Tenant-in-chief
Encyclopedia : T : TE : TEN : Tenant-in-chief
In
medieval and
early modern European society, a
tenant-in-chief, sometimes
vassal-in-chief, denotes the high
nobles who held their lands as
tenants directly from the
monarch, as opposed to holding them from another nobleman or senior member of the clergy. Such people were the backbone of the monarchs's influence throughout the
state and include
princes and
dukes (many of whom would have been immediate relatives of the monarch), and
earls.
The term is actually a neologism of later historians.
From Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Original article here. Support Wikipedia by contributing or donating.
All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License See Wikipedia Copyrights for details.
