Feudal Law. [ad. F. † subinfeudation (Cotgr.) or med.L. *subinfeudātio: see SUB- 9 (b) and INFEUDATION. Cf. F. sous-infeudation (16th c.).]
1. The granting of lands by a feudatory to an inferior to be held of himself, on the same terms as he held them of his superior; the relation or tenure so established.
In England this practice was abolished in 1290 by the statute Quia Emptores, but in Scotland the principle of subinfeudation still survives, and is carried out to an unlimited degree.
1730. M. Wright, Introd. Law Tenures, 156, note. Subinfeudation (by which a new inferior Feud was carved out of the old, the old one still subsisting).
1766. Blackstone, Comm., II. 91. The superior lords observed, that by this method of subinfeudation they lost all their feodal profits, of wardships, marriages, and escheats, which fell into the hands of these mesne or middle lords. Ibid., 136. The widow is immediate tenant to the heir, by a kind of subinfeudation or under-tenancy.
a. 1862. Buckle, Misc. Wks. (1872), I. 353. Subinfeudation, so general in France, was checked by Magna Charta.
1876. Bancroft, Hist. U.S., I. vii. 182. To the proprietary was given the power of creating manors and courts baron, and of establishing a colonial aristocracy on the system of sub-infeudation.
1880. Sir J. B. Phear, Aryan Village in India, vi. 154. This system of sub-infeudation … prevails universally throughout Bengal.
2. An instance of this; also, an estate or fief created by this process.
1766. Blackstone, Comm., II. 257. In subinfeudations, or alienations of lands by a vasal to be holden as of himself.
1773. Archæologia, II. 306. These land-holders of the first class, or barons, had a power of making subinfeudations of their land.
1832. Austin, Jurispr. (1879), II. 879. The statute ‘Quia Emptores’ 18 Edw. 1 prevented any new subinfeudations.
1870. M. A. Lower, Hist. Sussex, I. 265. The manor is a sub-infeudation of Washington.
transf. 1840. New Monthly Mag., LIX. 161. What subinfeudations of parentheses, what accumulations of paragraph upon paragraph.
So Subinfeudatory, a sub-vassal holding by subinfeudation.
1886. Encycl. Brit., XX. 298/2. At the time of the Conquest the manor was granted to Walter d’Eincourt, and in the 12th century it was divided among the three daughters of his subinfeudatory Paganus.
