"Fief" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... better judge of this; only repeat my words to him: that the Emperor will not admit the claims of the collateral branches of the Electoral house, and if unfortunately the Electoral Prince of Brandenburg should die without descendants, he will consider the Electoral Mark as an unincumbered fief, which the Emperor of Germany, in the plenitude of his power and as an act of free grace, might ...
— The Youth of the Great Elector • L. Muhlbach
... which France was reduced. Horolf, however, did not limit his ambition to the acquisition of booty; he wished permanently to enjoy some of the fine countries he was ravaging, and after many treaties made and broken, received the dutchy of Normandy from the lands of Charles the Simple, as a fief, together with Gisla, the daughter of the French monarch, in marriage. Thus did a mere pirate found the family which in a few years gave sovereigns to England, Naples, and Sicily, and spread the fame of their talents and prowess ...
— The Pirates Own Book • Charles Ellms
... 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
... resolved to build a church there. But this is the story of a time when, as it has been said, “royal founders were in fashion.” More truly, the name is considered to be derived from the general designation of the fief or district in which the valley lies, Porrois—which, again, is supposed to be a corruption of Porra or Borra, meaning ...
— Pascal • John Tulloch
... 1126: This 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 of ...
— Henry VIII. • A. F. Pollard
... the "Court of the King." This court was not only a great council, but also a court of justice; the great vassals had the right to demand a trial by their equals, or peers, and in this case the court became the Court of Peers. The fief, held from the suzerain, could not be diminished or impaired in any way—just as the modern tenant has no right to damage his landlord's property; at the death of the vassal, the suzerain inherited, and in case he left infant children, the ...
— Paris from the Earliest Period to the Present Day; Volume 1 • William Walton
... governors of provinces or ministers of Pharaoh, must have been considerable. Their descendants followed in their fathers' footsteps, until the day came when royal favour or an advantageous marriage secured them the possession of an hereditary fief, and transformed the son or grandson of a prosperous scribe into a feudal lord. It was from people of this class, and from the children of the Pharaoh, that the nobility was mostly recruited. In the Delta, where the authority of the Pharaoh was almost everywhere directly felt, ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 2 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... Citadel and works adjacent—The greater part acquired by purchase from individuals, and partly by conquest, of the old French Works, &c., an annual ground rent of L1 17s. 0d., is payable on part of this land to the Fief ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... of the 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 power ...
— The Constitutional Development of Japan 1863-1881 • Toyokichi Iyenaga
... patriarch is sole proprietor, and the possessions of the family are vested in him, and he governs as proprietor as well as father. In the tribe, the chief is the proprietor, and in the nation, the king is the landlord, and holds the domain. Hence, the feudal baron is invested with his fief by the suzerain, holds it from him, and to him it escheats when forfeited or vacant. All the great Asiatic kings of ancient or modern times hold the domain and govern as proprietors; they have the authority of the father ...
— The American Republic: Its Constitution, Tendencies, and Destiny • A. O. Brownson
... who shall be responsible for the issues to us or to him to whom we shall assign them; and if we have given or sold the wardship of any such land to anyone and he has there in made destruction or waste, he shall lose that wardship, and it shall be transferred to two lawful and discreet men of that fief, who shall be responsible to us in like ...
— The Magna Carta
... had left special orders 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 ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... strikes straight into Aste. Before entering the town we glanced over in the direction of Campan, and caught a fine glimpse of the Houn Blanquo (6411 ft.), and the Pic du Midi, with a bit of the Montaigu. Aste is interesting, formerly a fief of the Grammont family; it has been associated with not a few celebrated characters, and though that does not enhance the value of the surrounding property (since the Grammont estate is now in the market), yet of course it renders the ...
— Twixt France and Spain • E. Ernest Bilbrough
... 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 till they came without the city ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... narrative as a bitter enemy of Frontenac, a word concerning him may fitly be written here. He was an officer of the king's army who had come to Canada with Talon. The fact that his wife was Talon's niece had put him in the pathway of promotion. The order of St Sulpice, holding in fief the whole island of Montreal, had power to name the local governor. In June 1669 the Sulpicians had nominated Perrot, and two years later his appointment had been confirmed by the king. Later, as we ...
— The Fighting Governor - A Chronicle of Frontenac • Charles W. Colby
... castle of Fosdinovo stand upon a mountain-spur above Sarzana, commanding the valley of the Magra and the plains of Luni. This is an ancient fief of the Malaspina House, and still in the possession of the Marquis of ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... Grief? And what are Right, and Wrong, And Feeling, that belong To creatures all who owe thee fief? What worse is Weak than ...
— Poems of the Past and the Present • Thomas Hardy
... themselves of Spain. Eude, a discontented Duke of Guienne in France, had been vanquished by Charles Martel, who derived that humble but glorious surname from the event we are now to record. Charles had left Eude the enjoyment of his dukedom, provided that he held it as a fief from the crown; but blind with ambition and avarice, Eude adopted a scheme which threw Christianity itself, as well as Europe, into a crisis of peril which has never since occurred. By marrying a daughter with a Mahometan emir, he rashly began an intercourse ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... 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 ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 3 - "Destructors" to "Diameter" • Various
... "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 it ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... communal property and the jurisdiction over foreigners, exempted freemen from servile tasks, suppressed arbitrary imposts, and restored the tribunes and other Byzantine magistrates, whom the people were allowed to select freely according to the ancient custom. In 952 Istria became a German fief by gift of Otho I. of Germany (who had conquered Italy the year before) in feud to his brother Henry, duke of Bavaria, together with Verona and Friuli. Documents show the presence of large numbers of persons of German origin during the tenth century; ...
— The Shores of the Adriatic - The Austrian Side, The Kuestenlande, Istria, and Dalmatia • F. Hamilton Jackson
... England were also in desolation. The long "Hundred Years' War" between them began in 1340. France was not averse to it. In fact, her King, Philip of Valois, rather welcomed the opportunity of wresting away Guienne, the last remaining French fief of the English kings. France, as we have seen, was regarded as the strongest land of Europe. England was thought of as little more than a French colony, whose Norman dukes had in the previous century been thoroughly chastised and deprived of half their territories by their overlord. To be ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... Franks keep silence—all save Ganelon Who rose and stood before the King, and spake Bold words and haughty:—"Put not faith in fools, Nor me nor others; follow your own rede! Since King Marsile makes offer to become Your man, with hands joined; furthermore will hold Spain as a fief from you; yea, will receive Our law as his law, he who counsel gives Such proffer to reject, cares not a whit What death we die. No counsel take of pride; Let pass the fools and listen to ...
— La Chanson de Roland • Lon Gautier
... old form of Anversa, Antwerp. All versions that I have seen call Gautier Comte d'Angers or Angiers, the translators, who forgot or were unaware that Antwerp, as part of Flanders, was then a fief of the French crown, apparently taking it for granted that the mention of the latter city was in error and substituting the name of the ancient capital of Anjou ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... belief in 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 ...
— The Discovery of America Vol. 1 (of 2) - with some account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest • John Fiske
... had for some time carried on with his uncle, Sigismund I., King of Poland. But he subsequently embraced the doctrines of Luther, deserted his order, became reconciled to Sigismund, and for his reward East Prussia was now first raised into a duchy as a fief of Poland, and made hereditary in his family. This Albert was the founder of the University of Konigsberg. (See Puffendorff, ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 18. Saturday, March 2, 1850 • Various
... into the {148} hands of the Pope's legate (A.D. 1213), and receiving it again at the end of three days as a tributary vassal of the Roman see, caused England to be looked upon for some years as only a fief of Rome. ...
— A Key to the Knowledge of Church History (Ancient) • John Henry Blunt
... 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 ravages extended along ...
— Landholding In England • Joseph Fisher
... cart was brought to the door, drawn by two black horses with long tails and hairy feet, a tram one and a leader. Though the job shook my nerves, I could not refuse to give them a hand down the stair with the coffin, which had a fief-like smell of death and saw-dust; and we got it fairly landed in the cart, among clean straw. I saw the clodhapper of a ploughman aye dighting his een with ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - tailor in Dalkeith • D. M. Moir
... 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
... judgment," as Thwackum did Square;[362] but he does not tell us whether he 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, ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... him, he admitted that during their wanderings, my father, with that recklessness that alternated curiously with his caution, had ventured into the city of Bologna notwithstanding that it was a Papal fief, for the sole purpose of studying with Marozzo that Falcone himself had daily accompanied him, witnessed the lessons, and afterwards practised with my father, so that he had come to learn most of ...
— The Strolling Saint • Raphael Sabatini
... 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 of ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... 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 the Crown. ...
— Half-Hours with Great Story-Tellers • Various
... she regarded with unmerited tenderness. That queen found that it would be madness to attempt the restoration of the abbey lands. She found that her subjects would never suffer her to make her hereditary kingdom a fief of Castile. On these points she encountered a steady resistance, and was compelled to give way. If she was able to establish the Catholic worship and to persecute those who would not conform to it, it was evidently because the people ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... 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 ...
— Old English Libraries, The Making, Collection, and Use of Books • Ernest A. Savage
... a 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 estate it is perhaps scarce a ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... 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 ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... and it became customary for the bride to let the ring fall in front of the altar and then stoop at her husband's feet to pick it up.[323] Feudalism carried on, and by its military character exaggerated, these Teutonic influences. A fief was land held on condition of military service, and the nature of its influence on marriage is implied in that fact. The woman was given with the fief and her ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... insisted on spreading a report of his own death (in which to gratify him I willingly acquiesced), he left at my disposal the rents of a great proportion of his estates, and especially all those, which, having belonged to your mother, reverted to him as a male fief. In this he may have thought that he was acting with extreme generosity, while, in the opinion of all impartial men, he will only be considered as having fulfilled a natural obligation, seeing that, in justice, if not in strict law, you must be considered as the ...
— The Black Dwarf • Sir Walter Scott
... Hammer was dead, and his young son Pepin was king of France. Bego of Belin was his dearest friend, and to him he had given all Gascony in fief. You would have far to go to find the peer of the valiant Bego. None of King Pepin's nobles dared gainsay him. Rude in speech and rough in war, though he was, he was a true knight, gentle and loving to his friends, very tender to his wife and children, kind to his vassals, just ...
— Hero Tales • James Baldwin
... Spain, so runs the chronicle; castle and keeper alike had gone down except Saragossa, the mountain town, where King Marsil held his court, surrounded by 20,000 Mohammedan nobles. At their council it was agreed to accept Spain as a fief from the emperor, and ten knights set out with golden bridles and ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various
... of Duchatel, by the gift, as her marriage portion, of a tract of land adjoining the seigniory of Mainville, and at present the property of Andre Duchatel; but which, at the nuptials, would be added to the Montigny manor, as a sort of arriere fief, and so gratify the craving of the elder Montigny for territorial aggrandizement. The splendid person of Claude had long ago caught the slight affections of Seraphine, who in her visits to Mainville, would hang upon him, much to his distaste, and persist to make him her reluctant ...
— The Advocate • Charles Heavysege
... 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 join with ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... choicest love of this heart of mine! O dame of noblest line, whom I snatched away on thy bride night that none might prevent me taking thy maidenhead or tumble thee before I did, and whom none save myself hath loved or hath enjoyed: O my sweetheart! I would fief sleep a little while." He then laid his head upon the lady's thighs; and, stretching out his legs which extended down to the sea, slept and snored and sparked like the roll of thunder. Presently she raised her head towards ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... independence of the Northmen is well illustrated by their behavior when called to court to do homage for this new fief. Rollo was directed to place both his hands between those of the king, and take his vow of allegiance; so he submitted with indifferent grace. But when he was told that he must conclude the ceremony by kissing the ...
— Legends of the Middle Ages - Narrated with Special Reference to Literature and Art • H.A. Guerber
... had fallen 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 ...
— History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. Vol. II. • James Anthony Froude
... even so stated here," said the minstrel, and he proceeded to read:—"'The watch at this outpost of Hazelside [Footnote: Hazelside Place, the fief granted to Thomas Dickson by William the Hardy, seventh Lord Douglas, is still pointed out about two miles to the southwest of the Castle Dangerous. Dickson was sixty years of age at the time when Lord James first appeared in Douglasdale. ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... conscious of his inability to rescue the crown from the united forces of the Hungarian partisans of Stephen, and from the Turks, condescended also to send a message to the sultan, offering to hold the crown as his fief and to pay to the Porte the same tribute which John had paid, if the sultan would support his claim. The imperious Turk, knowing that he could depose the baby king at his pleasure, insultingly rejected the proposals which Ferdinand had ...
— The Empire of Austria; Its Rise and Present Power • John S. C. Abbott
... melody or love, but for the same reason that people sing so loudly in church—in the urgent need of expending superabundant vitality. His voice rolled out under the purple sky as if he were the first man, but half emerged from brutishness, pursuing his mate in a world all fief to him, a world that revealed her as she fled through the door of morning and the door of evening, rolling its vaporous curtains back as she went through. It was Reddin, come forth from his dark house, ...
— Gone to Earth • Mary Webb
... 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 officers who attended the court, commanded ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... his word, and when she had her own again, Beatrix gave him a third share of her broad lands, to hold in fief to Gilbert Warde, though he had no rightful claim; and because he had saved her life, he was called Dunstan Le Sauveur, because he had saved her and many; and he had favour of King Henry and fought bravely, and was made a knight, and ...
— Via Crucis • F. Marion Crawford
... Lake Debo, 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 are no longer upon ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume 19 - Travel and Adventure • Various
... plans to settle his great fief. Working in his brain no doubt were dreams of a feudal domain, of a seigniorial chateau looking out across the great river, of respectful tenants paying annual dues to their lord in labour, kind, and money, ...
— A Canadian Manor and Its Seigneurs - The Story of a Hundred Years, 1761-1861 • George M. Wrong
... ever 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 ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... towers, the "Qui qu'en grogne" is a memorial of her dauntless spirit. 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, ...
— Brittany & Its Byways • Fanny Bury Palliser
... persuasion, it is said, of his mother, Eleanor, the more effectually to conciliate Henry, formally resigned his crown into the hand of the emperor, who immediately restored it to him to be held as a fief of the empire, and burdened with a yearly feudal payment to his superior lord of five thousand pounds. This strange transaction rests on the authority of the contemporary annalist Hoveden. Richard, descending the Rhine as far as Cologne, ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various
... Apulia and Sicily, when the Pope declared that Frederick had forfeited it. He could not, however, prevent his brother Charles, Count of Anjou, from accepting it; for Charles had married Beatrice, heiress of the imperial fief of Provence, and being thus independent of his brother Louis, was able to establish a branch of the French royal family on the throne at Naples. The reign of St. Louis was a time of much progress and improvement. There were great scholars and thinkers at all the universities. Romance and poetry ...
— History of France • Charlotte M. Yonge
... 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 ...
— Jonah and Co. • Dornford Yates
... history 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
... Isabella's father, determined to seize the duchy for himself, instead of allowing it to descend to Isabella, the proper heir, who, being but a woman, was looked upon with very little respect. "Lorraine," he said, "was too noble and valuable a fief to descend in the family on the ...
— Margaret of Anjou - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... R. E. See Ducange, Gloss Lat. tom. i. p. 297.) His antagonist Muratori reduces the popes to be no more than the exarchs of the emperor. In the more equitable view of Mosheim, (Institut. Hist. Eccles. p. 264, 265,) they held Rome under the empire as the most honorable species of fief ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... legality is thrown over the naked facts as they are ushered into history. Contemporary criticism did occasionally make itself heard, especially from the emperor, who declared that the Netherland provinces must come to him as a lapsed imperial fief. For a time Philip denied that any links existed between his domain and the empire, but in 1449 he finally found it convenient to discuss the question with Frederic III. at Besancon; still he never came to the point of ...
— Charles the Bold - Last Duke Of Burgundy, 1433-1477 • Ruth Putnam
... comes upon a mud-hut, where the custom-house officials lie in wait for him. This house without land (for the bulk of the estate is really in Guerande) derives an income from the marshes and a few outlying farms of over ten thousand francs a year. Such is the fief of Les Touches, from which the Revolution lopped its feudal rights. The paludiers, however, continue to call it "the chateau," and they would still say "seigneur" if the fief were not now in the female line. When Felicite set about restoring ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac
... having his own reasons for changing parishes. The Flemish tradition then gives place to that of Brittany, which is authenticated by documents. One Olivier Guinemer gave a receipt in 1306 to the executors of Duke Jean II de Bretagne. He held a fief under Saint-Sauveur de Dinan, "on which the duke had settled tenants contrary to agreements." The executors, to liquidate the estate, had to pay immense sums for "indemnification, restitution and damages," and took care ...
— Georges Guynemer - Knight of the Air • Henry Bordeaux
... having guaranteed the treaty of Munster; which hath given it a constant pretense to thrust itself into the affairs of the empire. When France got Alsace yielded by treaty, it was very willing to have held it as a fief of the empire; but the empire was then wiser. Every power should be very careful not to give the least pretense to a neighboring power to meddle with the affairs of its interior. Sweden hath already felt the effects of the Czarina's calling herself Guarantee of its present ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... jurisprudence of the kingdom, cited by Imbert, in his Judicial Practice; all those cited by Monstrelet, in 1459, against the witches of Artois; the decrees of the same parliament, of the 13th of October 1573, against Mary Le Fief, native of Saumur; of the 21st of October 1596, against the Sieur de Beaumont, who pleaded, in his defence, that he had only sought the aid of the devil for the purpose of unbewitching the afflicted and of curing diseases; of the 4th of July 1606, against Francis du Bose; ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... to this betrothal, and caused him to swear fealty to his uncle for Brittany as a fief of Normandy. Arthur was now thirteen, and had newly received the order of knighthood, adopting as his device the lion, unicorn, and griffin, which tradition declared to have been borne by his namesake, and this homage must have been sorely against his will. He ...
— Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... which are the very key to the understanding of the Middle Ages, is often itself wrapt in obscurity. On 'fief' and 'feudal' how much has been disputed. [Footnote: Stubbs, Constitutional History of England, vol. i. p. 251.] 'Morganatic' marriages are recognized by the public law of Germany, but why called 'morganatic' is unsettled still. [Footnote: [There is no mystery about this ...
— On the Study of Words • Richard C Trench
... eldest daughter. These were legal or required aids. They took the place of taxation in modern states. There were other things that the vassal was expected to do which were gracious or voluntary. If the liege died without heirs, or forfeited the fief by a violation of the conditions on which it was held, it reverted to the lord. The liege was invested with the fief. He knelt before the suzerain, put his hands within the hands of the suzerain, and ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... last Duke of Cleves died a few months before, "leaving all the world his heirs"—to use Henry's own phrase—the Emperor had stepped in, and over-riding the rights of certain German princes had bestowed the fief upon his own nephew, the Archduke Leopold. Now this was an arrangement that did not suit Henry's policy at all, and being then—as the result of a wise husbanding of resources—the most powerful prince in Europe, ...
— The Historical Nights Entertainment, Second Series • Rafael Sabatini
... uncle, El Zagal, usurped my birthright. Amidst open war and secret treason I wrestled for my crown; and now, the sole sovereign of Granada, when, as I fondly imagined, my uncle had lost all claim on the affections of my people by succumbing to the Christian king, and accepting a fief under his dominion, I find that the very crime of El Zagal is fixed upon me by my unhappy subjects—that they deem he would not have yielded but for my supineness. At the moment of my delivery from my rival, I am received with execration by ...
— Leila or, The Siege of Granada, Book I. • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... hierarchy, was obviously due to its ever-increasing exactions. The chief of these were the pallium or price paid to the Pope for an ecclesiastical investiture; the annates or first year's revenues of a church fief; and the tithes which were of two kinds, the great tithe paid in agricultural produce, and the small tithe consisting in a head of cattle. The latter seems to have been especially obnoxious to the peasant. The sudden increase in ...
— German Culture Past and Present • Ernest Belfort Bax
... King John II bestowed upon his youngest son, Philip the Hardy, Duke of Touraine, as a reward, it is said, for the valour he displayed in the battle of Poictiers. The county of Burgundy, generally known as Franche-Comte, was not included in this donation, for it was an imperial fief; and it fell by inheritance in the female line to Margaret, dowager Countess of Flanders, widow of Count Louis II, who was killed at Crecy. The duchy and the county were soon, however, to be re-united, for Philip married Margaret, daughter and heiress of Louis de Male, Count of Flanders, ...
— History of Holland • George Edmundson
... reputation. He was bent upon the permanent aggrandisement of all the branches of the Delle Rovere family. Casting about for territorial dignity, the Pope set his heart upon the Lordship of Imola, where Taddeo Manfredi of Faenza, being in financial difficulties, had surrendered the fief ...
— The Tragedies of the Medici • Edgcumbe Staley
... great king, like that of France or England, went to war, he summoned all his crown vassals to attend him, with the number of armed men corresponding to his fief, as it was called, that is, territory which had been granted to each of them. The prince, duke, or earl, in order to obey the summons, called upon all the gentlemen to whom he had given estates, to attend his standard with their followers in arms. The gentlemen, in ...
— Composition-Rhetoric • Stratton D. Brooks
... 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 ...
— The Coinages of the Channel Islands • B. Lowsley
... to his dominion shall unite Gay Reggio, joined to Modena's bold land. And his redoubted valour lend such light, The willing people call him to command. Sixth of the name, his Azo rears upright The church's banner in his noble hand: Fair Adria's fief to him in dower shall bring The child of ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... on the state of Florence, already quoted more than once, contains a curious aristocratic comment upon the shop-life of illustrious Florentine citizens. See Appendix ii. Even Piero de' Medici refused a Neapolitan fief on the ground that he was ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... deserted fief in possession for one year, shall be considered as having gained it by prescriptive right, and shall be defended in its possession against the previous ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 5, November, 1863 • Various
... Saktawut, Subedar Major, 215th Indurgurh [Todd's] Rajputs, now at Lyndhurst, Hampshire, England, this letter is sent to Madhu Singh, Sawant, Risaldar Major [retired] 146th [Dublana] Horse, on his fief which he holds under the Thakore Sahib of Pech at Bukani by the River, near Chiturkaira, Kotah, Rajputana, written in the fifth month of ...
— The Eyes of Asia • Rudyard Kipling
... supposed that the Nawab Faiz Muhammad Khan of Jhajjar was deeply implicated in this murder, though no proof of it could be found. He died soon after the execution of Shams-ud-din, and was succeeded in his fief by his eldest son, Faiz Ali Khan.[21] This fief was bestowed on the father of the deceased, whose name was Najabat Ali Khan, by Lord Lake, on the termination of the war in 1805, for the aid he had given to the retreating ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... made everybody laugh, and the gentleman who had addressed me came and embraced me, not in the least offended. The joke was explained to me. His name was Casalnovo, not Casanova, and he was duke and lord of the fief of that name. ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... 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 ...
— The Unity of Civilization • Various
... of him, in the Revue Encyclopedique, 115th livraison, p. 277, &c. it is well and pleasantly observed, that, "such was his abstraction from all surrounding objects and passing events, he could tell you who was Bishop of such a diocese, and who was Lord of such a fief, in the XIIth century, much more readily, and with greater chance of being correct, than he would, who was the living Minister of the Interior, or who was the then Prefect of the department of the Seine?" By the kindness of ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Two • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... "Did its owner sell it to thee?" and quoth the robber, "Not so; I stole it, this and other than it." Then said the Chief, "How camest thou to bring it for sale to the place whence thou stolest it?" "I will not tell my tale save to the Sultan, for that I have a profitable counsel wherewith I would fief bespeak him." "Name it!" "Art thou the Sultan?" "No!" "I'll not tell it save to himself." Accordingly the Wali carried him up to the Sultan and he said I have a counsel for thee, O my lord." Asked the Sultan, "What is ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... 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 ...
— The Cariboo Trail - A Chronicle of the Gold-fields of British Columbia • Agnes C. Laut
... &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, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... 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 ...
— The Collection of Antiquities • Honore de Balzac
... &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
... he 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 ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... led up to Magna Charta. But it was a scene as ignominious as the first surrender before Pandulf, when Pope Innocent accepted the homage of King John as the price of supporting him against his barons, and the wretched King, before the altar of St. Paul, ceded his kingdom as a fief of the Holy See. The Archbishop of Canterbury protested both ...
— Old St. Paul's Cathedral • William Benham
... survivor set off 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 than usual, however, ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... abbey, and a most powerful one, being presided over by daughters of kings or women of none but the highest rank, and these noble women held the power of life and death over all the country which was fief ...
— As Seen By Me • Lilian Bell
... 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. [The Seamy Side ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe
... sought the fair; how often fief and fain * My palming felt the finger ends that bear the varied stain! And tickled pouting breasts that stand firm as pomegranates twain * And bit the apple of her cheek kissed ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 7 • Richard F. Burton
... alive in 1212, but he probably died soon afterwards, without returning to France, (Ducange, Observations sur Villehardouin, p. 238.) His fief of Messinople, the gift of Boniface, was the ancient Maximianopolis, which flourished in the time of Ammianus Marcellinus, among the cities of Thrace, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... setting out for the summer. We have no summers, I think, but what we raise, like pineapples, by fire. My bay is an absolute water-soochy, and teaches me how to feel for you. You are quite in the right to sell your fief in Marshland. I should be glad if you would take one step more, and quit Marshland. We live, at least, on terra firma in this part of the world, and can saunter out without stilts. Item, we do not wade into pools, and call it going upon the water, and ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... 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, known usually ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... permitted for 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 ...
— Publications of the Scottish History Society, Vol. 36 • Sir John Lauder
... to Lord Otto, lowered it before him. Otto then demanded, "Who art thou, and what is thy request?" to which he answered, "Mighty feudal Lord, I am kinsman of Dinnies von Meseritz, and pray you for the fief." "And who are these on horseback who follow thee?" "They are the feudal vassals of my Lord, even as my father was." And Otto said, "Ride up, my men, and do as your fathers have done." Then Frederick Ubeske rode up, lowered his banner (charged with a sun and peacock's ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V1 • William Mienhold
... to be a sailor of the sea, a rover, and he saw the rest of his existence passed with her, aboard their faithful little schooner. They would have the whole round world as their playground; they held the earth and the great seas in fief; there was no one to let or to hinder. They two belonged to each other. Once outside the Heads again, and they swept the land of cities and of little things behind them, and they two were left alone once more; alone in the great ...
— Moran of the Lady Letty • Frank Norris
... reasonless: below 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 rose, ...
— Time's Laughingstocks and Other Verses • Thomas Hardy
... "in a city of a thousand families, or in a secondary fief, [11] he might be charged with the governorship; but I cannot answer ...
— Chinese Literature • Anonymous
... 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 ...
— Shakespeare's Family • Mrs. C. C. Stopes
... love's live breath, Shines, and subdues the shadow of time called grief, The shade whose length of life is as life's date brief, With joy that broods on the sunlight past, and saith That thought and love hold sorrow and change in fief. ...
— A Channel Passage and Other Poems - Taken from The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles - Swinburne—Vol VI • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... that Miako should be visited and the mikado compelled to ratify it; and as the Prince of Satzuma is responsible for the latest murder, it has been proposed that Kagosima should be bombarded, and that his fief, the Loo Choo Islands, should be held as a material guarantee for the fulfilment of his (the tycoon's) and the mikados' obligations. Some British journalists have maintained that as the expense of a war, from the courage of the people and the appliances of the rulers, would be great, ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No 3, September 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... 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 the ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... from Catalonia. (Instituciones, p. 96.) The twenty-sixth title, part. 4, of Alfonso X.'s code, (Siete Partidas,) treats exclusively of them. (De los Feudos.) The laws 2, 4, 5, are expressly devoted to a brief exposition of the nature of a fief, the ceremonies of investiture, and the reciprocal obligations of lord and vassal. Those of the latter consisted in keeping his lord's counsel, maintaining his interest, and aiding him in war. With all this, there ...
— History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella V1 • William H. Prescott
... French on one occasion by a scheme to capture the place and oust the intruders. This—it is a cruel story—was when he summoned its governor, his own half-brother, Sir Pierre Arnaut, to Orthez, under pretense of desiring a visit. Sir Pierre was holding Lourde stoutly in fief for the English prince, and was in considerable doubt about going, for he knew his man and had suspicions; however, "all thynges consydred, he sayd he wolde go, bycause in no wyse he wolde displease the erle." ...
— A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees • Edwin Asa Dix
... 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, ...
— In Freedom's Cause • G. A. Henty
... combined forces began in 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 ...
— Romance of Roman Villas - (The Renaissance) • Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney
... warfare drove the ceorl, the free tiller of the soil, to 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 ...
— History of the English People, Volume I (of 8) - Early England, 449-1071; Foreign Kings, 1071-1204; The Charter, 1204-1216 • John Richard Green
... fact, been formed in the course of history, and which have disappeared or may disappear in its course. There exists between the aesthetic fact and a human institution (such as monogamic marriage or the fief) a difference to some extent comparable with that between simple and compound bodies in chemistry. It is impossible to indicate the formation of the former, otherwise they would not be simple, and if this be discovered, they cease to be simple and ...
— Aesthetic as Science of Expression and General Linguistic • Benedetto Croce
... Papal Court was itself too sensible of the enormity to give its sanction, he (Hildebrand) overbore the wavering Pope and forced him to bless the enterprise; and, when he had in his turn mounted the Papal throne, he vehemently claimed that his action had made England a fief for ever of the Holy See! Gregory VII and Innocent III are the two greatest and most sincerely religions of the medieval Popes, and they carried the power of the Papacy to a height which excites the amazement of the modern historian. But they were at the same time the most militant of the Popes, ...
— The War and the Churches • Joseph McCabe
... 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 dear wife. It must belong to your children ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... thousand, it is difficult to realize its importance in the 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 ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... the railway leading from Havre de Grace to Rouen, was, in the sixth century, the seigniory of one Vauthier, chamberlain to Clotaire I., the royal son of Clovis and Clotilda. Nothing whatever is known of the earlier part of Vauthier's history, more than that he held the fief of Yvetot from Clotaire by the feudal tenure of military service. An able and trustworthy statesman in the council-chamber, a valiant and skilful commander in the battle-field, the chamberlain lived on terms ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 458 - Volume 18, New Series, October 9, 1852 • Various
... Augustus until its destruction by Theodoric. And nearest of all these to him were the Longobardo church and the ancient houses and the dismantled fortress and the ruined walls of what had been the fief of the Toralba, the mediaeval fortified town of Ruscino. It still kept this, its latest, name, but it kept little else. Thrice a thousand centuries had rolled over it, eating it away as the sea eats away a cliff. War and fire and time had had their will with ...
— The Waters of Edera • Louise de la Rame, a.k.a. Ouida
... The real causes of war were mutual jealousies, and passion for military glory. The assigned causes were, that Charles did not respect the claims of Francis as king of Naples; and, on the other hand, that Francis had seized the duchy of Milan, which was a fief of the empire, and also retained the duchy of Burgundy, the patrimonial ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... introduced this modified form of the feudal system into Canada, when he constituted, in 1627, the whole of the colony as a fief of the great fur-trading company of the Hundred Associates on the sole condition of its paying fealty and homage to the Crown. It had the right of establishing seigniories as a part of its undertaking ...
— Lord Elgin • John George Bourinot
... 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 ...
— Ionica • William Cory (AKA William Johnson)
... in Shen-hsi. Fourteenth in descent from him came Thien-Yi, better known as Khang Thang, or Thang the Successful, who dethroned the last descendant of the line of Hsia, and became the founder of a new dynasty. We meet with him first at a considerable distance from the ancestral fief (which, however, gave name to the dynasty), having as his capital the southern Po, which seems correctly referred to the present district of Shang-khiu, in the department of Kwei-teh, Ho-nan. Among the twenty-seven sovereigns who followed Thang, there were three ...
— The Shih King • James Legge
... Urbino. Blood more illustrious than hers could not be found in Italy. When she was 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 ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... evening passed, and at its end Makrisi followed the troubadour to his regranted fief of Vaquieras. This was a chill and brilliant night, swayed by a frozen moon so powerful that no stars showed in the unclouded heavens, and everywhere the bogs were curdled with thin ice. An obdurate wind swept like a knife-blade ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... 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 ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various
... 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
... Count of Avesnes when his freehold was declared a mere fief, himself a mere vassal, a serf of the Earl of Hainault. Read, too, the dreadful story of the Great Chancellor of Flanders, the first magistrate of Bruges, who also was claimed as a serf.—Gualterius, Scriptores Rerum Francicarum, ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... independence. The sovereigns could not at discretion, or by the want of it, play the bloody game of war for their mere amusement; and the emperor putting in his claim at this epoch to his ancient rights of sovereignty over Brabant, as an imperial fief, the council and the people treated ...
— Holland - The History of the Netherlands • Thomas Colley Grattan
... name of soldiers. Hence when these crude forms of social life began to crystallize into the carefully marked ranks of the feudal system, the "milites"[2] formed the order of gentlemen, the smaller feudatories, who gave land in fief to their vassals—generally the old inhabitants—while holding their own nominally from the "duces," or dukes, the representatives of their former leaders in war, who held their tenure direct ...
— The Communes Of Lombardy From The VI. To The X. Century • William Klapp Williams
... 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 ...
— The Gorgeous Isle - A Romance; Scene: Nevis, B.W.I. 1842 • Gertrude Atherton
... death in 1245, Charles of Anjou succeeded to his dominions to the prejudice of his two English brothers-in-law, and became the founder of a Capetian line of counts of Provence, which brought the great fief of the empire under the same northern French influences which Alfonse of Poitiers was diffusing over the lost inheritances of Eleanor of Aquitaine ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout
... brothers, having assumed the habit of the order, lived and died in the performance of acts of charity and devotion. His lands, to which no one asserted any claim, lay waste until they were reassumed by the emperor as a lapsed fief, and the ruins of the castle, which Waldeck had called by his own name, are still shunned by the miner and forester as haunted by evil spirits. Thus were the miseries attendant upon wealth, hastily attained and ill employed, exemplified in the ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... 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 the ...
— Beatrice d'Este, Duchess of Milan, 1475-1497 • Julia Mary Cartwright
... 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
... old, his wife nigh about his age; that her husband was now their only child; that he was descended from a son of the great Earl John, killed at the Bridge of Chatillon, that he held the estate of Bridgefield in fief on tenure of military service to the head of his family. She did not know how much it was worth by the year, but she must pray the good ladies to excuse her, as she had many preparations to make. Volunteers to assist ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... under the Peshwah in the famous campaigns of 1737-8 against the Mogul emperor, Mohammed Shah: and on the cession of Malwa to the Mahrattas in 1743, he received the government of that province as a jaghir or fief, which he transmitted at his death to his son Mahdajee. The life of this daring and politic chief would be almost identical with the history, during the same period, of Central and Upper India, in which he attained such a degree of authority as had not been ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 343, May 1844 • Various
... Champignelles family to give a receipt for the legal dower of Mademoiselle Philiberte (this was necessary in those days); but in return, the Champignelles, who were allied to many of the great families, promised to obtain the erection of the little fief of la Chanterie into a barony; and they kept their word. The aunt of the future husband, Madame de Boisfrelon, the widow of a parliamentary councillor, promised to bequeath her whole fortune ...
— The Brotherhood of Consolation • Honore de Balzac
... friend to the church, and a favourer of the clergy. On this occasion he promised to improve those happy beginnings in proportion to the means he should acquire by the favour of the Holy See. It is said that he even proposed to hold his new kingdom as a fief from Rome. The pope, therefore, entered heartily into his interests; he excommunicated all those that should oppose his enterprise, and sent him, as a means of ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... 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 effectively beyond ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 1 of 8 • Various
... 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, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 8 - The Later Renaissance: From Gutenberg To The Reformation • Editor-in-Chief: Rossiter Johnson
... Count Herbert, 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 Herbert passed by ...
— William the Conqueror • E. A. Freeman
... now in his gloomy castle at Rouen—which his great-grandfather, Richard the 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
... nothing more universally acknowledged than in his power to interfere in the marriage 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 that ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... five hundred years. But true to his instinct, the 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 him with a hint for the whole ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... 1732. He was the son of a watchmaker, and learned his father's trade. He invented a new escapement, and was allowed to call himself "Clockmaker to the King"—Louis XV. At twenty-four he married a widow, and took the name of Beaumarchais from a small fief belonging to her. Within a year his wife died. Being a fine musician, he was appointed instructor of the King's daughters; and he was quick to turn to good account the influence thus acquired. In 1764 he made a sudden trip to Spain to vindicate a sister ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... Confucius willingly sent him off, and would gladly have accompanied him. 'Let me 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
... the Athenian 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 countries of modern Georgia, Armenia, Balkh, the Punjaub, Affghanistan, ...
— The Fifteen Decisive Battles of The World From Marathon to Waterloo • Sir Edward Creasy, M.A.
... 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 ...
— Successful Recitations • Various
... 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 shriek ...
— McGuffey's Eclectic Spelling Book • W. H. McGuffey
... of estates 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, tillers ...
— The Coming of the Friars • Augustus Jessopp
... a little domain, held in fief, and is known as La Grande Breteche. During my stay at Vendome, where Despleins had left me in charge of a rich patient, the sight of this strange dwelling became one of my keenest pleasures. Was it not far better than a ruin? Certain memories of indisputable authenticity ...
— La Grande Breteche • Honore de Balzac |
