Holyworkfolk

English

Etymology

See halywercfolk.

Noun

Holyworkfolk pl (plural only)

1. (medieval English law) Tenants who held land by the service of repairing or defending a church or monument and were therefore exempt from feudal and military duties; specifically, the caretakers of the body of St Cuthbert.
   • 1877, The Saturday Review of Politics, Literature, Science, Art, and Finance, volume 44, page 525:

     More curious still is the position of certain tenants of the bishopric who called themselves Holyworkfolk, who claimed that their only duty was to pray

   • 1878, Thomas Duffus Hardy, “Preface”, in Registrum Palatinum Dunelmense: The Register of Richard de Kellawe, Lord Palatine and Bishop of Durham, page viii:

     This they naturally considered an indignity, and made a party against on the ground that were Holyworkfolk and held their lands for the defence of the body of St. Cuthbert, and not at the bishop's pleasure

   • 1991, R. C. van Caenegem, English Lawsuits from William I to Richard I: Henry II and Richard I, page 437:

     Record made before justices in eyre by elder men of the Holyworkfolk (Durham) and Northumberland of a sworn inquest held in the time of King Henry I concerning fishery rights in the Tyne

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 The imported definitions may be significantly out of date, and any more recent senses may be completely missing.