VAVASSOR, VALVASSOR, a term applied in the ancient records of England, Scotland, France, Lombardy,. and Aragon, to persons holding fiefs not immediately under the king or other • persons possessing jury regalia (as the duke of Normandy, the earl of Chester, or the bishop of Durham), but under some intermediate lord. It appears also, that to constitute a vavassory{, it was necessary that the party should have subordinate freeholders, as vassals holding of his vavassory. (Wilkins, Leges Angl.', 247 ; Bracton, 5 b, 6, 93 b ; Ducange.) In vavassories were generally held by knights' service; but in Normandy, besides the franchee vavassories or vavas aerie,' nobles, there were aoeage vavassoriea held by the rent of a rose, a spur, or a glove, and also rarasaorics rilaines. The possessors of these inferior vavassories were sometimes called " valvassius." Vavassore are twice mentioned in Domesday, pp. 53 and 1469 ; and in the laws of William the Conqueror, the relief due from a vavassor to his liege lord is described. (Kelham, 40.) A charter of Henry I. directs that pleas of the division of laud between the vavassors of two different lords be determined iu the county court. In the great Roll of the Pipe of 31 Henry I., mention is made of the vavassors belonging to the barony of the archbishop of York. In the laws of Henry 11. the jurisdiction of vavassors is specified. Medea (' Baronia Auglicana,' note, p. 135), sets out a writ in which that prince requires the resi dence or constant attendance of all barons and vavassors, who owe service of castle-guard at Rockingham castle. Francis de Damn, in the time of Richard I. was seised of two honours, one that of Bohun in Normandy, which he held of the king, as duke per baruniant, the other in England, consisting of the manor of Fordea, &e., in Sussex, which he held in varasscrid. (` Abbrev. lilac., in Donna Cap. Westin.' 88.) In the next reign Alice Briewicre claimed Plinitree in Devon, and Depeworth In Somerset and Dorset, assigned to her by her late husband Roger de Pole, on the day he set out for Jerusalem, for the full third part of three vavassories, namely, for the vavassories of the earl of Salisbury, the earl of Vernon, and of the vavassory of Earl William de Bohun (' lb.', 61 b). In the close rolls of 4 H. III. is a writ to the sheriff of Wiltshire, directing him to give sciain to W. Mandevill; R. Maudut, W. Comyn, and W. de Fontibue of three vavassories of the fee of the Earl of Clare, belonging to the barony of Funtell (Foothill), which barony Andrew Giffard had, with the assent of King John, resigned to those persons as the right heirs (presump tive) of the barony, reserving the vavassories, which vavassories would appear to have been seized into the king's lands upon the death of °hard under the advice of the crown lawyers, the council of the minor king being afterwards of opinion that such seizure ought not to have been made. Here, vavassorles held of the honour of Clare
appear to have become in some way annexed to a barony held of the crown. In the record and process of the renunciation of Richard 11., that prince abcolves all dukes, marquesses, earls, barons, knights, vassals, and rarassers, and other his liege-men, from their oaths of fidelity (3 Rot. Park, 410); and about the same period Chaucer, after describing his Franklin, says, wss no where swtche a worthy rersso*r." From this time we lose sight of the English rammer. Numerous eubseigniories however still exist, the owners of which, though not so designated, are in truth VaVAMOTIL. From the inalienable quality of she Duchy of Cornwall, many manors in Devonshire and Cornwall are held, though the name is no longer continued, as vavatwories of the duchy ; of which there are many in the former county, holden of the duchy honour of Bradninch.
The breaking up of the old feudal baronies, and the frequent forfeitures 1 by those who held immediately of the crown, brought the great and many of the lesser vavassors into the position of immediate tenants to the crown. lint as the extinction of vavassories was gradual, no new class of crown tenants arose, as was the case in Germany where the disappearance of the dukedoms of Suabia and Franconia (caused by the extinction of the House of liehenstaufTen in the person of Conradin, beheaded upon the failure of his attempt to recover the kingdom of Naples from Charles of Anjou), gave rise to a new order in the state, namely, the .immediate chivalry (noblesse immediate) of the empire, the reichsritterschaft, a body ntediatised by the Congress of Vienna.
When James 1., imitating the practice of France, introduced hereditary titles without peerages, a proposal for giving- to the new order the designation of vavassors was rejected, and the novel but more appropriate title of BAILOYET was adopted.
(Torrien, Coat. de Norma )die ; Testa de NeriU, 166 a ; Selden's Titles of Honour, 513, 520 ; Cragii, Jas. Feud-, 100, 141; Manning:a Serriens ad Leven', 185, 291 a.)