FEE, FIEF, or FEUD (AS. fcoh, (loth. fahn, cattle, property; connected with Lat. peons, Skt. patt, cattle). In the feudal system of land ten ure, a. freehold estate in land, field of another and in subordination to certain paramount rights of the latter. These rights, taken together, con stituted lordship of the land, while the inter est of the subordinate owner was described by the term freehold (liberum tenementum), or tenancy. This relation of landlord and free tenant was the correlative of the personal rela tion of lord and vassal, 'upon which it was found ed, and which it gradually superseded. The lord owed his vassal protection and justice, in return for which he exacted loyal allegiance, and the performance of certain services in accordance with the station and means of the vassal. In the course of time, when the lords became great landowners, these services came to be connected with the lands granted by them to their vassals, and then the lands were regarded as held by such and such services, and the different forms of freehold tenure were described by the service appropriate to each, as the tenure of knight's service, the tenure of grand sergcantry (or grand service: magnum serritivm), the tenure of free and common socagc (i.e. the service of soemen), etc. See FEunAttsm; TENURE.
Understood in this feudal sense—of lands held of a superior lord by some definite service or duty—the fee stands in contrast to the allodial or absolute ownership of land, free from obligation of service or any relation of vassalage to a superior lord. It is doubtful how far this conception of absolute and independent ownership of lands was ever realized in practice in the Middle Ages; certainly there was none of it in England after the ascendency of the feudal sys tem had become complete. Sec ALLopi um.
As the term 'fee' stood for land held in any form of freehold tenure of a superior lord, it was originally applicable to such land, whatever the estate of the tenant might he. Probably the ear liest fees were for the life of tenant only, but the lord might and often did grant them to the tenant 'and his heirs.' in which ease they became estates of inheritance. Before long, how ever, the term fee changed its meaning. As early as the thirteenth century it was commonly used in the sense of an inheritable estate, and this has continued to be its signification to the present day. It no longer denotes an estate held of another, as distinguished from an estate which owes no duty to any superior, hut any estate, whether feudal or allodial, which is capable of transmission to the heirs of its owner. But its
quality of heritability still depends in common law jurisdictions on the use of words of inherit ance in the instrument creating the estate. A gift to John Doe 'absolutely and forever,' or to him 'and his assigns forever,' will vest in him only a life-estate, while a grant to an• and his heirs will give him a fee. This technical rule Itas been abrogated by statute in many American Slates, and the more reasonable rule substituted that. the intention of the grantor shall govern.
The right of freely alienating fees was not acquired until the quality of heritability had be come definitely attached to them. It was finally established by the fatuous statute Quin Entp/ores stat. West minster I I I., 1290), which granted and ordained that from thenceforth "it should be lawful to every freeman to sell at his own pleas ure his lands and tenements or part of them," and at the same time provided that the feottee, or person to whom the lands were conveyed, should hold them not of his seller, but "of the chief lord of the fee, by such service and customs as his feoffor held before." Sec VEOFFMENT SUBINFEUDATION.
A fee with the qualities of general heritability awl unlimited alienability is known as a fee simple (feodnin simplex), and this is the form of estate commonly referred to when the term fee is employed without a qualifying adjective. Side by side with the fee simple, however, there has grown up an inferior kind of fee, with Bin ited rights of inheritance and with restricted rights of alienation, known as a fee tail; but this is after six hundred years of existence, dying out. See ESTATE; FEE SIMPLE; FEE TAIL.
In Scotch law' the term fee is employed to de scribe the full right of proprietorship of lands, as contrasted with a life-rent, which is the limited right of usufruct during life. A fee farm is land held by another in fee—that is, in perpetu ity by the tenant and his heirs, but subject to a perpetual rent, payable to the lord of whom the land is held. It was a common form of landholding ill several of the American Colonies.
Consult.: The Commentaries of Blackstone and Kent ; and Pollock and Maitland, _History of Eng lish. Law (2d ed.. London and New York, IS99) ; Digby, Ilistory of the Law of Real Property (5th (q1., Oxford. 1897 ).