Definition
RELEVER is a Law French verb meaning "to relieve" or, more specifically, to pay a relief — the feudal fee owed by an heir to a lord upon inheriting land held by feudal tenure. The term appears in Old French legal texts, particularly Britton, and encapsulates the act of a new tenant "lifting up" or restoring a fallen estate by making the customary payment that entitled him to take possession of lands descended from his ancestor.
Relief, the underlying concept, was the sum an heir paid to the feudal lord as a condition of succeeding to inherited lands. Without this payment, the land could revert or remain withheld by the lord. The word relever thus describes both the act of paying and, conceptually, the re-raising of an estate that had "fallen" at the death of the previous tenant.
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Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): "Relever" in modern French means to lift again, to raise back up, or to relieve someone of a duty or position. In English, "relieve" carries senses of easing a burden, substituting one person for another, or providing aid.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1813): Webster does not list "relever" as an English entry; it was not absorbed into English common vocabulary. "Relieve" appears as the anglicized cognate, defined broadly as to free from pain, trouble, or evil; to succor; to ease.
The gap here is complete: modern English speakers encountering "relever" would likely read it as a French infinitive with no particular legal weight. In its legal context, the term is a technical Law French term of art tied exclusively to the feudal incident of relief — a property law obligation with no intuitive connection to the modern meanings of "relieve."
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Common Confusion
RELEVER should not be confused with the English noun "relief" in its modern procedural sense — the remedy or redress sought from a court. The two words share a Latin and Old French root (relevare), but procedural relief (as in "the plaintiff seeks equitable relief") is conceptually unrelated to the feudal relief that relever describes. Researchers encountering "relief" in early common law sources should verify whether the context is feudal tenure (a payment to the lord) or something else; the same English word covers both meanings across different historical periods.
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Why It Matters in Research
RELEVER appears in Law French sources and is not a term you will find in modern statutory codes or case reporters. Its research significance is almost entirely historical and contextual.
Researchers working in early English feudal law — particularly texts like Britton, Fleta, Glanvill, and Bracton — will encounter relever and its cognates as shorthand for the entire transaction by which an heir re-entered a feudal inheritance. Understanding the term is essential for reading these sources accurately and for tracing the development of real property law from feudal tenure to modern freehold.
The feudal incident of relief was one of several oppressive incidents — alongside wardship, marriage, and escheat — that shaped the political and legal tensions culminating in Magna Carta (1215) and, centuries later, the Statute of Tenures (1660). The concept threads through land law commentary up through Blackstone. A researcher tracing the historical roots of inheritance taxation, estate succession rules, or the decline of feudal tenure will encounter relever and its Latin cognates (relevium, introitus) across multiple source types.
Burrill's note connecting relever to the haereditas jacens of Roman civil law — and to introitus as a civil law analogue — is a useful pointer: comparative researchers examining civil law traditions alongside common law should check both streams. The haereditas jacens (the "lying inheritance," an estate not yet accepted by an heir) and the introitus (the entry payment) represent the same underlying economic logic, and tracing both illuminates how feudal common law absorbed and adapted Roman property concepts.
One trap: Law French sources use relever as a verb in conjugated forms. Britton's phrase "Volons nous" (we will) preceding relever indicates a normative command in the text, not a description of a transaction. Researchers should read these passages as prescriptive legal rules, not as records of specific payments.
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Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's Law Dictionary is the primary English-language legal dictionary source for this term, and its entry is brief but instructive. Burrill identifies relever as Law French for "to relieve; to pay a relief," cites Britton chapter 69, and locates the conceptual origin in the Roman civil law haereditas jacens — the estate suspended between the death of the ancestor and acceptance by the heir. He also notes the civil law term introitus (from Fleta, lib. 3, c. 17, § 1) as a functional parallel, citing Calvinus's Lexicon Juridicum for support.
Burrill's characterization of relief as a "principal and very oppressive incident of the feudal tenure" reflects the consensus of early modern English legal historians. This was not a neutral administrative fee; it was a politically contested extraction, one of the grievances enumerated in Magna Carta's Chapter 2 (setting limits on the amounts lords could demand).
Standard English legal dictionaries of the 18th and 19th centuries — including Jacob's Law Dictionary and Tomlin's New Law Dictionary — cover "relief" as a feudal incident under that English heading rather than under the Law French relever, which means researchers using those sources will need to search under the anglicized term. Burrill, with his stronger Law French coverage, is the better starting point for the French-language form.
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