Word Finder - fief

definition

An estate held by a person on condition of providing military service to a superior.

definition

Something over which one has rights or exercises control.

definition

An area of dominion, especially in a corporate or governmental bureaucracy.

Each fief was organized like the kingdom.

His daughter Marie sold the fief of Coucy to Louis, duke of Orleans, in 1400.

The help afforded by Ertoghrul to the Seljukian monarch on a critical occasion led to the addition of Sugut to his fief, with which he was now formally invested.

Lothair was crowned emperor at the Lateran in June 1133, and as a further reward Innocent gave him the territories of the Countess Mathilda as a fief, but refused to surrender the right of investiture.

In 1810 it was divided by Napoleon between the grand duchy of Berg and France, but was, in 1815, restored to the duke of Arenberg as a fief under Prussian sovereignty.

After some delay the king assented to it provided that Prussia were held as a Polish fief; and after this arrangement had been confirmed by a treaty made at Cracow, Albert was invested with the duchy by Sigismund for himself and his heirs on the 10th of February 1525.

His reward in England was a mighty fief scattered over twelve counties.

The vidames usually took their title from the see they represented, but not infrequently they styled themselves, not after their official fief, but after Head Vicugna.

But in 1561 another master followed the example of Albert, and received Courland as an hereditary fief from Poland.

But the conception of the equality of the king and his peers in the long run led to hereditary monarchy; for if the king held his kingdom as a fief, like other nobles, the laws of descent which applied to a fief applied to the kingdom, and those laws demanded heredity.

Thus conceived as the holder of a great fief, the king had only the rights of suzerain over the four great baronies and the twelve minor fiefs of his kingdom.

With the crystallization of the feudal system in the 12th century the office of vidame, like that of avoue, had become an hereditary fief.

The island was annexed by Great Britain in 1628 and was bestowed in 1680 upon the Codrington family who, for more than 200 years, held it as a kind of feudal fief.

The faithful performance of all the duties he had assumed in homage constituted the vassal's right and title to his fief.

It often included also the duty of guarding the lord's castle, and of holding one's own castle subject to the plans of the lord for the defence of his fief.

In 1193 Margarito Brundusio received Malta as a fief with the title of count; he was Grand Admiral of Sicily.

His ancestry claimed blood relationship with the lords of Montespertoli, a fief situated between Val di Pesa and Val d'Elsa, at no great distance from the city.

The ceremony was of a preliminary nature, securing that the fief would not be alienated; but the vassal had to take the oath of fealty, and to be formally invested, when he reached his majority.

On the 6th of July 1806 Napoleon conferred on his minister the title of prince of Benevento, a papal fief in the Neapolitan territory.

Geoffrey Greytunic succeeded in making the count of Nantes his vassal, and in obtaining from the duke of Aquitaine the concession in fief of the district of Loudun.

The manor of Zuilen on the Vecht, four miles north-west of Utrecht, was partly held in fief from this abbey and partly from the bishops of Utrecht.

In 1345 it became a fief of the landgraves of Thuringia, to whom it escheated in 1385 with the extinction of the line of Otto III.

In the 10th century it passed under the titular sway of Liege, and remained the fief of the prince-bishopric till the French revolution put an end to that survival of feudalism.

It was from the precarium, or ecclesiastical benefice, that the feudal fief originated.

Furia, in feudal law, was the right granted to tenants having major jurisdiction to erect a gallows within the limits of their fief.

Ketteler, who had adopted Lutheranism during a visit to Germany in 1553, now professed the Augsburg Confession, and became the first duke of a new Protestant duchy, which he was to hold as a fief of the Polish crown, with local autonomy and absolute freedom of worship. The southern provinces of the ancient territory of the Order, Courland and Semgallen, had first been ceded on the 24th of June 1559 to Lithuania on similar conditions, the matter being finally adjusted by the compact of March 1562.

Algeria was considered as a kind of great military fief, and the officers who ruled there commonly took the side of the native chieftains against the civil population.

The lordship of Horn was a fief of the counts of Loon, and after 1361 of the bishop of Liege; but in 1450 it was raised to a countship by the Emperor Frederick II.

Albi (Albiga) was, in the Gallo-Roman period, capital of the Albigenses, and later of the viscounty of Albigeois, which was a fief of the counts of Toulouse.

In 1128 his brother-in-law, Henry II., margrave of the Saxon north mark, died, and Albert, disappointed at not receiving this fief, attacked Udo, the succeeding margrave, and was consequently deprived of Lusatia by Lothair.

From 1368 the electors themselves held the county of Arnsberg as an imperial fief.

Snorri himself became the lendrma8r, vassal or baron, of the king of Norway, and held his lands as a fief under him.

Finally it became a fief of the dukes of Schleswig-Holstein, though often hypothecated for loans advanced to these princes by the free city of Hamburg.

Malik Shah regulated also the affairs of Asia Minor and Syria, conceding the latter province as an hereditary fief to his brother Tutush, who established himself at Damascus and killed Atsiz.

The province of Kerman was one of the first conquests of the Seljuks, and became the hereditary fief of Kavurd, the son of Chakir Beg.

This valiant prince saved the empire from destruction and conquered Erzerum, which had been ruled during a considerable time by a separate dynasty, and was now given in fief to his brother, Mughit ud-din Toghrul Shah.

On the death of Count Leonhard (12th April 1500) the fief reverted to the house of Habsburg.

His first plan was a combination against her of Saxony, Denmark and Brandenburg; but, Brandenburg failing him, he was obliged very unwillingly to admit Russia into the partnership. The tsar was to be content with Ingria and Esthonia, while Augustus was to take Livonia, nominally as a fief of Poland, but really as an hereditary possession of the Saxon house.

The French court gave her frequent presents, and in December 1673 conferred upon her the ducal fief of Aubigny at the request of Charles II.

In 1143 Heribert of Bierum, bishop of Utrecht, converted the office into an hereditary fief in favour of his brother Liffert, on the extinction of whose male line it was partitioned between the families of Koevorden (or Coevorden) and van den Hove.

The duke rounded off his dominions by the purchase of Tenda and Oneglia, which increased his seaboard, and the last years of his life were spent in fruitless negotiations to obtain Monferrato, held by the Gonzagas under Spanish protection, and Saluzzo, which was a French fief.

In 1037 he issued from Milan his famous edict for the kingdom of Italy which decreed that upon the death of a landholder his fief should, descend to his son, or grandson, and that no fiefholder should be deprived of his fief without the judgment of his peers.

Instead of acknowledging its inferiority as in former times it had claimed to be the higher power; it had eyen attempted to dispose of the imperial crown as if the Empire were a papal fief; and it had found out that it could at any time tamper, and perhaps paralyse, the imperial authority by exciting internal strife in Germany.

During a meeting of the diet a papal legate read a letter from Pope Adrian IV., which seemed to imply that the Empire was a papal fief.

Besides the imperial cities, and the princes and other immediate nobles, there were the mediate nobles, the men who held land in fief of the highest classes of the aristocracy, and who, in virtue of this feudal relation, looked down upon the allodial proprietors or freemen, and upon the burghers.

They were often transformed into free knights by the grant of a fief, and the class ultimately became absorbed in that of the knights.

Meissen, which he claimed as a vacant fief of the Empire, and Thuringia, which he bought from the landgrave Albert II., seemed to offer a favorable field for this undertaking, and he spent a large part of his short reign in a futile attempt to carry out his plan.

He became a Protestant, dissolved the order, and received in fief of the king of Poland the duchy of Prussia.

By virtue of the old relations between the popes and the Normans of Apulia, he held his kingdom in fief of the Holy See, a position which on the whole strengthened the royal power.

Towards the beginning of the 3rd Islamic century the practice of giving Egypt in fief to a governor was resumed by the caliph Mamun, who bestowed this privilege on Abdallgh b.