Feoffment

Fefment.

L. Fr. <fe Eng. [L. Lot. feoffamentum, q. v.] The gift of a fee {donatio feudi.) A gift or conveyance in fee, of land, or other corporeal hereditaments, accompanied by livery of seisin, or actual delivery of possessioa. ^rac^ fol.

12 b. ^rt«.c.34. Co.Litt.9&. 2 Bl. Com. 810, 311.

4 Kenfs Com. 480, 481— A conveyance of corporeal hereditaments by delivery of the possession upon, or within view of the hereditaments conveyed.

Butler*8 Co. Litt. Note 231, lib. 3.

The deed, instrument, or charter, (as it was formerly most commonly termed,) by which such a donation is expressed.

2 Bl. Com. 310. Skep. Touch. 203. 4 Kent's Com. 480. ^e Feoffamentum, Charta.

For a form of this kind of deed in the original Latin, see 2 Bl, Com. Appendix, No. 1. Anciently, a feoffment might be without deed, the donation with which the livery was accompanied being merely oral, but it was usually put into writing.

1 Beeves* Hist, E. Law, 90.

Poterit fieri donatio cum charta, vel sine charta. Bract. fol. lib. By the statute of frauds, a written instru* ment was expressly required to convey the fee.

1 Steph. Com. 218. See Stat. 8 &» Vict. c. 106, § 3.

A feoffment originally meant the grant oi A feud or fee, that is, a barony or knight's fee, for which certam services were due from the feoffee to the feoffor. This was the proper sense of the word; but by custom it came afterwards to signify also a grant, (with livery of seisin,) of a free inheritance to a man and his heirs, referring rather to the perpetuity of the estate than to the feudal tenure.

1 Beeves' Hist. E. Law, 90, 91.

Mad. Form. Angl. Diss. p.

4. Butler's Note, 231, lib. 3.

Co. Lilt. It was for ages the only method (in ordinary use) for conveying the freehold of land in possession, but has now fallen in great measure mto disuse, even in England, having been almost entirely supplanted by some of that class of conveyances founded on the statute law of the realm.

1 Steph. Com. 467, 468.

In American law it is scarcely known.

2 Hilliard's Real Prop. 293, et seq.

Littleton uses feoffment in its. present form, but Britton writes it feffement,