Definition
To feoffare is to enfeoff — that is, to convey a freehold estate in land by the ceremony of feoffment, investing the recipient with seisin. The term is the Latin verb form from which the English legal action of feoffment derives. The one who performs the act is the feoffator (the grantor or bestower); the one who receives is the feoffatus (the grantee or feoffee). Feoffare thus names the act of transferring a fee by livery of seisin, the foundational conveyancing mechanism of medieval English land law.
Common Confusion
Feoffare, feoffment, feoffee, and feoffor are closely related but distinct: feoffare is the verb (the act of conveying); feoffment is the noun for the transaction or instrument; feoffor is the English form for the grantor; feoffee is the recipient. Historical sources sometimes use these interchangeably or conflate the Latin and English forms, which can create confusion when reading pleadings, deeds, or law French records. A researcher encountering feoffator in a Latin source and feoffor in an English source is looking at the same party in the same transaction.
Why It Matters in Research
Feoffare is a Latin term of art found primarily in medieval and early modern legal records — plea rolls, conveyances, and Latin treatises — rather than in English-language case law or modern statutes. Researchers working in the Law Mind corpus should expect to encounter it in sources organized around the feudal tenure system: Bracton, Glanvill, Littleton's Tenures, and Coke on Littleton. Because livery of seisin as a mode of conveyance was effectively abolished in England by the Statute of Uses (1535) and superseded further by the Statute of Frauds (1677), feoffare appears almost exclusively in historical and antiquarian legal literature after the seventeenth century. In American sources, the term is vestigial — appearing in treatises on real property history and occasionally in equity cases tracing title through ancient deeds, but never as operative language in modern conveyancing. A researcher tracing chain of title through colonial or early American records may encounter the term in deeds predating local adoption of statutory conveyancing forms. The key navigational point: when feoffare or its cognates appear in a source, the researcher is almost certainly in feudal-tenure territory, and the analysis must account for the distinct rules governing freehold estates held by livery rather than by deed or statutory transfer.
Historical Dictionary Support
The three source dictionaries are in close agreement. Both editions of Black's define feoffare as "to enfeoff; to bestow a fee" and identify the Latin agent nouns feoffator and feoffatus for the grantor and grantee respectively. Bouvier's is more spare — "to bestow a fee" — with a citation to Reeve's History of English Law, signaling the term's proper home in legal history rather than active practice. No source offers a definition that diverges substantively from the others, which reflects the term's character: it is settled, archaic, and uncontested. What the historical dictionaries do not supply is practical guidance on how the ceremony of livery of seisin operated, why it mattered that feoffare required a physical act rather than a written instrument, or how the feudal incidents attached to the fee conveyed by this method. For that context, researchers must go to the treatise literature directly.
Jurisdictional Note
Feoffare has no meaningful jurisdictional variation in modern practice because it is not operative language in any current legal system. In historical research, English and American sources treat the term consistently, though American colonial records occasionally adapt Latin conveyancing language to local conditions.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
See Law Mind Encyclopedia: Feoffment; Livery of Seisin; Feudal Tenure.