Freeholder

[f. FREE a. + HOLDER; rendering AF. fraunc tenaunt.]

  1.  One who possesses a freehold estate.

  For the use in Scots Law see quot. 1890.

c. 1425.  Wyntoun, Cron., VIII. xi. 9.

1523.  Fitzherb., Surv., Prol. And than may the lorde of y^e sayd maners, lordshippes, landes, and tenementes haue parfyte knowledge … who is his freholders, copyeholders, customarye tenaunte, or tenaunt at his wyll.

1664.  Butler, Hud., II. iii. 1169.

1765.  Blackstone, Comm., I. ix. 347. He [the coroner] is still chosen by all the freeholders in the county court.

1876.  Bancroft, Hist. U. S., III. i. 13. The cultivator of the soil was, for the most part, a freeholder.

1890.  Bell’s Dict. Law Scotl. (ed. 7), Freeholder … in modern language, applied to such as, before the passing of the Reform Act of 1832, were entitled to elect or be elected members of Parliament, and who must have held lands extending to a forty shilling land of old extent, or £400 Scots of valued rent.

  fig.  1637.  Rutherford, Lett., 9 Sept. (1891), 498–9. I would praise Him for this, that the whole army of the redeemed ones sit rent-free in heaven. Our holding is better than blench: we are all freeholders.

1670.  Brooks, Wks. (1867), VI. 373. Hypocrites are hell’s free-holders; all other sinners are but inmates to hypocrites.

1751.  Jortin, Serm. (1771), V. ix. 195. God did not make them freeholders; they held their possessions under him, and to him they were obliged to pay a large yearly rent, for the service of his court, of the tabernacle or temple.

  2.  slang. (See quot.)

a. 1700.  B. E., Dict. Cant. Crew, Freeholder, he whose Wife goes with him to the Ale-house.

1725.  in New Cant. Dict.

  Hence Freeholdership.

1810.  Bentham, The Elements of the Art of Packing (1821), 247. That which speaks of high treason and freeholdership.

1862.  Ansted, Channel Isl., IV. xxiii. (ed. 2), 544. It began with fiefs, and it has developed a system of practical freeholdership.