Definition
An archaic Anglo-Norman French (Law French) term for a feoffee — that is, a person to whom a freehold estate in land is conveyed by feoffment. The feffe is the recipient of the grant; the person making the grant is the feoffor. The term appears in early English legal records and medieval treatises, particularly in sources drawing on Law French usage, but was displaced entirely by "feoffee" in standard legal English long before the modern period.
Common Confusion
FEFFE vs. FEOFFOR: The feffe (feoffee) receives the estate; the feoffor conveys it. Because both terms derive from the same root and appear in close proximity in historical texts, researchers working with medieval and early modern sources occasionally transpose them. The directional relationship is: feoffor → [feoffment] → feffe/feoffee.
FEFFE vs. FEOFFEE: These are the same office, not distinct roles. "Feffe" is simply an earlier or contracted Law French spelling of "feoffee." No substantive legal distinction exists between them. The confusion is purely orthographic and historical.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers are most likely to encounter "feffe" when working with early English legal manuscripts, Year Books, or sources that preserve Law French spelling conventions — particularly texts predating the standardization of legal English in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Britton, the thirteenth-century legal treatise cited in Burrill, is the primary source context for this spelling; researchers consulting Britton's original chapters 34 and 42 will find "feffe" used where later commentators would write "feoffee."
The practical research trap is indexing and search: a corpus search for "feoffee" will not return "feffe," and vice versa. When searching Law Mind materials for land conveyance in medieval or early common law contexts, run both spellings. Also watch for variant forms including "fefee," "feoffe," and "feoffé."
The Burrill entry is notable for embedding the feffe definition within a larger discussion of fee farm and feudum talliatum — a common feature of historical dictionary entries that groups related feudal land concepts together. A researcher landing on "feffe" in Burrill should follow the cross-references to fee farm and the note to Hargrave's edition of Coke on Littleton, where the estate terminology is more fully developed.
Because the term is essentially extinct in operative legal writing, it has no modern statutory or case law presence. Its research value is entirely historical and documentary.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's Law Dictionary provides the only source entry for this term in the Law Mind corpus. Burrill defines feffe simply as a Law French form of "feoffee," citing Britton chapters 34 and 42, and moves quickly into the related doctrine of fee farm — reflecting the editorial tendency of nineteenth-century legal dictionaries to use narrow headwords as entry points into broader feudal land law discussions.
No entry for "feffe" appears in Black's Law Dictionary (early editions) or Tomlin's Law Dictionary, which had fully standardized the "feoffee" spelling by the time those works were compiled. This absence is itself informative: the term had passed out of active legal use before the major Victorian-era dictionaries were written, leaving Burrill's citation of Britton as one of the few anchors for the spelling in English legal lexicography.
Spelman's Glossarium (referenced obliquely via Burrill's citation of Spelman, voc. Feodum) and Coke's Reports (8 Co. 27) provide the deeper feudal framework within which feffe/feoffee operated, but neither uses the contracted "feffe" spelling in their most-cited passages.
Jurisdictional Note
The term is exclusively English common law in origin and has no independent development in American, Scottish, or civilian legal traditions. American land law absorbed the concept of feoffee through the reception of English common law but standardized the spelling as "feoffee" from the earliest period of American legal writing.