Definition
De feodo is a Latin and Law Latin phrase meaning "of fee" or "in fee." It appears in medieval English statutes and legal documents to describe an office, land, or right held in fee — that is, as a heritable, permanent interest rather than a temporary appointment or life estate. A person holding an office de feodo holds it as a form of property that can descend to heirs, not merely as a personal privilege that expires at death or the pleasure of a grantor.
The phrase is closely related to in feodo (in fee) and functions as a descriptive qualifier attached to offices and tenures to signal their hereditary character. It is not a standalone doctrine but a shorthand classification embedded in the feudal vocabulary of medieval English law.
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Common Confusion
De feodo is sometimes read as equivalent to "in fee simple" in the modern property sense, but the two are not identical. Lord Coke noted that the phrase encompasses not only those holding a fee simple in their office or land but also those holding by other fee tenures — including fee tail and other hereditary arrangements. The word "fee" in this context carries its full feudal range, not just the fee simple absolute of modern property law. Researchers should not assume de feodo signals fee simple ownership without examining the surrounding tenure context.
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Why It Matters in Research
This phrase surfaces almost exclusively in pre-modern sources — chiefly the statutes of Edward I and II, forest charters, and the Year Books — and is largely absent from legal discourse after the seventeenth century. Researchers working in the Law Mind corpus on feudal tenure, heritable office, or medieval administrative history will encounter it primarily as an embedded qualifier in statutory text rather than as a defined term argued in its own right.
Two research traps are worth noting. First, the phrase appears in abbreviated or contracted form in manuscript and early printed sources, and editors have not always rendered it consistently. Second, the transition from feudal office-holding to modern public office created a long period in which de feodo language persisted in statutes even as the underlying heritable character of offices was being dismantled by legislation and judicial decision. A statute using de feodo language may therefore describe an arrangement that was already legally obsolete or contested by the time the source was written or reprinted.
For corpus researchers, the most productive cross-reference path runs through the vocabulary of tenure: in feodo, fee simple, fee tail, and the broader feudal framework. Understanding de feodo as a qualifier — not a freestanding legal concept — is essential for accurate indexing and interpretation of the sources in which it appears.
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Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill is the primary dictionary source for this term in the Law Mind corpus, and his treatment is concise but instructive. He defines de feodo as "of fee; in fee" and notes its application in old statutes to officers — citing the Carta de Foresta (Forestarius de feodo, forester of fee) and the Statute of Westminster II (Marescallus de feodo, marshal of fee) as representative examples. Burrill's entry preserves Lord Coke's significant observation that the phrase is not limited to those holding a fee simple in their offices but extends more broadly to all who hold by fee tenure.
No other dictionary in the immediate source set covers this term. Older comprehensive dictionaries of Law Latin, such as Du Cange's Glossarium, provide continental parallels for feudum and its derivatives, but the specifically English statutory usage recorded by Burrill reflects the Anglo-Norman feudal vocabulary that evolved distinctly from continental practice. The Burrill entry, though brief, captures the essential navigational intelligence: the phrase is a term of art in medieval English statutory language, and Coke's gloss on its scope remains the authoritative interpretive note for reading those statutes.
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Jurisdictional Note
De feodo is a term of English feudal law and appears as a live phrase only in English and Anglo-Irish legal sources. It has no meaningful counterpart in American law, where heritable office was not recognized, and it does not appear as an operative legal phrase in Scots law, which developed its own distinct feudal vocabulary.
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Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
No single Law Mind Encyclopedia entry addresses feudal tenure or heritable office directly. Researchers pursuing the broader doctrinal context of fee-based holding may find background orientation in: Business Organizations & Corporate Law Encyclopedia — Corporate Formation: Defective Incorporation (De Facto, Corporation by Estoppel), for comparative perspective on how "de facto" status terminology evolved from similar Latin classificatory roots, though the substantive doctrines are distinct.
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