halywercfolk

English

Etymology

Learned borrowing from Old English hāliġ (“holy”) + weorc (“work”) + folc (“folk”).

Noun

halywercfolk (uncountable)

1. (law) In Old English law, tenants who held land by the service of repairing or defending a church or monument, whereby they were exempted from feudal and military services.
   • 1874, Thomas Blount, William Carew Hazlitt, Tenures of Land & Customs of Manors, page 429:

     For such persons within the bishopric of Durham as held their lands by the service of defending the corpse of St Cuthbert were called Halywercfolk, and claimed the privilege of not being forced to go out of the bishopric either by the King or Bishop.

Part or all of this entry has been imported from the 1910 edition of Black’s Law Dictionary, which is now free of copyright and hence in the public domain. The imported definitions may be significantly out of date, and any more recent senses may be completely missing.