Definition
An obligation owed by an abbey or other religious house to its royal founder, consisting of an allowance of food, drink, clothing, lodging, or money for the sustentation of a designated servant of the crown. The king, as founder of the religious house, held the right to nominate a person — typically an aged or infirm royal servant — to be maintained by that house at the house's expense. The allowance was delivered in kind (meals, garments, lodging) or, later, commuted to a money payment.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): Listed only as an alternative form of corrody, with no independent definition — both spellings point to the same historical legal concept.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): "An allowance of meat, drink, or clothing due from an abbey or other religious house for the sustenance of such of the king's servants as he may designate to receive it."
Editorial note: The common and legal definitions here are unusually close, because the word never passed into general civilian use — it remained a term of art throughout its working life. The Webster's entry is essentially a lay restatement of the legal definition rather than a divergent popular meaning.
Common Confusion
CORODY vs. PENSION: The distinction mattered in practice. A corody was a maintenance allowance directed to any royal servant whom the king chose to place in the religious house, charged against the house as an institution. A pension, in the ecclesiastical and feudal sense, was a recurring payment granted specifically to a clergyman or religious officer out of church revenues. Both could be paid in money, and both were obligations running against ecclesiastical property — but their origins, beneficiaries, and legal bases differed. Black's first edition draws this line explicitly. Researchers encountering either term in medieval records should not treat them as interchangeable.
Why It Matters in Research
CORODY is an extinct term with almost no modern legal application, but it appears frequently enough in medieval records, monastic cartularies, and early English legal proceedings to require precise identification. Several navigational points:
Spelling variation is significant. Historical sources use corody, corrody, corodie, and corrody interchangeably. A corpus search limited to one spelling will miss substantial material. Both spellings were standard into the nineteenth century.
The term marks a specific legal relationship — royal founder's rights over religious houses — that collapsed with the dissolution of the monasteries under Henry VIII. Any corody appearing in post-Reformation sources is either an anachronism, a survival in a private grant context, or a historical reference. Bouvier confirms the concept was already obsolete by the time of Coke and Blackstone.
Assize of corody: Bouvier notes that an assize lay for a corody, meaning there was a recognized possessory action to recover the right. A researcher encountering assize proceedings in early plea rolls should know that corody rights were litigable as property interests, not merely customary expectations.
Corpus connections: Because corodies were obligations running against land held by religious houses, they appear in close proximity to records involving advowsons, tithes, and other ecclesiastical property rights. A research thread beginning with corody may need to extend into those adjacent categories.
Historical Dictionary Support
The four source dictionaries are in agreement on substance but vary in depth. Black's (both editions) provides the clearest functional definition and draws the corody/pension distinction. Bouvier adds the procedural dimension — the availability of an assize — and cites Coke and Blackstone for the proposition that corodies were already obsolete in the classical common law period. Anderson's entry merely redirects to PENSION, which understates the distinction and risks misleading a researcher who follows only that cross-reference.
What the historical sources collectively underemphasize: the corody right was a consequence of the founder relationship, itself a legally significant status that carried multiple privileges and obligations. The dictionaries treat corody in isolation without situating it within the broader structure of founder's rights. Blackstone's brief treatment at 2 Bl. Com. 40 is the standard reference point, but it is skeletal. Fitzherbert's Natura Brevium, cited by Bouvier, is the more practical source for understanding the pleading dimensions.
Jurisdictional Note
Corody was exclusively an English common law institution tied to the structure of royal patronage over religious foundations. It has no counterpart in American law and does not appear in any American jurisdiction's legal framework. The concept is relevant to Anglo-American legal research solely in the historical and comparative context.