Definition
Infeudation is the act of placing a person in possession of a freehold estate under the feudal system — the formal grant of a fee or fief by a superior lord to a vassal. The term carries two distinct but related meanings in legal sources:
1. The feudal conveyance by which a lord granted land to a vassal in return for homage, fealty, and service. This is the core meaning and is functionally synonymous with enfeoffment.
2. The granting of tithes to laymen — a practice in ecclesiastical property law by which rights to church tithes were transferred out of clerical hands and into lay ownership, creating what were sometimes called lay impropriations. This second meaning is historically significant but narrower, rooted in the intersection of feudal tenure and church property administration.
Both meanings share the same root concept: the formal extension of a feudal holding to a person who did not previously hold it.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): "The act, under the feudal system, of putting someone into possession of a fee or fief; enfeoffment."
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): "The act of putting one in possession of an estate in fee. The granting of tithes to laymen."
The common and legal definitions are unusually close here, but legal sources preserve a technical distinction ordinary usage collapses. General dictionaries treat infeudation as a single act; legal dictionaries recognize two formally separate operations — one involving land tenure, one involving ecclesiastical tithes — which arose in different bodies of doctrine and carried different consequences in property and church law.
Recognized Forms
/SUBTYPES
Temporal infeudation: A grant of tithes to a layperson or lay institution, creating a lay impropriaton. The grantee acquired the right to receive tithes originally belonging to a church benefice. This was a recognized and contested practice in English ecclesiastical law and was addressed in both canon law and Parliamentary legislation.
Feudal infeudation (enfeoffment): The standard conveyance of land by a superior lord to a vassal, constituting the vassal a holder of the fee in exchange for defined services. This form is the dominant historical meaning and the one most commonly encountered in land law sources.
Why It Matters in Research
Infeudation appears almost exclusively in historical and comparative legal sources. Researchers will encounter it in treatises on feudal tenure, early English land law, and ecclesiastical property — rarely if ever in modern case law or statutes. Several navigational points matter:
First, the term often appears interchangeably with enfeoffment in older sources, but they are not always identical in scope. Enfeoffment typically describes the act from the grantor's perspective; infeudation more often describes the resulting relationship or status. Some authors use them synonymously; others do not. Check context before treating them as exact equivalents.
Second, the tithe-granting sense creates a research trap. A reader scanning sources on feudal land tenure may encounter infeudation and assume land is involved, when the source is actually discussing ecclesiastical impropriations — a wholly different body of doctrine with its own statutes, disputes, and remedies in English law.
Third, Rapalje & Lawrence place the definition of infeudation immediately adjacent to inficiatio (a civil law procedural term), which reflects dictionary organization of the era rather than any conceptual relationship. Do not read proximity as connection.
Fourth, because infeudation describes a system abolished in England by the Statute of Quia Emptores (1290) in its sub-infeudation form, and more broadly by the Tenures Abolition Act of 1660, the term has no live legal application in modern common law jurisdictions. Its research utility is historical, comparative, and interpretive — understanding what older instruments, grants, or disputes meant when they used feudal terminology.
Historical Dictionary Support
All three source dictionaries offer identical or near-identical definitions, suggesting this term was settled and uncontroversial among legal lexicographers by the late nineteenth century. Black's (both editions) and Rapalje & Lawrence reproduce the same two-part formulation without variation: freehold possession and tithe grants to laymen.
Webster's 1913 tracks the legal dictionaries closely, citing Hale for the land meaning and Blackstone for the tithe meaning — appropriate authorities for both senses. This convergence across legal and general dictionaries is unusual and reflects the term's technical stability: infeudation had ceased to describe any living legal practice long before these dictionaries were compiled, leaving lexicographers with a fixed historical record rather than an evolving doctrine to track.
What the historical dictionaries do not address: the distinction between infeudation and sub-infeudation. Sub-infeudation — the practice by which a tenant granted land to a sub-tenant, creating a new rung in the feudal ladder rather than substituting a new tenant in the existing one — was a separate and ultimately prohibited act. The historical dictionaries treat infeudation without distinguishing it from sub-infeudation, which can mislead researchers working on the political and legal history of Quia Emptores.
Jurisdictional Note
Infeudation as an operative legal concept exists only in historical common law and civil law contexts. No modern jurisdiction uses it as a term of current law. Researchers working in Scottish legal history will find it used in sources on feudal land tenure that survived longer in Scotland than in England, with Scottish feudal tenure formally abolished only by the Abolition of Feudal Tenure etc. (Scotland) Act 2000.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
See Law Mind Encyclopedia: Feudal Tenure; Enfeoffment; Tithes and Ecclesiastical Property