Law Dictionary of Legal Terminology

SUBINFEUDATION

SUBINFEUDATION, estates, English law. The act of an inferior lord by which he carved out a part of an estate which he held of a superior, and granted it to an inferior tenant to be held of himself.

2. It was an indirect mode of transferring the fief, and resorted to as an artifice to elude the feudal restraint upon alienation: this was forbidden by the statute of Quia Emptores, 18 Ed. I; 2 Bl. Com. 91; 3 Kent, Com. 406.