FEE FARM

fee farm.Hist. A species of tenure in which land is held in perpetuity at a yearly rent (fee-farm

rent), without fealty, homage, or other services than those in the feoffment. — Also termed feodi

firma; firma feodi. See EMPHYTEUSIS.

“Now to all appearance the term socage, a term not found in Normandy, has been extending

itself upwards; a name appropriate to a class of cultivating peasants has begun to include the baron

or prelate who holds land at a rent but is not burdened with military service…. He is sometimes

said to have feodum censuale; far more commonly he is said to hold ‘in fee farm.’ This term has

difficulties of its own, for it appears in many different guises; a feoffee is to hold in feofirma, in

feufirmam, in fedfirmam, in feudo firmam, in feudo firma, ad firmam feodalem, but most

commonly, in feodi firma. The Old English language had both of the words of which this term is

compounded, both feoh (property) and feorm (rent); but so had the language of France, and in

Norman documents the term may be found in various shapes, firmam fedium, feudifirmam. But,

whatever may be the precise history of the phrase, to hold in fee farm means to hold heritably,

perpetually, at a rent; the fee, the inheritance, is let to farm.” 2 Frederick Pollock & Frederic W.

Maitland, The History of English Law Before the Time of Edward I 293 (2d ed. 1899).[Blacks Law 8th]