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Demesne

noun
(Written also demain)
1.
Extensive landed property (especially in the country) retained by the owner for his own use.  Synonyms: acres, estate, land, landed estate.
2.
Territory over which rule or control is exercised.  Synonyms: domain, land.  "He made it the law of the land"






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"Demesne" Quotes from Famous Books



... wapentake, and tithing shall remain at its ancient rent, without increase, except the royal demesne manors. ...
— The Magna Carta

... which came out of the shrine when he was about to seize the woman who was clinging to its side. Bishop Herfastus, too, was struck blind, when on a visit to the abbot, in the attempt to establish his new see in the monastical demesne, and afterward miraculously healed. For centuries the highest in the land brought gifts and laid them before ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume I. - Great Britain and Ireland • Various

... but less beauty, but their extent is not completely explored. The remains discovered in the caves give evidence of British and Roman settlements at Cheddar (Cedre, Chedare), which was a convenient trade centre. The manor of Cheddar was a royal demesne in Saxon times, and the witenagemot was held there in 966 and 968. It was granted by John in 1204 to Hugh, archdeacon of Wells, who sold it to the bishop of Bath and Wells in 1229, whose successors were overlords until 1553, when the bishop granted it to the king. ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 1 - "Chtelet" to "Chicago" • Various

... from the station. Its ruined castle, dating from the end of the fourteenth century, with its lofty octagonal donjon, nearly a hundred feet high, standing on a high "motte" or artificial mound, has a most imposing appearance. Bricquebec, the most considerable demesne of the Cotentins, was taken by King Henry V. from the Sire d'Estouteville, who had so gallantly defended Mont St. Michel against him. Henry gave Bricquebec to William de la Pole, Earl of Suffolk, the ill-fated favourite of Queen Margaret ...
— Brittany & Its Byways • Fanny Bury Palliser

... tenants of the houses and farms enclosed. In 1649 this park was given to the City of London in perpetuity, but was handed back again to Charles II. on his restoration. The Princess Amelia closed the public rights of way through the demesne, but in 1758 a decision of the courts renewed ...
— Hammersmith, Fulham and Putney - The Fascination of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton

... old times of absentee landlordism, squalor and misery crept up to the castle gates. The wretchedness of the tenants could be seen by every passer-by. The peasantry tell of unspeakable orgies held at the castle even upon the Sabbath day. The change is something miraculous. The waste pasture-like demesne is reclaimed and planted. The worst cabins have entirely disappeared; the rest are improved till they hardly ...
— The Letters of "Norah" on her Tour Through Ireland • Margaret Dixon McDougall

... proprietors, and partly from the slovenly habits of the country. And in some cases people who could afford it will not spend the money. There are, however, notable exceptions. Powerscourt in Wicklow, the seat of Viscount Powerscourt, and Woodstock in Kilkenny, the beautiful demesne of Mr. Tighe, are probably in as perfect order as any seats in England. A countryman was sent over to the latter one day with a message from another county. "Well, Jerry," said the master on his return, "what did you think of Woodstock?" "Shure, your honor," was the reply, "I niver seed such ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, No. 23, February, 1873, Vol. XI. • Various

... whose demesne lands are now in the demesne of the Cellarer. And that which is now called Averland was the land of ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 76, April 12, 1851 • Various

... out to sergeants-at-the-law, as appeareth, and was found by inquisition taken in the Guildhall of London, before William Purchase, mayor, and escheator for the king, Henry VII., in the 14th of his reign, after the death of John Lord Scrope, that he died deceased in his demesne of fee, by the feoffment of Guy Fairfax, knight, one of the king's justices, made in the 9th of the same king, unto the said John Scrope, knight, Lord Scrope of Bolton, and Robert Wingfield, esquire, of one house or tenement late called Sergeants' Inn, situate against ...
— Holborn and Bloomsbury - The Fascination of London • Sir Walter Besant

... of the palatinate. [Footnote: THE BOLDEN BOOK. As this ancient document gives the first trace of the Washington family, it merits especial mention. In 1183, a survey was made by order of Bishop de Pusaz of all the lands of the see held in demesne, or by tenants in villanage. The record was entered in a book called the Bolden Buke; the parish of Bolden occurring first in alphabetical arrangement. The document commences in the following manner: Incipit liber qui vocatur Bolden Book. Anno ...
— The Life of George Washington, Volume I • Washington Irving

... peep at his quiet face, where he bent, pipe in his mouth, above his papers, and now she had her own morning's task to perform. The task involved on such charmed winter days almost as much delighted loitering about the different quarters of her demesne as if spring were already at work on shrubs and borders. There were such inexhaustible possibilities still before her, such opportunities to bring out the latent graces of the old place, without a single irreverent ...
— The Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton, Part 2 (of 10) • Edith Wharton

... I travelled in the realms of gold And many goodly states and kingdoms seen; Round many western islands have I been Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold. Oft of one wide expanse had I been told That deep-browed Homer ruled as his demesne: Yet never did I breathe its pure serene Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold: Then felt I like some watcher in the skies When a new planet swims into his ken; Or like stout Cortez, when with eagle eyes He stared at the Pacific—and all his men Looked at each ...
— The Booklover and His Books • Harry Lyman Koopman

... Magna Charta itself, establishing them in all points as the law of the land; but it did more. "Hitherto the king's prerogative of levying money by name of tallage or prise, from his towns and tenants in demesne, had passed unquestioned. Some impositions, that especially on the export of wool, affected all the king's subjects. It was now the moment to enfranchise the people and give that security to private property which Magna Charta had given to personal liberty." Edward's statute ...
— Civil Government in the United States Considered with - Some Reference to Its Origins • John Fiske

... Hart. His is the demesne with the high tower of burnt bricks, near the west end of Tower Street. But stay! 'Twere better you did seek him at the Boar's Head ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye

... since grown almost entirely possessors of the north. Thus, at length, the woods being rooted up, the land was brought in, and tilled, and the glebes which could not before yield two-pence an acre, are equal to the best, sometimes affording the minister a good demesne, and ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. III.: Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Vol. I. • Jonathan Swift

... instead of one. Abundant progeny played at their doors, or rolled in their yard, watched by several unkempt, bedraggled mothers owning a common husband,—and we could easily understand how neither of these should feel much interest in the looks of a demesne held by them in such unhappy partnership. The humblest New-England cottage has its climbing flowers at the door-post, or its garden-bed in front; but how quickly would these wither, if the neat, brisk house-mistress owned her husband ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, April, 1864 • Various

... unfavourable to their interests and fled towards Wexford, leaving the deluded wretches to be cut in pieces. The engagement lasted two hours and an half—the Soldiers merited the cloth they wore, and gloried in the name of WILLIAM. Our Brigade remained all night in the demesne of Harvey Hay, one of the Rebel Chiefs: next day we returned to Houlet again, where we encamped for two days. The scouting parties killed more after the different engagements than what fell in Battle—many of their Commanders, were taken and hanged. We have suffered ...
— An Impartial Narrative of the Most Important Engagements Which Took Place Between His Majesty's Forces and the Rebels, During the Irish Rebellion, 1798. • John Jones

... morning, attended only by La Trape, with a groom, a page, and four Swiss, I started, giving out that I was bound for Sully to inspect that demesne, which had formerly been the property of my family, and of which the refusal had just been offered to me. Under cover of this destination I was enabled to reach La Ferte Alais unsuspected. There, pretending that the motion of the coach ...
— Stories By English Authors: France • Various

... Tignonville, and will retire from the lands of Vrillac. But if you refuse"—the man passed his eye along the line of attentive faces which fringed the battlement—"he will at sunset hang the said Tignonville on the gallows raised for Tavannes, and will harry the demesne of ...
— Count Hannibal - A Romance of the Court of France • Stanley J. Weyman

... travelled in the realms of gold, And many goodly states and kingdoms seen; Round many western islands have I been Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold. Oft of one wide expanse had I been told That deep-browed Homer ruled as his demesne: Yet did I never breathe its pure serene Till I heard Chapman speak out loud ...
— Rhymes and Meters - A Practical Manual for Versifiers • Horatio Winslow

... gave several tenements to the Prior of Rounceval, in Navarre, who established here the chief house of the priory in England. The hospital was finally suppressed by Edward VI. The little village of Charing then stood between London and Westminster. It formed part of the great demesne belonging to the Abbey of Westminster, and was inhabited chiefly by Thames fishermen, who had a settlement on the bank, and by the farmers of the Westminster estates. The derivation of the name from La Chere Reine is ...
— The Strand District - The Fascination of London • Sir Walter Besant

... to guess, I should perhaps say he does like it. Here we are now. Inside this low gate you are within the demesne, and I may bid you welcome to Kilgobbin. We shall build a lodge here one of these days. There's a good stretch, however, yet to the castle. We call it two miles, and it's not ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever

... right place. We had many improving conversations, by which I profited more than he; and he impressed me, like Englishmen of every class, as standing steadfastly but unaggressively upon the rights of his station. In England you feel that you cannot trespass upon the social demesne of the lowliest without being unmistakably warned off the premises. The social inferiors have a convention of profound respect for the social superiors, but it sometimes seemed provisional only, a mask which they expected ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells

... century, large possessions, particularly some extensive forests, which still bear their name. The grandfather of Louis, the Comte Herve de Camors, had, on his return from the emigration, bought back a small part of the hereditary demesne. There he established himself in the old-fashioned style, and nourished until his death incurable prejudices against the French ...
— Monsieur de Camors, Complete • Octave Feuillet

... was the only residence in the road, if one excepted the quarters of caretakers and managers, and it was agreed by all who saw his tiny demesne, that Mr. ...
— The Daffodil Mystery • Edgar Wallace

... really think, Robert," said Mabel, "that since the girls had set their hearts on this excursion, you might have indulged them." "The conceit of men!" cried Clarice; "what had our coming to do with Mr. Hartman? Is he lord of the manor, that no one may trespass on his demesne?" Jane too turned on me. "It was not very kind of you, brother, to prefer a mere acquaintance above your own sister, and suspect her motives in order to save his peace, forsooth!" I knew it was humbug; but ...
— A Pessimist - In Theory and Practice • Robert Timsol

... Broadwater, a slow and lordly stream, that moved mightily down the wide valley, became merged for a space in Lough Kieraun, and thence flowed onwards, broad and brimming, bearded with rushes, passing like a king, cloaked in the splendours of the sunset, to its suicide in the far-away Atlantic. The demesne of Mount Music lay along its banks; in woods often, more often in pastures; with boggy places ringed with willows, lovely, in their seasons, with yellow flags, and meadowsweet, kingcups, ragwort and loosestrife. Its western boundary was the Ownashee, a mountain ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross

... been quiet and old-fashioned and sleepy. Once it was a royal manor, and contained a royal residence. William the Conqueror held Woking in demesne himself, and it passed through the hands of every king until James I, who gave it to one of his foresters, Sir Edward Zouch. Sir Edward had to pay something for his privilege. He held the manor on condition that he was to bring to the ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker

... been cut down for pike-handles, that the clubs would not allow any more to be taken thence, in compassion to the proprietor. At Mount Bolton the owner had it cut and left outside the wood for the people, to prevent further waste; at Lord Waterford's demesne more ash-trees had been cut down, and the useless parts left behind. All the anvils in the country ring with pike-forging, and every weapon is put in order ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... was to bring you in to lunch. She said she wanted to see you. By jingo, I forgot all about it! But you've all become very stupid among you, I know that." And so they rode back to Desmond Court, entering the demesne by one of the straight, dull, level roads which led up to ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope

... ribands at the election time, and the gentlemen of the committee's accounts unsettled, and their subscription never gathered; and there were cows to be paid for, with the smith and farrier's bills to be set against the rent of the demesne, with calf and hay money; then there was all the servants' wages, since I don't know when, coming due to them, and sums advanced for them by my son Jason for clothes, and boots, and whips, and odd ...
— Castle Rackrent • Maria Edgeworth

... then, after advancing through stately avenues, he arrived at mighty gates of wondrous workmanship, that once had been the boast of a celebrated convent on the Danube, but which, in the days of revolutions, had reached England, and had been obtained by the grandfather of Lothair to guard the choice demesne that was the ...
— Lothair • Benjamin Disraeli

... there was above an average of resolution in the style of going at the fences. The ground almost all plough, naturally drained by chalk sub-subsoil, fortunately rode light; but presently we passed the edge of the Wolds, held on through some thin plantations over the demesne grass of a squire's house, then on a bit of unreclaimed heath, where a flock of sheep brought us to a few minutes' check. With the help of a veteran of the hunt, who had been riding well up, a cast forward set us agoing again, and brought ...
— A New Illustrated Edition of J. S. Rarey's Art of Taming Horses • J. S. Rarey

... The Marquis Wellesley (husband of Miss Caton of Maryland), who succeeded his father as second earl of Mornington, sold it to a Mr. Burroughs, who, after greatly improving it, let it to Mr. Roger O'Connor, a near relative of the Chartist agitator of the name. Whilst in his possession the house and demesne were stripped of everything that could be turned into money; the timber, which was remarkable both for quantity and quality, was cut down; and the gardens were permitted to run to waste. At length the house—being heavily insured—was found to be on fire, and was burnt before assistance ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - April, 1873, Vol. XI, No. 25. • Various

... though his goods, and flocks, and herds abound; His wide demesne to fair profusion grown; Though proud his lofty mansion looks around, On hills, and fields, and ...
— An Essay on War, in Blank Verse; Honington Green, a Ballad; The - Culprit, an Elegy; and Other Poems, on Various Subjects • Nathaniel Bloomfield

... they have got there: an argument commonly accepted in his day. Thus he commenced, like the monks themselves, with the beginning of the world; but then came a wide gap down to Domesday Book. The hides and yardlands held by the conquerors—how much was in demesne, how many acres were wood and how many meadow—the number of servi, and what the mill paid were ...
— Round About a Great Estate • Richard Jefferies

... mentioned and a struggling colony of prickly pears. Altogether, God's Location, as with characteristic reverence it had been called, could justly boast of an indubitably superior quality of desolation. It was in the most thickly settled part of this interesting demesne that Mr. Jefferson Doman staked off his claim. If in the prosecution of his design he should deem it expedient to remove any of the dead they would have the right to ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Vol. II: In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians • Ambrose Bierce

... heard the sound of a flute, played with a skill so exquisite as to draw them, surprised and spellbound, to the banks. The musician was a young man, in a boat, which he had moored beneath the trees of their demesne. He was alone, or, rather, he had one companion, in a large Newfoundland dog, that sat watchful at the helm of the boat, and appeared to enjoy the music as much as his master. As the ladies approached the spot, the dog growled, and the young man ceased, though without ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... watering-places, Tonbridge Wells, in Sussex. It is very extensive, and there are no less than ninety miles of grass drives cut through the park and woods. Almost the largest park is that attached to the present duke of Marlborough's famous seat, Blenheim. A large proportion of this magnificent demesne formed part of Woodstock Chase, a favorite hunting-seat of British sovereigns from an early date up to the time of Queen Anne. It was then granted by the Crown to the hero of Blenheim, far more fortunate in respect of the nation's gift than the hero of Waterloo, whose grant ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 29. August, 1873. • Various

... Lizzie Eustace, and that no calamity could be so great as that by which he would be overwhelmed were he still to allow himself to be forced into that marriage. "It would be better," Mrs. Hittaway had said, "to retire to Ireland at once, and cultivate your demesne in Tipperary." This was a grievous sentence, and one which had greatly excited the brother's wrath;—but it had shown how very strong was his sister's opinion against the lady to whom he had unfortunately offered his hand. Then there came to him a letter from Mr. ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope

... Fanshawe who had walked out of Mr. Harte's demesne to Jimville and wore names that smacked of the soil,—"Alkali Bill," "Pike" Wilson, "Three Finger," and "Mono Jim;" fierce, shy, profane, sun-dried derelicts of the windy hills, who each owned, or had owned, a mine ...
— The Land of Little Rain • Mary Austin

... exuberance about the trees and shrubs. Miss King found all this very charming. She took a walk round the pleasure grounds on the evening of her arrival, and felt that she had happened upon the Irish demesne of her dreams—a region of spacious dilapidation, exquisite natural beauty, romantic possibilities, and an inexhaustible supply of local colour; a place very different indeed from the trim Thames-side villas in which she generally spent her summer holidays. Her maid unpacked a ...
— The Simpkins Plot • George A. Birmingham

... which preserved the grace of a superannuated coquette down to the grottos encrusted with shell-work, where slumbered the loves of a bygone age, everything in this antique demesne had retained the physiognomy of former days. Everything seemed to speak still of ancient customs, of the manners of long ago, of faded gallantries, and of the elegant trivialities so ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant

... of agriculture. This book understands the garden to be that part of the personal or home premises devoted to ornament, and to the growing of vegetables and fruits. The garden, therefore, is an ill-defined demesne; but the reader must not make the mistake of defining it by dimensions, for one may have a garden in a flower-pot or on a thousand acres. In other words, this book declares that every bit of land that is not used for buildings, walks, drives, ...
— Manual of Gardening (Second Edition) • L. H. Bailey

... this great demesne Buck ruled. Here he was born, and here he had lived the four years of his life. It was true, there were other dogs, There could not but be other dogs on so vast a place, but they did not count. They came and went, resided in ...
— The Call of the Wild • Jack London

... the monasteries and nunneries are going to the ground in superstition-saturated Spain; while eager workmen are demolishing the last hiding-places of monkery, and letting the daylight into places that have well kept the frightful secrets of three hundred years, and turning the ancient cloister demesne into public parks and pleasure-grounds,—the Romish priesthood here, in free Bavaria, seem to imagine that they cannot only resist the progress of events, but that they can actually bring back the owlish twilight of the Middle Ages. The reactionary ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... winds assaulted, Sat ever Tamara, the Queen— A heavenly angel of beauty, With a spirit of hell's own demesne. ...
— Russian Lyrics • Translated by Martha Gilbert Dickinson Bianchi

... a feller in Limerick and chased that for a bit; then on a 'tween day, when I was away and the deer out grazing in the demesne, somebody slipped a brace of Mauser bullets into it, and that form of diversion was likewise at an end. As far as I could see an animal wouldn't stand a ten minutes' chance in my country unless it were ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 158, February 4, 1920 • Various

... the Phoenix Park approaches the little river Tolka, which winds through a succession of delightful bits of sylvan scenery, such as may be found in the wide demesne of Abbotstown and the classic shades of Glasnevin. From the banks of the Tolka, on the opposite side of the park, the pastures ascend in a gentle slope to culminate at Dunsink, where at a distance of half a mile from the stream, of four miles from Dublin, and at ...
— Great Astronomers • R. S. Ball

... then the variety there! Game in plenty to choose, fish, field, and meadow with hunting; Only the waste exceeds strangely the quantity still. Wealthy? perhaps I grant it; if all, wealth asks for, is absent. 5 Praise the demesne? no doubt; only ...
— The Poems and Fragments of Catullus • Catullus

... possession of a vast feudal domain, with a high wall round it, can never make up to him for the excitement of near neighbours. It may seriously be doubted whether the American millionaire who buys a lordly demesne in England is not doing violence to his natural and national tastes every day that ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead

... difficult to gain a living as serfs that they were willing to surrender all claim to their own little strips of land on the manor and to devote their whole time to working for fixed wages on the fields which were cultivated for the nobleman himself, the so-called lord's demesne. Thus a body of hired laborers grew up claiming no land beyond that on which their miserable huts stood ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes

... falling, a blessed place that the sun shines on, and the wind does not rise there or anything of the sort," and where as he says in another poem "logwood and mahogany" grow in company with its wind twisted beech and storm bent sycamore. Even my own home "sweet Coole demesne" has been transfigured in songs of the neighbourhood; and a while ago an old woman asking alms at the door while speaking of a monastery near Athenry broke into a chant of praise that has in it perhaps some memory of the Well of Healing at the world's end ...
— The Kiltartan Poetry Book • Lady Gregory

... the houses in St. Etienne, like their own, had no property dividing line, but lawn melted into lawn with a park-like openness that hinted at communistic kindliness. This had its disadvantages in lack of privacy, and hence it was that in spite of quite an extensive demesne, Lena found in her own garden no spot absolutely hidden from curious eyes of passers, except in one thicket of trees and shrubbery over near the Early boundary. Here there was seclusion, and here, therefore, young Mrs. Percival had her hammock and her group of chairs and tables; and here she spent ...
— Jewel Weed • Alice Ames Winter

... has been occupied and cultivated for several generations. Besides, the ditches which surround it, and the stone bridge that leads to the principal gate, justify the belief that the estate has some right to be considered a lordly demesne. In the neighborhood it is known as GRINSELHOF. The entire front of the property is covered by the homestead of the farmer, comprising his stables and granges; so that, in fact, every thing in their rear is concealed by these edifices as well as by dense thickets and hedges which ...
— The Poor Gentleman • Hendrik Conscience

... as soon as may be thou mayest gain at my father's hands an escort and a safe return. Thou shalt find a fair grove of Athene, a poplar grove near the road, and a spring wells forth therein, and a meadow lies all around. There is my father's demesne, and his fruitful close, within the sound of a man's shout from the city. Sit thee down there and wait until such time as we may have come into the city, and reached the house of my father. But when thou deemest that we are got to the palace, then go ...
— DONE INTO ENGLISH PROSE • S. H. BUTCHER, M.A.

... myself to this state of things had it not been for Jorrocks of Havistock Farm. Jorrocks is a coarse, burly, matter-of-fact fellow whom I only happen to know through the accidental circumstance of his fields adjoining my demesne. Yet this man, though utterly devoid of all appreciation of archaeological unities, is in possession of a well authenticated and undeniable spectre. Its existence only dates back, I believe, to the reign of the ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Mystic-Humorous Stories • Various

... gentleman's family, raised by being a minion of Henry the Eighth. As there generally is some resemblance of character to create these relations, the favorite was in all likelihood much such another as his master. The first of those immoderate grants was not taken from the ancient demesne of the crown, but from the recent confiscation of the ancient nobility of the land. The lion, having sucked the blood of his prey, threw the offal carcass to the jackal in waiting. Having tasted once the food of confiscation, the favorites ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. V. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... the Earl of Coventry the strange fact that the Earl of Devon's harriers last week gave chase, in his demesne, to an unhappy donkey, whom they tore to pieces before they could be called off; upon which his lordship asked for a piece of chalk and a slate, and composed the following jeu d'esprit on ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, October 16, 1841 • Various

... nostrils, there's no tree, No grain of dust, nor no cold-seeming stone, But wears a fume of its circumfluous self. Thine own life and the lives of all that live, The issue of thy loins, Is this thy gaberdine, Wherein thou walkest through thy large demesne And sphery pleasances,— Amazing the unstal-ed eyes of Heaven, And us that still a precious seeing have Behind this dim and mortal jelly. Ah! If not in all too late and frozen a day I come in rearward of the ...
— New Poems • Francis Thompson

... in any real sense be his. There does not exist such a power of possessing as he would arrogate. There is not such a sense of having as that of which he has conceived the shadow in his degenerate and lapsing imagination. The real owner of his demesne is that pedlar passing his gate, into a divine soul receiving the sweetnesses which not all the greed of the so-counted possessor can keep within his walls: they overflow the cup-lip of the coping, to give themselves to the footfarer. The motions ...
— Hope of the Gospel • George MacDonald

... tempered at most times by a Sweet Mildness; yet there were seasons when this brightness, as that of the Sun in a wholly cloudless sky, became Fierce, and burnt up him who beheld it. Time had been so long a husbandman of her fair demesne, had reaped so many crops of smiles and tears from that comely visage, that it were a baseness to infer that no traces of his husbandry appeared on her once smooth and silken flesh, for the adornment of which she had ever disdained the use of ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 1 of 3 • George Augustus Sala

... conscience to ask Lord Rosse to place it at the service of any person except an experienced astronomer. No introduction, I believe, is necessary for seeing it in the day-time. The instrument stands unenclosed in the Castle Demesne, to which strangers are admitted without question, ...
— Autobiography of Sir George Biddell Airy • George Biddell Airy

... selected by two rich old maids to visit a property in that part of Lancashire which lies near the famous forest of Pendle, with which Mr. Ainsworth's "Lancashire Witches" has made us so pleasantly familiar. My business was to make partition of a small property, including a house and demesne to which they had, a long time ...
— A Stable for Nightmares - or Weird Tales • J. Sheridan Le Fanu

... saying: 'So be it, dear my brother, but am I come not to thee within three days at sunset, then shalt know that my wooing hath not prospered.' Upon the third day, therefore, Beltane the Duke girded on his armour and made ready to ride unto his own demesne, yet tarried until sunset, according to his word. But his brother Johan came not. Therefore he, in turn, rode upon his wooing and came unto the lady's presence in hauberk of mail, and thus ungently clad wooed her as one in haste to be gone, telling her that this world was no place for a man to ...
— Beltane The Smith • Jeffery Farnol

... Its chief courts were the weekly hundred court and the court leet held three times a year, and presided over by the reeve appointed by the earl of Gloucester. By the marriage of Earl John with the heiress of Earl William of Gloucester, Bristol became part of the royal demesne, the rent payable to the king being fixed, and the town shook off the feudal yoke. The charter granted by John in 1190 was an epoch in the history of the borough. It provided that no burgess should be impleaded without the walls, that no non-burgess should sell wine, cloth, wool, leather or corn ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various

... and open to the pedestrian. The entrance is in the Tillington road. Although of an entirely different character from the scenery we have already passed through, partaking more of the nature of an East Midland demesne, especially in the lower, or south end, the magnificent stretches of sward interspersed with noble groups of native trees will amply repay the visit. For those who have time to extend the ramble to the Prospect Tower in the northern portion of the park there is a magnificent view in store, especially ...
— Seaward Sussex - The South Downs from End to End • Edric Holmes

... and I was promoted from the potato field to be a groom's helper in the stables of "the master." We called his residence the "big house." It was like a castle on the Rhine. A very wonderful man was this Member of Parliament to the labourers around on his demesne. Not the least part of this wonder consisted in the tradition that he had a different suit of clothes for every day in the year. He was very fond of fine horses, and gloried in the fact that he owned a winner of the Derby. He kept ...
— From the Bottom Up - The Life Story of Alexander Irvine • Alexander Irvine

... on, and not in the same parish, began the Castle Blanch demesne. The park sloped down to the Thames, and was handsome, and quite full of timber, and the mansion, as the name imported, had been built in the height of pseudo-Gothic, with a formidable keep-looking tower at each corner, but the fortification below consisting ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge

... tenants of the king, which held per baroniam, (by the right of a baron,) and did suit and service (served as judges) at his own court; and the burghers and tenants in ancient demesne, that did suit and service (served as jurors or judges) in their own court in person), and in the king's by proxy, there was also a set of freeholders, that did suit aud service (served as jurors) at the ...
— An Essay on the Trial By Jury • Lysander Spooner

... Mains, demesne. Mair, more. Maist, most. Mart, a fatted cow. Mann, must. Maunder, palaver. Maut, malt. Mensfu', modest, mindful. Mickle, much. Mind, to remember. Mirligoes, dizziness. Mislear'd, unmannerly. Mistaen, mistaken. Many, many. "Morn, the," ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... felt and hummed to himself, though not in words. He had never heard of Arcady, though for many years he had been a citizen of that demesne. ...
— Our Mr. Wrenn - The Romantic Adventures of a Gentle Man • Sinclair Lewis

... that washed its foundations has vanished along with them—and a crowd of other buildings, wholly without character, has long stood where here a single tree, and there a grove, did once render so lovely that small demesne; which, how could we, who thought it the very heart of Paradise, even for one moment have believed was one day to be blotted out of being, and we ourselves—then so linked in love that the band which bound us all together ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson

... We approached the dark demesne, which was now pretty decently clothed with potatoes, artichokes, rhubarb, raspberry-canes, marrows and even cucumber-frames. In the midst was a large open cask which filled itself by a pipe from a former six-inch water-hazard. Here James began to ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Aug. 22, 1917 • Various

... and trithings (except our demesne manors) shall remain at old rents, and without any additional payment.***here ...
— The Magna Carta

... bosom, not much put about at any human danger, let me add, for an encounter with an enemy of flesh and blood was a less fearsome prospect than the chance of an encounter with more invulnerable foes, who, my skin told me, haunted every heugh and howe of that still and sombre demesne of Dalness. But I set my teeth tight in my resolution, and with my dirk drawn in my hand—it was the only weapon left me—I crept over the grass from bush to bush and tree to tree as much out of the revelation of the window-lights as their numbers ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro

... interested parties. The mansion is recognized as common property without dispute. The sisters come and go peacefully through the same door, attend to their business, pass and let the others pass. Down at the bottom of the pit, each has her little demesne, her group of cells dug at the cost of fresh toil, when the old ones, now insufficient in number, are occupied. In these recesses, which are private estates, each mother works by herself, jealous of her property and of her privacy. Every elsewhere, ...
— Bramble-bees and Others • J. Henri Fabre

... was as liable to punishment as if he had killed a freeman. Instead of impeding enfranchisement, the laws, as well as the public feeling, encouraged it. If a villein who had fled from his lord remained a year and a day unclaimed upon the King's demesne lands, or in any privileged town, he became free. All doubtful cases were decided in favorem libertatis. Even the established maxim in law, partus sequitur ventrem, was set aside in favour of liberty; the child of a neif was free if the father were a freeman, ...
— Colloquies on Society • Robert Southey

... were fringed with the willow, the weeping-elm, and the alder, glittered in the sunlight,—their finny inhabitants occasionally leaping in the air, in joyous sport. Fourteen buildings were scattered over the demesne,—one, by its spire, seeming to be devoted to ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 5, March, 1858 • Various

... from a modern farmer. Though he was bound to the soil and could not go away if he wished to do so, yet he could not be sold as though he were a slave; nor, on the other hand, could he, like a farmer, be turned out of his holding so long as he fulfilled his obligation of cultivating his lord's demesne. The lord was almost invariably a thegn, either of the king or of some superior thegn, and there thus arose in England, as there arose about the same time on the Continent, a chain of personal relationships. The king was no longer merely the head of ...
— A Student's History of England, v. 1 (of 3) - From the earliest times to the Death of King Edward VII • Samuel Rawson Gardiner

... glittering silver between the black shadows of its banks. A little while I sat there listening, and surveying the stately, turreted chateau that loomed, a grey, noble pile, beyond the water. I speculated what demesne this might be, and I realized that it was ...
— Bardelys the Magnificent • Rafael Sabatini

... races," says Disraeli, "the sporting world was astonished by hearing that Lord George Bentinck had parted with his racing stud at an almost nominal price. Lord George was present, as was his custom, at this meeting held in the demesne of one who was among his dearest friends. Lord George was not only present, but apparently absorbed in the sport, and his horses were very successful. The world has hardly done justice to the great sacrifice which he made on this occasion to a high sense of duty. He not only ...
— The Portland Peerage Romance • Charles J. Archard

... above all the Missionary Society, are deeply moved in the matter. It hath even been made a personal charge against myself, and with much bitterness I am held up as unzealous for allowing such a nefarious stronghold of Satan to continue on mine own demesne, and harbour one, escaped, as it were, from grace. Acting, therefore, not according to my heart, but as spokesman of the Town Council, the Synod of Elders, and the Society for the Promulgation of Godliness among the Heathen, I am to state that you, Rolf Kittering, ...
— Rolf In The Woods • Ernest Thompson Seton

... mines and in agriculture. This plot of land may be held as long as the occupant wishes; and in case no gold, or very little, should be found there, a request for a fresh square of like dimensions is presented, and the parcel of abandoned land reverts to the common demesne. This is the order followed by the colonists of Darien who are engaged in gold-seeking. I think it is the same for the others, but I have not questioned all of them. Sometimes such a parcel of twelve paces square has netted its possessor ...
— De Orbe Novo, Volume 1 (of 2) - The Eight Decades of Peter Martyr D'Anghera • Trans. by Francis Augustus MacNutt

... She strayed away last night. Susan didn't miss her till the mornin'. She found her just inside the gates of the demesne—by old Lizzie's lodge. She was soaked wid rain an' in a dead faint. I wonder Susan ventured with that blackguard about. She brought Miss Stella to and helped or carried her back. She's wanderin' like in her mind ever ...
— Love of Brothers • Katharine Tynan

... the elder girls. At every point of view, at every flower, the happy little party would stop to talk, admire, and theorise in concert. Emily's reserve had vanished as morning mists. She was full of glee and gladness, on her own demesne, no longer awkward and silent. On fine days Emily and Anne would persuade the others to walk to the Waterfall which made an island of brilliant green turf in the midst of the heather, set with clear springs, shaded with here and there a silver birch, and dotted with ...
— Emily Bront • A. Mary F. (Agnes Mary Frances) Robinson

... so, where does it end? Our first environment is a crib, a room, our mother's eyes. Sensations of hunger, heat, and motion beat upon the baby-brain; there is a vague murmur of sound in the baby-ears. Yet it is this babe who, in after days, has all the universe for his soul's demesne! His environment stretches out to towns and rivers, shore and sea. Looking upward into space, he can view a star whose distance is a thousand times ten thousand miles. Beyond the path of his feet or of his sight, there ...
— The Warriors • Lindsay, Anna Robertson Brown

... the "demesne," which was the lord's home-farm, attached to his dwelling, and the villagers' land, which was held by the villeins for their own use, on the condition of the cultivation of their lord's ground. Hence it will be seen ...
— Lynton and Lynmouth - A Pageant of Cliff & Moorland • John Presland

... right; for if it had not been a cottage it must have been a villa, and a villa, in England at least, was not a place in which one could fancy him at home. But it was, to my vision, a cottage glorified and translated; it was a palace of art, on a slightly reduced scale,—it was an old English demesne. It nestled under a cluster of magnificent beeches, it had little creaking lattices that opened out of, or into, pendent mats of ivy, and gables, and old red tiles, as well as a general aspect of being painted in water-colors and inhabited by people whose lives would go on in chapters ...
— The Author of Beltraffio • Henry James

... all these things were accomplished did Hakon quit Denmark & thence fared forth to the north of Norway, to his demesne. ...
— The Sagas of Olaf Tryggvason and of Harald The Tyrant (Harald Haardraade) • Snorri Sturluson

... was a good deal of gilding about them, and the lofty apex bore a marquis's crown above a shield supported by two naked savages, upon which the de Bruyeres arms were richly emblazoned—it was an entrance worthy of a royal demesne. When our party paused before it, in the course of the morning, a servant in a rich, showy livery was slowly opening the folding leaves of the magnificent gates, so as to admit them into the park. The very oxen hesitated ere ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier

... close of the last century, there lived in the extensive parish of Ashton, in the county of ——, a hard-hearted, eccentric old man, called Mark Hurdlestone, the lord of the manor, the wealthy owner of Oak Hall and its wide demesne, the richest commoner in England, ...
— Mark Hurdlestone - Or, The Two Brothers • Susanna Moodie

... fancy then lofty and wide as a cathedral would seem now, was a famous place for battledore and shuttlecock; and behind was a garden, equal to that of old Alcinous himself. My favourite walk was one of turf by a long straight pond, bordered with lime-trees. But the whole demesne was the fairy ground of my childhood; and its presiding genius was grandpapa. He must have been a very handsome man in his youth, for I remember him at nearly eighty, a very fine-looking one, even in the decay of mind and body. In the morning a velvet cap; by dinner, a flaxen wig; ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb

... experienced by the Barons Baltimore, Lords Proprietary of Maryland, in building up communities in their demesne was not a local problem, but one which confronted those interested in the development of the entire portion of this continent now occupied by the Southern States. Generally speaking, towns came into being more slowly ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street

... and forest, with cultivated fields very infrequently interspersed; the moors of Cowley, the woods of Shotover and Bagley; and farther still, the forests of Nuneham, inhabited even then by the Harcourts, who still hold the ancestral demesne. Descending, he made his way to Greyfriars, as the Franciscan house was called, encountering many groups who were already wending their way to lecture room, or, like Martin, returning to break their fast after morning chapel, which then meant early mass at one of the many ...
— The House of Walderne - A Tale of the Cloister and the Forest in the Days of the Barons' Wars • A. D. Crake

... the name of Frognal is not known, though the locality is of some importance, as it contained the old manor-house where the Courts Leet were held. The demesne lands at Frognal occupied from four to five hundred acres of the best land stretching from Child's Hill to Belsize. The old manor-house, which stood at the north-east corner of West End Lane, was a long, low farmhouse building which contained a big hall. Mr. Pool, a ...
— Hampstead and Marylebone - The Fascination of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton

... long, low, red-brick house standing in prettily-wooded grounds, bordered by the river, on the other side of which lay the park belonging to the squire. The park ran for some distance on both sides of the stream, and the Rectory grounds were, so to speak, taken out of the very midst of the squire's, demesne. The continuation of wooded ground on either side the narrow winding river made the place particularly picturesque; and it was a favorite amusement for the rector's son and daughter to push a rather crazy boat out of the little boat-house at the foot of the garden, and ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant

... mansion of the Duke of Buckingham, with the demesne belonging to it, originally bore the name of York House and occupied a large portion of the ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott



Words linked to "Demesne" :   freehold, countryseat, entail, realm, manor, empire, sheikdom, archduchy, smallholding, duchy, sheikhdom, fiefdom, region, barony, landed estate, state, earldom, realty, hacienda, khanate, seigneury, grand duchy, homestead, glebe, dukedom, real estate, seigniory, suzerainty, domain, viscounty, immovable, imperium, Crown land, plantation, principality, signory, real property, feoff, leasehold, estate, princedom, emirate, kingdom, country, fief



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