Under the English feudal system several different forms of land tenure existed, each effectively a contract with differing rights and duties attached thereto. Such tenures could be either free-hold if they were hereditable or perpetual or non-free if they terminated on the tenant's death or at an earlier specified period.
The Honour of Richmond (or Richmondshire) was a feudal barony in what is now mainly North Yorkshire, England. The honour was two tiers below Yorkshire, the middle tier being the North Riding.
Before the honour was created, the land was held by Edwin, Earl of Mercia who died in 1071. The honour was granted to Count Alan Rufus (also known as Alain le Roux) by King William the Conqueror (as a gift of thanks for his services in the Conquest) sometime from after the Domesday Book of 1068 to just after the earl's death in 1071, the date is uncertain.
An overlord in the English feudal system was a lord of a manor who had subinfeudated a particular manor, estate or fee, to a tenant. The tenant thenceforth owed to the overlord one of a variety of services, usually military service or serjeanty, depending on which form of tenure (i.e. feudal tenancy contract) the estate was held under. The highest overlord of all, or lord paramount, was the monarch, who due to his ancestor William the Conqueror's personal conquest of the Kingdom of England, owned by inheritance from him all the land in England under allodial title and had no superior overlord, "holding from God and his sword", although certain monarchs, notably King John (1199â1216) purported to grant the Kingdom of England to Pope Innocent III, who would thus have become overlord to English monarchs.
A paramount lord may then be seen to occupy the apex of the feudal pyramid, or the root of the feudal tree, and such allodial title is also termed "radical title" (from Latin radix, root), "ultimate title" and "final title". William the Conqueror immediately set about granting tenancies on his newly won lands, in accordance with feudal principles. The monarch's immediate tenants were the tenants-in-chief, usually military magnates, who held the highest status in feudal society below the monarch. The tenants-in-chief usually held multiple manors or other estates from the monarch, often as feudal barons (or "barons by tenure") who owed their royal overlord an enhanced and onerous form of military service, and subinfeudated most to tenants, generally their own knights or military followers, keeping only a few in demesne. This created a mesne lord â tenant relationship. The knights in turn subinfeudated to their own tenants, creating a further subsidiary mesne lord â tenant relationship. Over the centuries for any single estate the process was in practice repeated numerous times.
Under feudalism in France and England during the Middle Ages, tenure by serjeanty (/ËsÉËrdĘÉnti/) was a form of tenure in return for a specified duty other than standard knight-service.