"Fief" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the old form of Anversa, Antwerp. All versions that I have seen call Gautier Comte d'Angers or Angiers, the translators, who forgot or were unaware that Antwerp, as part of Flanders, was then a fief of the French crown, apparently taking it for granted that the mention of the latter city was in error and substituting the name of the ancient capital of Anjou on their ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... top of this fortress one could formerly see all the surrounding country. It was called the Fox's tower, without any one knowing exactly why; and from this appellation, no doubt, had come the name Renardet, borne by the owners of this fief, which had remained in the same family, it was said, for more than two hundred years. For the Renardets formed part of the upper middle class, all but noble, to be met with so often in ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... upon a species of landright, very different from the copyhold so frequent in England. Every alienation or sale of landed property must be made in the shape of a feudal conveyance, and the party who acquires it holds thereby an absolute and perfect right of property in the fief, while he discharges the stipulations of the vassal, and, above all, pays the feu-duties. The vassal or tenant of the site of the smallest cottage holds his possession as absolutely as the proprietor, of whose large estate it is perhaps ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... the Count of Avesnes when his freehold was declared a mere fief, himself a mere vassal, a serf of the Earl of Hainault. Read, too, the dreadful story of the Great Chancellor of Flanders, the first magistrate of Bruges, who also was claimed as a serf.—Gualterius, ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... rendering the Papacy free from lay control; he had gained for ever for the Church one of her most cherished tenets, the absolute independence of the Pope's election by the College of Cardinals; and he had even partially reduced the Western Empire into a fief of the Church itself. The former of Gregory's great objects, the freedom of election, still remains intact after an interval of more than eight hundred years; the latter attempt, though long struggled for and apparently with success at times, ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... Yen," he replied, "in a city of a thousand families, or in a secondary fief, [11] he might be charged with the governorship; but I cannot answer ...
— Chinese Literature • Anonymous
... first of January, 1500, our combined forces began in earnest the assault of the citadel of Forli, which we had held in siege throughout the previous month. Little stomach had I for the business, since to my shame I was making war upon a woman. Imola which had already surrendered to us, was also her fief, but had she commanded its forces in person we would not have taken it so easily. For fighting blood ran in the veins of the Lady of Forli, she being the grand-daughter of the great condottiere Francesco Sforza. And this was ...
— Romance of Roman Villas - (The Renaissance) • Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney
... deprive all the Italian noblemen of their property, in order that he might convert their castles and domains into principalities for his illegitimates. He began with the weakest, and had despatched this little army to eject Malatesta from his fief of Rimini. Faustus and the Devil, riding along the road, perceived upon an eminence contiguous to the papal camp two men, magnificently dressed, engaged in a furious combat. Moved by curiosity, Faustus advanced to the spot; the fiend followed him; and they ...
— Faustus - his Life, Death, and Doom • Friedrich Maximilian von Klinger
... were established at Metz and Brisach, and they had instructions from Louis to reannex to his crown all the domains which had ever been held in fief by any of his predecessors, however remote. They began by summoning the lords of the Trois- Eveches to acknowledge their vassalage to France; and they went on to cite before their tribunal the Elector Palatine, the King of Spain, and the ...
— Prince Eugene and His Times • L. Muhlbach
... derived from the right of original conquest, as well to all the soldiers as to the leader; and these estates, as it is said, were not even forfeitable, no, not for felony, as if that were in some sort the necessary consequence of an inheritable estate. So far were they from resembling a fief. But there were other possessions which bore a nearer resemblance to fiefs, at least in their first feeble and infantile state of the tenure, than, those inheritances which were held by an absolute right in the proprietor. The great officers who attended the court, commanded ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... itself was a symbolical sunflower constantly turning toward Royalty. Great excuses are to be made for this, the last male descendant, whose father in his youth had been an Imperial page, and who had been nursed in the conception that Italy (or at least Lombardy) was a natural fief of Austria, allied by instinct and by interest to the holders of the Alps. Count Serabiglione mixed little with his countrymen,—the statement might be inversed,—but when, perchance, he was among them, he talked willingly of the Tedeschi, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... which would be planted and inhabited within twenty-one years. The political jurisdiction of the area was still under the Virginia government. The laws of the colony were to remain operative, and in effect the grant was "to create a subordinate fief or proprietorship within Virginia." But considerable confusion prevailed over the retroactive recognition of grants, and many landholders sought confirmation of their ownership. "Besides there are many other grants," stated Governor William Berkeley, "in that patent inconsistent ...
— Mother Earth - Land Grants in Virginia 1607-1699 • W. Stitt Robinson, Jr.
... full years in Spain, so runs the chronicle; castle and keeper alike had gone down except Saragossa, the mountain town, where King Marsil held his court, surrounded by 20,000 Mohammedan nobles. At their council it was agreed to accept Spain as a fief from the emperor, and ten knights set out with golden bridles and ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various
... dominion with the bayonet and the bullet; and finally, six weeks later, I saw how they behaved when substantially all their country, excluding a strip of seaboard, had been reduced to the state of a conquered fief held and ruled by ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb
... were fiefs of two separate branches of the Orsini family. The house of Pico lost their lordship of Mirandola in 1536, when Galeotto Pico took refuge with his sons in France. His descendants renewed their hold upon the fief, which was erected into ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini
... this modified form of the feudal system into Canada, when he constituted, in 1627, the whole of the colony as a fief of the great fur-trading company of the Hundred Associates on the sole condition of its paying fealty and homage to the Crown. It had the right of establishing seigniories as a part of its undertaking to bring four thousand colonists to the province ...
— Lord Elgin • John George Bourinot
... resume the province of Pennsylvania as his own. A clause in the charter had reserved this right, which could be exercised on payment of a certain sum of money. The colonists now preferred to be an appanage of the crown rather than a fief of the Penns. Oddly enough, some of the provincial governors were suggesting the like measure concerning other provinces; but from widely different motives. The colonists thought a monarch better than private individuals, as a master; while the governors ...
— Benjamin Franklin • John Torrey Morse, Jr.
... of the Delle Rovere family. Casting about for territorial dignity, the Pope set his heart upon the Lordship of Imola, where Taddeo Manfredi of Faenza, being in financial difficulties, had surrendered the fief to the Duke ...
— The Tragedies of the Medici • Edgcumbe Staley
... entering the town we glanced over in the direction of Campan, and caught a fine glimpse of the Houn Blanquo (6411 ft.), and the Pic du Midi, with a bit of the Montaigu. Aste is interesting, formerly a fief of the Grammont family; it has been associated with not a few celebrated characters, and though that does not enhance the value of the surrounding property (since the Grammont estate is now in the market), ...
— Twixt France and Spain • E. Ernest Bilbrough
... this territory, the indivisibility of which had been guaranteed by solemn treaties; and the Emperor, who seemed disposed to enter upon it as a vacant fief, might be considered as the ninth. Four of these, the Elector of Brandenburg, the Count Palatine of Neuburg, the Count Palatine of Deux Ponts, and the Margrave of Burgau, an Austrian prince, claimed it as a female fief in name of four princesses, ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... Tappington. The features are handsome, but shrewdish, betraying, as it were, a touch of the old Baron's temperament; but we never could learn that she actually kicked her husband. She brought him a very pretty fortune in chains, watches, and Saracen ear-rings; the barony, being a male fief, ...
— Half-Hours with Great Story-Tellers • Various
... excellent qualities, so that we soon became great friends. We had also both of us the pleasure of being acquainted with some highly-cultured people, the families of the physician, of the minister, and of the schoolmaster in the neighbouring Protestant village, which was as yet still a fief of the Empire.[25] My friend the tutor was a young man quite out of the common, with an actively inquiring mind; especially fond of making plans for wide-stretching travel, and comprehensive schemes of education. ...
— Autobiography of Friedrich Froebel • Friedrich Froebel
... Marco Foscari on the state of Florence, already quoted more than once, contains a curious aristocratic comment upon the shop-life of illustrious Florentine citizens. See Appendix ii. Even Piero de' Medici refused a Neapolitan fief on the ground that he ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... hold such deserted fief in possession for one year, shall be considered as having gained it by prescriptive right, and shall be defended in its possession against the previous ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 5, November, 1863 • Various
... betided thee, O Shimas, that thou seekest admission unto me?" He answered, "This long while have I not looked upon the face of my lord the King and indeed I longed sore for thee; and now, behold, I have seen thy countenance and come to thee with a word which I would fief say to thee, O King stablished in all prosperity!" Quoth the King, "Say what seemeth good to thee;" and quoth Shimas, "I would have thee bear in mind O King, that Allah Almighty hath endowed thee with learning and wisdom, for all the tenderness of thy years, such as He never vouchsafed unto ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton
... very alarming incident to the emperor, who was bent upon a war with the two crowns, and had determined to send prince Eugene with an army into Italy, to take possession of the duchy of Milan as a fief of the empire. The new pope Clement XI., who had succeeded to the papacy in the preceding year, was attached to the French interest; the Venetians favoured the emperor; but they refused to ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... themselves with Fribourg, and war seemed so imminent that the matter was taken before the Diet, when, with the aid of the French ambassadors and a summons from the emperor Charles V to respect the independence of his imperial fief, Count Michel was able to retain the freedom of Gruyere, but compelled like his father to admit Berne's authority over his possessions in the Pays de Vaud. In the support which Francois I gave to ...
— The Counts of Gruyere • Mrs. Reginald de Koven
... knight who had ridden out of Stuttgard with Ebbo had told him that it was no wonder that this had been his reception, for not only was Schlangenwald an old intimate of the Markgraf, but Swabia was claimed as a fief of Wurtemburg, so that Ebbo's direct homage to the Emperor, without the interposition of the Markgraf, had made him no ...
— The Dove in the Eagle's Nest • Charlotte M. Yonge
... reasons for changing parishes. The Flemish tradition then gives place to that of Brittany, which is authenticated by documents. One Olivier Guinemer gave a receipt in 1306 to the executors of Duke Jean II de Bretagne. He held a fief under Saint-Sauveur de Dinan, "on which the duke had settled tenants contrary to agreements." The executors, to liquidate the estate, had to pay immense sums for "indemnification, restitution and damages," and took care to "take receipts from all those to whom their commission obliged them to distribute ...
— Georges Guynemer - Knight of the Air • Henry Bordeaux |
