Definition
The act of investing a person with a freehold estate in land by feoffment, or the instrument by which that transfer was effected and evidenced. Infeoffment is functionally synonymous with enfeoffment and is most closely associated with the feudal system of land tenure, in which delivery of possession — livery of seisin — was the operative legal act conveying title. In Scottish law specifically, the term carried a more precise technical meaning: it referred to the whole feudal right of a vassal, and later, more narrowly, to the notarial instrument attesting that actual possession of land had been formally delivered.
Common Confusion
INFEOFFMENT / ENFEOFFMENT / FEOFFMENT: These three terms describe overlapping but technically distinct concepts. Feoffment is the transaction itself — the grant of a fee by a feoffor to a feoffee. Enfeoffment (or infeoffment) is the act of putting the feoffee into possession, or the written instrument memorializing that act. In practice, historical sources use all three interchangeably, and researchers should not assume precision of usage in older documents. In Scottish sources, infeoffment (often rendered infeftment) carries the most distinct technical content: it denotes the completed feudal investiture or the notarial attestation of seisin, making it closer to a formal title document than the English usage suggests.
Why It Matters in Research
This term is primarily a historical artifact of feudal land law and will appear in English and Scottish sources ranging from medieval records through the eighteenth century. Several research traps are worth flagging.
First, spelling is inconsistent across the corpus. Researchers will encounter infeoffment, enfeoffment, infeftment, and enfeffment in varying sources. Scottish legal materials tend toward infeftment as the standard form; English sources favor enfeoffment. Searching any single spelling will miss a portion of the corpus.
Second, the Scottish and English meanings diverge in a way that matters substantively. In English law, infeoffment describes the act or instrument of transferring a fee by livery of seisin — it is part of the transaction. In Scottish feudal law, as Bouvier notes citing Erskine, infeftment was at first the whole feudal right itself, later narrowing to the notarial instrument attesting delivery of possession. A Scottish document referencing infeftment as establishing title is making a claim about the completeness of the feudal right, not merely about the transfer ceremony.
Third, researchers working in post-1925 English law or post-feudal Scottish land reform materials will rarely encounter this term in operative legal documents. The Feudal Tenure etc. (Abolition) (Scotland) Act 2000 formally ended the feudal system in Scotland; infeoffment as a live legal concept in Scottish conveyancing effectively became historical at that point. English land law abolished livery of seisin far earlier, with the Statute of Uses (1536) and later the Law of Property Act 1925 completing the transformation of land transfer into documentary conveyancing.
Fourth, for corpus connections: infeoffment links directly to seisin, feoffment, and investiture as the surrounding conceptual framework of feudal land tenure. Researchers tracing property rights in historical materials should expect these terms to cluster together. A document that uses infeoffment but omits any reference to livery of seisin or saisine may be using the term loosely.
Historical Dictionary Support
The five source dictionaries show near-complete agreement on the English meaning but reveal a meaningful divergence in Scottish usage that rewards attention.
Black's (both editions) and Rapalje & Lawrence give the shortest definitions, treating infeoffment as simply the act or instrument of feoffment and noting the Scottish synonym of saisine. Anderson's Dictionary of Law adds nothing, redirecting entirely to FEOFFMENT. This cross-reference pattern is itself instructive: Anderson treats infeoffment as purely derivative, with no independent content.
Bouvier's offers the most substantive entry. Citing Bell's Dictionary for the general definition and Erskine's Principles (Inst. 183) for the Scottish usage, Bouvier distinguishes between infeftment as the "whole feudal right" and its later, narrower meaning as the notarial attestation of actual possession. This evolution — from the right itself to the instrument proving the right — is a meaningful doctrinal development that the shorter dictionaries entirely miss.
What the historical dictionaries do not address: none of the five sources discusses the procedural requirements for a valid infeoffment, the relationship between infeoffment and the Statute of Uses, or the consequences of defective infeoffment for title disputes. Researchers needing that level of analysis will need to look beyond dictionary sources to Coke on Littleton, Blackstone's Commentaries, or Erskine's Institutes directly.
Jurisdictional Note
The term has distinct legal weight in Scottish versus English law. In England, infeoffment is historical — livery of seisin was effectively replaced by documentary conveyancing by the seventeenth century and fully superseded by modern statute. In Scotland, infeftment remained a operative concept in feudal conveyancing through the twentieth century, with formal abolition arriving only in 2000. American law inherited the English framework; the term appears in American historical land records but carried no independent doctrinal development in U.S. jurisdictions.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
See Law Mind Encyclopedia: Feudal Tenure; Feoffment and Livery of Seisin; Scottish Land Law.