Familiares, Investing daughters with rights of sons, honour

Familiares (from the Latin familia = family)

Noble and non-noble persons who served either the King or secular/ecclesiastic landowners for certain return services. This service was first and foremost military service. If his lord bore an office, he could subsitute him or helped him in other ways. The familiares represented his lord in legal cases, and they were employed as farm officers in the farm management. In return the lord gave them a plot of land with hereditary rights, or for a fixed period of time, or he asked the king for a donation for them. They might have had shares from the incomes of the office, but in most cases they worked for full board. In theory the familiaris - the Hungarian word for it means servant - voluntarily served his lord, he could leave him under certain circumstances. The agreement was made in words first, then in writing. Familiares who took up bigger services (for example, leaders of fortresses) took an oath to their lords. The legal relation between the familiaris and his lord is called familiaritas, which spread in the second half of the 13th century. In history it is used in the narrow sense, only the services of the noblemen are meant by this.

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Investing daughters with the rights of sons

A privileged right given to landlords by the king to declare girls as male inheritors making them legal heirs of the ancient estate of the father. First it was performed by Charles I. It was against clan possessions. Later kings promised that they would invest daughters with the rights of sons only if the person has no male heirs within a certain degree of relationship.

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honour / office

The main offices of the country given by the king to his followers for a period of time, which was defined by the ruler. The donation included juristic authority and the incomes, which was collected and spent by the owner of the honour. It was gradually pushed back after Sigismund's reign because of the big donations. Honours did not become feudal fiefs in the Western European sense of the word.

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