What is "tenants-in-chief"

Usage examples of "tenants-in-chief".

Poplanich's Own was recruited from the family's estates, from among the more prosperous tenants-in-chief and bailiffs and such, and the family coffers paid for their initial equipment, against a remittance of land-tax.

In other counties tenants-in-chief, overseers, and bailiffs might furnish such recruits.

It was always on the lowest and least that the weight came down in the end, just as debt found its way down from the king through his barons, through their tenants-in-chief and their sub-tenants, to the free cottagers and the bound villeins on their poor little yardlands of earth.