Definition
To enfeoff is to invest a person with a freehold estate in land by the act of feoffment — the formal conveyance of corporeal hereditaments (physical, inheritable land interests) from one party to another. The word describes the act performed by the grantor: to enfeoff is to make the gift of the fee, placing the recipient in legal possession of the freehold.
In classical common law property, enfeoffment was the operative verb for the entire ceremony of livery of seisin — the grantor physically delivering possession of the land, often by handing over a clod of earth or a twig on the land itself, in the presence of witnesses. The person enfeoffed thereby acquired seisin, the foundational concept of lawful possession under the feudal land system.
The term is now archaic in active legal use. Modern property conveyances — accomplished by deed, recording, and statutory transfer — have entirely displaced feoffment and its vocabulary. Enfeoff survives primarily in historical legal texts, title chain analysis, and academic treatment of medieval and early modern land law.
---
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): To transfer a fief to, to endow with a fief; to put a person in legal possession of a freehold interest. Also, in an obsolete secondary sense, to give up completely; to surrender or yield.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): To give a feud or right in land to; to invest with a fief or fee by the process of feoffment. Also, obsolete figurative sense: to give in vassalage; to make subservient. ("The king enfeoffed himself to popularity." — Shakespeare.)
The gap worth noting: the Shakespearean and figurative uses — surrender, subservience, yielding — have no legal counterpart. In legal usage, enfeoff is strictly and exclusively an act of granting and investing, never surrendering. A researcher encountering the word in literary or rhetorical contexts should not read legal conveyance intent into it; equally, a researcher in legal sources should not expect the figurative sense to appear.
---
Common Confusion
ENFEOFF is sometimes loosely treated as synonymous with any land transfer, but the term carries specific technical content: it applies only to the conveyance of corporeal hereditaments (tangible, inheritable land) by feoffment, and historically required livery of seisin to be complete. It does not describe the grant of incorporeal hereditaments (such as easements or rents), which were conveyed by distinct instruments. Researchers should also distinguish enfeoff from infeudation, which describes the broader act of placing land into the feudal tenure system, and from the related but distinct concept of investiture, used in ecclesiastical and certain continental contexts.
---
Why It Matters in Research
ENFEOFF is a term researchers will encounter in historical title chains, colonial land grants, English Year Books, early American deed records, and treatises on real property from Littleton through Blackstone. Several navigational points matter:
**Temporal boundary.** The Statute of Frauds (1677) and later recording acts progressively eliminated the practical need for livery of seisin and its vocabulary. By the nineteenth century, enfeoff had become largely ceremonial in legal writing; by the twentieth, it is diagnostic of historical rather than contemporary sources. When you see it in a primary source, it signals pre-modern conveyancing procedure.
**Corpus connections.** Enfeoff cannot be understood in isolation. It presupposes familiarity with feoffment (the transaction), seisin (the possession thereby conveyed), the fee (the estate granted), and livery of seisin (the ceremony of delivery). These terms form a cluster; a researcher pulling one will need the others. Anderson's Dictionary simply redirects to FEE, which is accurate as far as it goes but understates the procedural content the term carries.
**Colonial American records.** Early colonial land grants — particularly in Virginia, Maryland, and the Carolinas — employed enfeoffment language directly inherited from English practice. Researchers working with seventeenth- and eighteenth-century American title records should expect the term and understand that its legal effect depends on whether livery of seisin was actually performed or merely recited pro forma.
**Trap in historical sources.** Some historical deeds and grants use enfeoff as a general term of art meaning simply "convey," without strict attention to whether the technical requirements of feoffment were satisfied. The presence of the word does not guarantee that a valid feoffment occurred; it may be formulaic. This matters in title dispute contexts where the validity of the original conveyance is at issue.
---
Historical Dictionary Support
The source dictionaries are in close agreement on the core meaning and remarkably spare on elaboration — reflecting the term's status as a well-settled piece of legal vocabulary that pointed researchers to the fuller treatment under FEOFFMENT rather than standing alone.
Black's (both editions) and Bouvier agree word-for-word on the primary definition: investment with an estate by feoffment; gift of corporeal hereditaments. Burrill adds the Latin equivalents (feoffare, infeudare) and the Blackstone citation (2 Bl. Com. 310), which remains the standard learned reference for the doctrine. Anderson's redirection to FEE reflects a different organizational choice — treating the estate as primary and the act of conveyance as derivative — which is defensible but loses the procedural specificity that makes enfeoff useful as a research term.
What the historical dictionaries collectively underemphasize: the ceremonial dimension. The act of enfeoffing was not merely a verbal or written act; its legal force depended on physical delivery of possession. This procedural reality is crucial context that Black's and Bouvier assume the reader already knows. Researchers new to feudal property law who rely solely on the dictionary definitions will miss it.
---
Jurisdictional Note
Enfeoff is a term of English common law origin and has no meaningful current variation across U.S. jurisdictions — all have replaced feoffment with statutory conveyancing. In jurisdictions with civil law heritage (Louisiana, Quebec, parts of the former Spanish and French colonial territories), the term and its underlying concept were never operative; different transfer vocabulary and doctrine apply entirely.
---
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
Law Mind Encyclopedia — Feoffment (primary reference for the transaction of which enfeoffment is the operative act)
Law Mind Encyclopedia — Seisin (the legal possession conveyed by enfeoffment)
Law Mind Encyclopedia — Fee Simple (the estate most commonly conveyed by feoffment)
---