feoffor

It was because the feoffor could impose on him many various duties that landowners acquired through his instrumentality the power to do many things with their land.

The feoffee was thenceforward said to hold his property "of" or "from" the feoffor, in return for a specified service depending on the exact form of feudal land tenure involved in the feoffment.

The conveyance or delivery of possession, known as livery of seisin was effected generally on the site of the land in a symbolic ceremony of transfer from the feoffor to the feoffee in the presence of witnesses.

It declared that every freeman might sell his tenement or any part of it, but in such a manner that the feoffee should hold the same lord and by the same services, of whom and by which the feoffor held.

By means of the doctrine to uses, however, the devise of land was secured by a circuitous method, generally by conveyance to feoffees to uses in the lifetime of the feoffor to such uses as he should appoint by his will.

In medieval English trust law, the settlor was known as the feoffor to uses while the trustee was known as the feoffee to uses and the beneficiary was known as the cestui que use, or cestui que trust.

In Coke, Littleton 212b., Lord Coke says: 'where the condition is for payment of £20, the obligor or feoffor cannot at the time appointed pay a lesser sum in satisfaction of the whole, because it is apparent that a lesser sum of money cannot be a satisfaction of a greater.