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) At the head; as, a commander in chief. (b) (Eng. Law) From the king, or sovereign; as, tenure in chief, tenure directly from the king.

A tenure of lands by knight's service; that is, by the condition of a knight's performing service on horseback, or of performing some noble or military service to his lord.

Formed by agreement or compact; stipulated. Conventional services reserved by tenures upon grants, made out of the crown or knights' service. Sir M. Hale.

Copyhold; tenure; lease. [Obs.] Shak. Copy book, a book in which copies are written or printed for learners to imitate. -- Examined copies (Law), those which have been compared with the originals. -- Exemplified copies, those which are attested under seal of a court. -- Certified or Office copies, those which are ma…

A tenure of estate by copy of court roll; or a tenure for which the tenant has nothing to show, except the rolls made by the steward of the lord's court. Blackstone.

Anancient tenure of land, which obliged the tenant to give notice of an invasion by blowing a horn.

Diagonal; diametrical; hence; diametrically opposed. [Obs.] Sin can have no tenure by law at all, but is rather an eternal outlaw, and in hostility with law past all atonement; both diagonal contraries, as much allowing one another as day and night together in one hemisphere. Milton.

To deprive of that principal quality of gavelkind tenure by which lands descend equally among all the sons of the tenant; -- said of lands. Burrill.

1086. It consists of two volumes, a large folio and a quarto, and gives the proprietors' tenures, arable land, woodland, etc. [Written also Doomsday Book.]

The tenure by which a drench held land. [Obs.] Burrill.

The term or tenure of a lease of land for cultivation; a leasehold. [Obs.] It is great willfulness in landlords to make any longer farms to their tenants. Spenser.

property; possession; tenure. "Laden with rich fee." Spenser. Once did she hold the gorgeous East in fee. Wordsworth.

Feudal tenure; the feudal system. See Feudality. Burke.

A free and gratuitous right to lands made to one for service to be performed by him; a tenure where the vassal, in place of military services, makes a return in grain or in money. Burrill.

f hereditarily, rendering to his superior such duties and services as belong to military tenure, etc., the property of the soil always remaining in the lord or superior; a fief; a fee.

Of or pertaining to feuds, fiefs, or feels; as, feudal rights or services; feudal tenures.

The act of reducing to feudal tenure.

To reduce toa feudal tenure; to conform to feudalism.

Held by, or pertaining to, feudal tenure.

Held from another on some conditional tenure; as, a feudatory title. Bacon.