glebe-land

English

Alternative forms

• glebeland
• glebe land

Noun

glebe-land (plural glebe-lands)

1. (historical) Area of land belonging to a parish in medieval times.
   • 1831, L[etitia] E[lizabeth] L[andon], chapter X, in Romance and Reality. […], volume I, London: Henry Colburn and Richard Bentley, […], →OCLC, page 85:

     In good truth, I hardly know—a Miss Arundel—a wood-nymph, the daughter of either a country squire or a clergyman—equipped, I suppose, by a mortgage on either the squire's corn-fields, or the parson's glebe land—[..]

   • 1919, Ronald Firbank, Valmouth, Duckworth, hardback edition, page 8:

     Prior to the Reformation the farm buildings (since rebuilt and considerably dwindled) had appertained, like much of the glebe-land around Valmouth, to the Abbots of St. Veronica, when at the confiscation of the monasteries by the Crown one Thierry Monfaulcon Tooke, tennis-master to the Court of King Henry VIII, feinting to injure himself one day while playing with the royal princesses, had been offered by Henry, through their touching entreaties "in consideration of his mishap", the Abbey Farm of St. Veronica's, then recently vacated by the monks [...].

Synonyms

• glebe