Definition
Latin. "In doing" or "in making or paying." A term of medieval conveyancing used in feudal tenure documents to describe the obligation of a tenant to perform services or render payments as a condition of holding land. The phrase most commonly appeared as *faciendo inde talia servitia* — "doing therefor such services" — introducing the specific duties owed by a tenant to a lord as part of a tenure reservation clause.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers working in early property law, feudal tenure, or medieval conveyancing will encounter *faciendo* primarily in two contexts: tenure grants reserving services, and rent reservation clauses in ancient deeds. Coke on Littleton (Co. Litt. 47a) treats it as one of the recognized apt words for reserving a rent, meaning its presence in a deed carried technical legal weight — a court reading such an instrument would understand the word as operative, not merely descriptive.
The term is historically tethered to the concept of *factiones* — acts of service, as opposed to payments in kind or money rents. This distinction matters when reconstructing the nature of a tenure obligation from a historical instrument: *faciendo* signals performance-based duty, which had different enforcement characteristics than a money payment obligation.
For corpus researchers, *faciendo* will not appear in modern American legal documents. It belongs to the stratum of Latin feudal vocabulary that persisted in English common law instruments through the early modern period and was largely displaced by plain-language drafting conventions and statutory tenure reforms (most dramatically by the Statute of Tenures, 12 Car. II, c. 24, in England). Encountering it in an American source would indicate either historical quotation, academic treatment of feudal tenure origins, or a document of colonial vintage drawing on English conveyancing forms.
Cross-reference to *tenendum* and *reddendum* clauses is essential: *faciendo* operated within the *reddendum* (reservation clause) of a deed, alongside the *tenendum* (the holding clause). Understanding the structural grammar of a medieval conveyance helps isolate where *faciendo* does its legal work.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill provides the fullest treatment, correctly identifying *faciendo* as a term of art in ancient deeds, citing both Coke and Bracton, and distinguishing it as applicable specifically to service obligations consisting of acts (*factiones*) rather than mere payments. Burrill's note that it applied to "those services which consisted of acts done" reflects an important doctrinal subdivision within feudal tenure — the difference between doing-type services (plowing, castle-guard, knight service) and paying-type obligations.
Black's (both editions) gives only a fragment — "in doing or paying; in some activity" — which accurately conveys the literal translation but misses the technical conveyancing context that gives the term its legal significance. A researcher relying on Black's alone would understand the word but not know how to use it when reading an ancient deed.
No entry in the surveyed dictionaries addresses the post-feudal obsolescence of the term or its relationship to the broader *reddendum* clause structure, which represents a gap for researchers who need to situate the word within the architecture of the instrument where they find it.