cofeoffee

plural cofeoffees · alternative co-feoffee

1. historicallawA joint feoffee; one of a group of individuals jointly holding a fief.

   He [John Broke] last appears as an attorney in 1400, though afterwards, for nearly ten years, he was frequently named as cofeoffee in Hartfield hundred.

   1974, Eleanor Searle, Lordship and Community: Battle Abbey and Its Banlieu, 1066-1538, Toronto, O.N.: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, →ISBN, page 422

   3 more examples

   […] that then ſuch and ſo many of the ſaid twelue Cofeoffees aforenamed, which ſhal ſo depart away forth of the ſaid towne of C. and inhabite ⁊ dwell in any other place, ſhall not […] take, receiue, or diſpoſe, any of the rents, iſſues, or profits of the ſaid tenements ⁊ premiſſes: […]

   1615, William West, The First Part of Simboleography. […], London: […] Companie of Stationers, page 249

   But where the Lands of any Cofeoffee are omitted, there ſuch Perſon, whoſe Lands are extended, muſt bring his Audita Qeurela againſt the Conuſee, and ſuch Cofeoffee; […]

   a. 1726, Lord Chief Baron Gilbert [i.e., Jeffrey Gilbert], The Law of Executions. […], London: […] W. Owen […], published 1763, page 45

   The other acts of this reign that are at all of a juridical nature, are the following: one was to declare that wherever the king was co-feoffee of lands to the use of the feoffer, the land should be in the co-feoffees; which was to prevent the conclusion of law that would give, in such case, the whole to the kind: another required a certain qualification of property in jurors who served in the sherrif's tourn.

   1869, [John Reeves], chapter XXIV, in W[illiam] [Francis] Finlason, editor, Reeves' History of the English Law, […], Vol. III. From the Reign of Edward IV to the Reign of Elizabeth, London: Reeves & Turner […], page 16