"Fief" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... feudal system had then reached its fullest development, and the laws established by Rollo were properly administered. With the accession of Hugh Capet to the throne of France, Normandy had become a most loyal as well as powerful fief of the crown. The tenth century witnessed also an attempt on the part of the serfs of the Duchy to throw off something of the awful grip of the feudal power. These peasants were the descendants of Celts, ...
— Normandy, Complete - The Scenery & Romance Of Its Ancient Towns • Gordon Home
... 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 ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... by 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 ...
— History of Holland • George Edmundson
... ruling 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
... 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: fly, fly, or ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume I. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... 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 ...
— THE CHINESE CLASSICS (PROLEGOMENA) Unicode Version • James Legge
... LUIGI, a natural son of Pope Paul III., who figures in Benvenuto Cellini's Life; received in fief from the Papal See various estates, including the dukedom of Parma; he ill requited his father's trust and affection by a life of debauchery and finally ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... 'for this is the message I would have you bear to King Marsile. If he agrees to become my vassal, and to receive Holy Baptism, I will give him half of Spain as a fief. The other half will be held by Roland, my nephew. If these terms do not please King Marsile, I will myself besiege Saragossa, and will take him and bind him in chains. Then he shall be brought to Aix, where he shall be put to a shameful death. So take this letter ...
— The Book of Romance • Various
... 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 to bring four thousand colonists to the province ...
— Lord Elgin • John George Bourinot
... to the mad Wallacks. They are a nation of madmen on the other side of Transylvania. Their country was formerly a fief of Hungary, like Moldavia, which is inhabited by the same race, who speak the same ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... Anguersa, the 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 on ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... the archbishopric of Rheims. The young 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 the rights of his two elder sisters, Gersendis, ...
— William the Conqueror • E. A. Freeman
... which he belonged, one of whom fell by the side of the brave Earl of Douglas at Otterbourne. On these occasions Simon usually held upon his knee an ancient broadsword, which had belonged to his ancestors before any of the family had consented to accept a fief under the peaceful dominion of the monks of St. Mary's. In modern days, Simon might have lived at ease on his own estate, and quietly murmured against the fate that had doomed him to dwell there, ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... 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
... fragments and the Germans were among them, holding dominion with the bayonet and the bullet; and finally, six weeks later, I saw how they behaved when substantially all their country, excluding a strip of seaboard, had been reduced to the state of a conquered fief held and ruled by force ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb
... private property, after the death of the owner, fall egalement a tous les jeunes travailleurs. The practical consequences of this system may now be seen in Turkey. There, the principal military fiefs are held in this way. Hence it is, that the Turkish owner of such a fief builds as little as possible. When one of his walls threatens to fall, it is kept standing by means of props. If it falls in fact, the only consequence is that there are fewer rooms in the house, and the owner settles beside ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... a day perhaps, and they were stooping in the fields again. And the children early put shoulder to the wheel; those too small for the fields begged food in the streets of the town. Little Poland was virtually a fief of Joe Hilliard's. Men, women, and elves looked up to him as to a benevolent feudal lord, and the naturalized males voted Joe Hilliard's party ticket with ...
— The Henchman • Mark Lee Luther
... or a stick, was formerly used as a symbol of investiture of a feudal fief. According to some authors the breaking of the straw or stick was a proof that the vassals renounced their homage; hence the allusion of Moliere. The breaking of a staff was also typical of the voluntary or compulsory abandonment ...
— The Love-Tiff • Moliere
... 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, do you ...
— In Freedom's Cause • G. A. Henty
... 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, of a parish church in which over the seigniorial pew should ...
— A Canadian Manor and Its Seigneurs - The Story of a Hundred Years, 1761-1861 • George M. Wrong
... clipped this ancient feature from Canadian feudalism, and given absolute military control of the country to the Governor at Quebec. The seigneur's judicial powers varied according to the importance of his fief. Barons were empowered to erect gallows and pillories, but the ordinary judicial powers of a Canadian seigneur were confined to Middle and Low justice, ...
— Old Quebec - The Fortress of New France • Sir Gilbert Parker and Claude Glennon Bryan
... 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 get sore throats. I trust yours is better ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... had been to him a Port Royal or royal refuge, he 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 a marshy and ...
— Pascal • John Tulloch
... 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 or benefice—premuntur ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... prisoner patriotically fighting against it. That Henry V. 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 best of those at home. Charles ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... 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
... Towers property, and counterscarp of the 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 de Villeray. ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... 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 ...
— In Troubadour-Land - A Ramble in Provence and Languedoc • S. Baring-Gould
... for bad, Gregory had succeeded in rendering 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 for and apparently with success at times, ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... the purse or the sword, compared to that of the spirit, is poor and contemptible. As to lands, you may have agrarian laws, and equal partition. But a man's intellect is all his own, held direct from God, an inalienable fief. It is the most potent of weapons in the hands of a paladin. If the people comprehend Force in the physical sense, how much more do they reverence the intellectual! Ask Hildebrand, or Luther, or Loyola. They fall prostrate before it, as before an idol. The mastery of mind over mind is the ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... believe that she had been subject to certain influences; it is so with all visionaries: some unseen director leads them. Thus it must have been with Jeanne. At Vaucouleurs she was heard to say that the Dauphin held the kingdom in fief (en commende).[86] Such a term she had not learnt from the folk of her village. She uttered a prophecy which she had not invented and which had obviously been ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... remaining third of the value of the property, and took possession of the land and its population. This was the first stage of freedom for the serfs. They became Crown peasants, held their dwellings and bit of land as an hereditary fief from the Crown, and paid annually for the same a sum total of five rubles, (about four shillings for each male person;) a rent for which, assuredly, in the whole of Germany, the very poorest farm is not to be had; to say nothing of ...
— The trade, domestic and foreign • Henry Charles Carey
... 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 ...
— The Unity of Civilization • Various
... 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 privately and ...
— Old St. Paul's Cathedral • William Benham
... improvisatrice are low and quiet, and her motions assert the dignity of a life nobly lived. For Joan of Iblin has returned from Crusade, has conquered the intruders and restored quiet to the realm. But, thereafter, siege is laid to his own castle and fief of Beirut, and now, gray-haired and full of honors, his time of service drawing to a close, his trust fulfilled and the young monarch come to his majority, he implores his royal ward to assemble his full court, and kneeling in their ...
— The Royal Pawn of Venice - A Romance of Cyprus • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... 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 sea, to the depth of the girths of the saddle; and during the ...
— The Coinages of the Channel Islands • B. Lowsley
... noblemen of their property, in order that he might convert their castles and domains into principalities for his illegitimates. He began with the weakest, and had despatched this little army to eject Malatesta from his fief of Rimini. Faustus and the Devil, riding along the road, perceived upon an eminence contiguous to the papal camp two men, magnificently dressed, engaged in a furious combat. Moved by curiosity, Faustus advanced to the spot; the fiend followed him; and they perceived, ...
— Faustus - his Life, Death, and Doom • Friedrich Maximilian von Klinger
... to the perquisites of Densuke. Thus time passed; and with it the delivery of O'Mino, and the crisis in the affairs of Densuke approached. Now Geishu[u] Sama[7] was a fourth month daimyo[u]. Hence with the iris blossoms he took his departure from Edo to the government of his fief in Aki province. The Sakuji Machibugyo[u], one Takahashi Daihachiro[u], plead illness on this occasion of the exodus. As unable to accompany his lord he remained in Edo. On plea of convenience he established himself in the abandoned quarters of the ashigaru or common soldiers, ...
— The Yotsuya Kwaidan or O'Iwa Inari - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 1 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... of the principality the Turks completely occupied the whole southern bank of the Danube, along with some posts and what is known as Temesvar, on the northern side. The Transylvanian slopes of the Carpathians and the country beyond were a fief of the German, or, as it was called, the Roman Empire, over which at that time Rudolph II. reigned, whilst the territory north of Moldavia formed part of Poland. But although Wallachia was nominally autonomous, and ...
— Roumania Past and Present • James Samuelson
... Jenson (Roos) in West-Gothland, all three councillors of state, were still in arms for Christian. That the first-named nobleman joined the party of Gustavus before the end of the year we know from his letter of thanks for a fief of which he received the investure. Both the latter were proclaimed in 1523 to be enemies of the realm, as also was the archbishop Gustavus Trolle. He had repaired to Denmark two years before, in order to obtain, by his personal instances with the King, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various
... 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 ...
— Montezuma's Daughter • H. Rider Haggard
... 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 ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... 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 water, but seem ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume 19 - Travel and Adventure • Various
... a child 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 rather like it[72]—the ...
— Epic and Romance - Essays on Medieval Literature • W. P. Ker
... 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 no object ...
— The Dove in the Eagle's Nest • Charlotte M. Yonge
... 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." He left the castle with his brother Jean under strict injunctions, and proceeded to ...
— A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees • Edwin Asa Dix
... wine, a fourth from a dealer in anchovies; and 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 ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... plateau; and, if Herodotus is to be believed, an organized monarchical society, ruled by the "Heraclids" of Sardes, was already developed there. We know practically nothing about it; but since some three centuries later the Lydian people was rich and luxurious in the Hermus valley, which had once been a fief of the Hatti, we must conclude that it had been enjoying security as far back as 1000 B.C. Who those Heraclid princes were exactly is obscure. The dynastic name given to them by Herodotus probably implies that they traced their ...
— The Ancient East • D. G. Hogarth
... 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 ...
— Hero Tales • James Baldwin
... 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 ...
— The War and the Churches • Joseph McCabe
... the right of 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 Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... 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 ...
— The Eve of the French Revolution • Edward J. Lowell
... defiance. 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 ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... give him 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 ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... 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. Jeanne ...
— Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois, Complete • Marguerite de Valois, Queen of Navarre
... "or I should rather say the Marchioness of Boscofolto, since the Duke has just bestowed on her the fief of that name, is impatient to make your acquaintance; and since you doubtless remember the saying of the Marquis de Montesquieu, that to know a ruler one must know his confessor and his mistress, you will perhaps be glad to seize both ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... young ambitious souls confine? To the next realm she stretch'd her sway, For Painture near adjoining lay, A plenteous province, and alluring prey. A Chamber of Dependencies was framed, (As conquerors will never want pretence, When arm'd, to justify the offence) And the whole fief, in right of poetry, she claim'd. The ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol II - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... to Rome, although he was an old man of eighty, and, having kissed the foot of His Holiness, besought him that he should deign to make use of him in the buildings which were to be erected, so men said, at the Monte, a place which the Lord Duke of Florence had given in fief to the Pontiff. The Pope, then, having received him warmly, ordained that the means to live in Rome should be given to him without exacting any sort of exertion from him; and in this manner Niccolo spent several months in Rome, drawing many ...
— Lives of the most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 06 (of 10) Fra Giocondo to Niccolo Soggi • Giorgio Vasari
... hundred camels that bend the knee; A thousand hawks that have moulted free; Four hundred mules with Arab gold, Which fifty wains might scantly hold. But he saith to France must I wend my way: He will follow to Aix with brief delay, Bend his heart unto Christ's belief, And hold his marches of me in fief; Yet I know not what in his heart may lie." "Beware! beware!" ...
— The Harvard Classics, Volume 49, Epic and Saga - With Introductions And Notes • Various
... in disarray, their fields cultivated by new owners, towns and cities grow up that are as strong or stronger than the castle. Before the Crusades no roturier, or mere tiller of the soil, could hold a fief, but the demand for money was so great that fiefs were bought and sold, and Philippe Auguste (1180) solved the problem by a law, declaring that when the king invested a man with a sufficient holding of land or fief, he became ipso facto a noble. This is the same common-sense ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... housetops of Roche-Corbon 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 an old cripple, with whom he had knocked about a great deal in Palestine and other places. ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 1 • Honore de Balzac
... theory was 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
... authority to make them, it has been proposed 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 ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No 3, September 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... kept 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 raised ...
— Via Crucis • F. Marion Crawford
... also during the 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 abandoned twenty ...
— The Book of Delight and Other Papers • Israel Abrahams
... County of Flanders was at this time in large part a fief of the French Crown. (See Natalis de Wailly, notes to Joinville, p. 576.) But that would not much affect the question either one ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... attract our attention, and we shall draw a rapid outline of this legislation, which, barbarian at the onset, becomes by degrees subject to the rules of moral progress. We shall ascertain that military service is the essence itself of the "fief," and that thence springs feudal right. On our way we shall protest against civil wars, and shall welcome emancipation and the formation of the communes. Following the thousand details of the life of the people, we shall see the slave become serf, and the serf become ...
— Manners, Custom and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period • Paul Lacroix
... Assistant to the deceased Cannabich, and was now out of work, says: "I had not the least thought of profiting by this vacancy; but what happened? The Herr Graf von Werthern, at Schloss Beichlingen, sent his Steward [LEHNSDIRECTOR, FIEF-DIRECTOR is the title of this Steward, which gives rise to obsolete thought of mill-dues, road-labor, payments IN NATURA], his Lehnsdirector, Herr Kettenbeil, over to my LOGIS [cheap boarding quarters]; who brought a gracious salutation from his Lord; ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVI. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Ten Years of Peace.—1746-1756. • Thomas Carlyle
... complicated by the continual 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 rebellion in Sweden, and a long ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various
... XI; his letter is dated the 9th December, 1474. Ferdinand terms Christopher Columbus a subject of Louis; it was because, as is known, Columbus was a Genoese, and Louis was sovereign of Genoa; although that city and Savona were held of him in fief by the duke ...
— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving
... change remains to be noted. Hitherto the King of England had borne the title of Lord of Ireland, the theory being that Ireland was held as a fief from the Pope. As marking a final repudiation of every kind of papal authority, Henry, after the suppression of the Geraldine rising, assumed the style of King of Ireland. The fact that the change was needed has some bearing on the opposed papal ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes
... 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 throughout ...
— The Pirates Own Book • Charles Ellms
... 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 ravages extended along the coasts of Europe as far south as Gibraltar, ...
— Landholding In England • Joseph Fisher
... bridge, and 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 village ...
— Twixt France and Spain • E. Ernest Bilbrough
... 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 ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... 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 ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... followed my Duke ere I was a lover, To take from England fief and fee; But now this game is the other way over— But now England hath ...
— Puck of Pook's Hill • Rudyard Kipling
... Ganelon," said Charlemagne, "this is my message to the heathen King Marsil. Say to him that he shall bend the knee to gentle Christ and be baptized in His name. Then will I give him full half of Spain to hold in fief. Over the other half Count Roland, my ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 2 (of 12) • Various
... outrage. Two of them, Walter and Odo, were bribed by William to deliver the fortresses of St. Valori and Albemarle into his hands: others soon after imitated the example of revolt; while Philip, King of France who ought to have protected his vassal in the possession of his fief, was, after making some efforts in his favour, engaged by large presents to remain neuter. The duke had also reason to apprehend danger from the intrigues of his brother Henry. This young prince, who had inherited nothing of his father's great possessions, but some of his money, had furnished Robert, ...
— The History of England, Volume I • David Hume
... 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 Les Touches, ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac |
