman Conquest of 1066, and parcelling it out as large fees in the form of feudal baronies to his followers, who then in turn subinfeudated (i.e. sub-divided) the lands comprising their baronies into ...
These medieval land terms include the following: a burgage, a plot of land rented from a lord or king; a hide: the hide, from the Anglo-Saxon word meaning "family", was, in the early medieval period, a land-holding that was considered sufficient to support a family. This was equivalent to 60 to 120 acres depending on the quality of the land ...