Forms: 7 feudall, 7–9 feodal, (8 Sc. fewdal), 7– feudal. [ad. med.L. feudālis, feodālis, f. feud-um, feod-um, FEUD. Cf. F. féodal.]
1. Of or pertaining to a feud or fief; of the nature of a feud or fief.
1614. Selden, Titles of Honor, 188. Neither did the Prouinces make them otherwise then Personal. For they were not annext to them as Feudall, but giuen into their Rule at the Emperors or Kings will.
a. 1677. Hale, Com. Law Eng., ix. 183. Wales, that was not always the Feudal Territory of … England.
1710. J. Dundas, View Feudal Law, xii. 47. The Money got for a Few is moveable … not Fewdal, for it does not succeed in place of the Few.
1828. Kent, Comm. (1873), III. liii. 497. The precise time when benefices became hereditary, is uncertain. They began to be hereditary in the age of Charlemagne, who facilitated the conversion of allodial into feudal estates.
b. Her. (See quot.)
1847. Gloss. Heraldry, Arms of Succession, otherwise called feudal arms, are those borne by the possessors of certain lordships or estates.
2. Of or pertaining to the holding of land in feud.
1639. Spelman, Feuds & Tenures, xxiii. 38. There was no … intervenient Lord to claim them by any feodal Tenure.
1767. Blackstone, Comm., II. 39. In all countries where the feodal polity has prevailed.
1781. Gibbon, Decl. & F., II. 48. The lands bestowed on the veterans, as the free reward of their valour, were henceforwards granted under a condition, which contains the first rudiments of the feudal tenures.
1873. H. Spencer, Stud. Sociol., v. 103. Re-introducing in a more general form the feudal arrangement of attachment to the soil, and reciprocal claim on the soil.
b. Feudal system: the system of polity which prevailed in Europe during the Middle Ages, and which was based on the relation of superior and vassal arising out of the holding of lands in feud.
1776. Adam Smith, W. N. (1869), I. I. xi. 251. Poland, where the feudal system still continues to take place, is at this day as beggarly a country as it was before the discovery of America.
1875. Kingsley, Herew. (1866), I. ix. 207–8. The feudal system never took root in their soil.
3. Of or pertaining to the feudal system; existing or such as existed under that system. Feudal lawyer: one learned in feudal law. Feudal writers: those who treat of the feudal system.
1665. Surv. Aff. Netherl., 32. By the Feodall [printed Feodau] Law, that King, their Lord, had forfeited his Right to his Fee, by fellonious actings on their goods and lives.
1765. Blackstone, Comm., I. 241. According to the known distribution of the feodal writers.
1807. Crabbe, The Parish Register, II. 204.
| Our peasants, strong and sturdy in the field, | |
| Cannot these arms of idle students wield; | |
| Like them, in feudal days, their valiant lords | |
| Resign’d the pen and grasp’d their conqu’ring swords. |
1816. Scott, Old Mort., ii. Under the reign of the last Stuarts, there was an anxious wish on the part of Government to counteract, by every means in their power, the strict or puritanical spirit which had been the chief characteristic of the republican government, and to revive those feudal institutions which united the vassal to the liege lord, and both to the Crown.
1840. T. A. Trollope, Summ. in Brittany, II. 106. To visit the ruins of two ancient feodal castles.
1886. Stubbs, Med. & Mod. Hist., 64. It is time too, as I said before, not only that we had a feudal map of England before the manorial boundaries are wiped away, but that we had a careful collection of manorial customs.
b. Feudal vassal, lord, etc.: one holding that position in the sense implied in the feudal system.
1639. Spelman, Feuds & Tenures, ii. 4. Their Feudal Vassals … enjoyed their Feuds no otherwise than from year to year at the pleasure of their Lords, either by grant or sufferance.
1839. W. Chambers, Tour Holland, 65/1. Otho, the feudal proprietor of this stronghold in the tenth century, the present reigning duke of Nassau and the king of Holland draw their origin.
1856. Froude, Hist. Eng. (1858), I. i. 18. That loyalty with which the people followed the standard, through good and evil, of their feudal superiors.
c. Occasionally of persons or their opinions: Adhering to the principles of the feudal system.
1876. Freeman, Norm. Conq., V. xxiv. 463. Lawyers and administrators alike would naturally look at everything with feudal eyes.
1883. Ouida, Wanda, I. 89. We are very feudal still, and our forest laws have escaped alteration in this especial part of the province.
† B. sb. pl. Feudal privileges. Obs. rare.
1625. F. Markham, Bk. Hon., II. iv. § 5. 54. All sorts whatsoeuer shall enioy their Feodalls and Rights, to which they are truely borne by lineall Descent.
Hence Feudally adv., in a feudal manner or spirit; under feudal conditions.
1839. Hallam, Hist. Lit., ii. II. § 44. He [the pope] cannot depose these princes, even for a just cause, as their immediate superior, unless they are feudally his vassals; but he can take away and give to others their kingdoms, if the salvation of souls require it.
1850. Mazzini, Royalty & Repub., 158. Conspirators, for the sake of power under Charles X., some of them members of secret Republican Societies—yet ardently protesting in public their reverence for the monarchical constitutional charter; abjectly flattering and trembling before the people when it arose in revolutionary omnipotence, yet feudally insolent when the lion was quieted again, conspiring against republican institutions to which all of them, even M. Montalembert, had sworn faith.
1873. Miss Broughton, Nancy, II. xii. 184. A lone and distant cottage, tenanted by a very aged, ignorant, and feudally loyal couple.
