Definition
An archaic Law French form of the word "feoffor" — the person who makes a feoffment, that is, who transfers an estate in fee simple by delivery of seisin (physical possession) to another. The feffour is the grantor in the feudal conveyancing ceremony by which freehold land was conveyed, as distinguished from the feoffee, who is the recipient of the grant.
Why It Matters in Research
This term will appear almost exclusively in medieval and early common law sources written in Law French or in English texts that borrow Law French vocabulary directly. Researchers encountering "feffour" in manuscript records, year books, or early treatises should recognize it immediately as a spelling variant of "feoffor" and cross-search under that headword. The spelling "feffour" reflects the phonetic conventions of Law French orthography and is not a distinct legal concept — it is the same office and role as the feoffor. Failure to make this connection can cause a researcher to treat the term as unidentifiable jargon when it is in fact a well-documented role in feudal land transfer. Burrill's citation to Britton (c. 34, 42) places the term firmly in thirteenth-century English legal usage, meaning this form will be concentrated in sources of that period and shortly after. Later sources uniformly use "feoffor" or the anglicized "feoffer."
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's Law Dictionary provides the only significant historical dictionary treatment, identifying the term concisely as "L. Fr. A feoffor" with a citation to Britton. This is characteristic of Burrill's handling of Law French variants: he records the form, identifies its language register, equates it to the recognized English legal term, and points to the authoritative source. Burrill does not elaborate on the feffour's legal duties or capacities beyond the identification, which is appropriate given that the substantive law is carried by the entry for "feoffor" rather than this variant spelling. No other major historical legal dictionaries in the Law Mind corpus (Bouvier, Black, Tomlin) appear to carry a separate entry for "feffour," reinforcing that this is a spelling variant rather than a term of independent legal art.