Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 9.djvu/87

 F E O F E II 77 FEOFFMENT, in English law, was the form of granting or conveying a freehold or fee. One of its essential ele ments was livery of seisin (delivery of possession), which consisted in formally giving to the feoffee on the land a clod or turf, or a growing twig, as a symbol of the transfer of the land. This was called livery in deed. Livery in law was made not on but in sight of this land, the feoffer saying to the feoffee, &quot;I give you that land; enter and take possession.&quot; By the 8 and 9 Viet. c. 106 feoffments were rendered unnecessary and superfluous. All corporeal hereditaments were by that Act declared to be in grant as well as livery, i.e., they could be granted by deed without livery. And feoffinents were in general required to be evidenced by deed. FERDINAND. The name of Ferdinand (the Italian Fcrdinando or Ferranle, Spanish Fernando or Hernando, Arabian Ferdeland), which is supposed to be of Gothic origin and to be allied to the German verdienend (meri torious), has been borne by a considerable number of European sovereigns, the more important of whom are noticed below in the following order first, the emperors, and then the kings of Naples, Portugal, and Spain, the grand-dukes of Tuscany, and the duke of Brunswick. FERDINAND! (1503-1564), emperor, was the son of Philip of Austria and Joanna daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain, and was born at Alcala in Spain 10th March 1503. In 1521 he married princess Anna of Hungary, and on the death in 1526 of her only brother the boy-king Louis of Bohemia and Hungary he was elected king of Bohemia, but in Hungary his claims were opposed by John Zapolya, palatine of Transylvania. Zapolya suf fered a severe defeat from the imperial troops near Tokay; but after receiving the aid of the Turks he managed to carry on the struggle with varying success until 1538, when the exhausted resources of both rival parties led to a compromise, by which it was agreed that a half of the kingdom should be assigned to each, and that on the death of John the half over which he ruled should revert to Ferdinand. But on the death of John in 1540 the Turks supported the cause of his infant son John Sigismund, and in 1547 Ferdinand was compelled to purchase peace at the price of a yearly tribute. The war was again renewed in 1552, and at its termination the Turks were allowed to retain possession of a part of Hungary in trust for Sigismund. In 1521 Ferdinand had been chosen president of the council of regency appointed to govern Germany during the absence in Spain of his brother the emperor Charles V., and in 1531 he was, through the influence of his brother, elected king of the Romans, in which capacity he acted the part of mediator between the emperor and the German princes, and in 1552 negotiated a treaty between him and the elector Maurice of Saxony. On the abdication of Charles in 1556 Ferdinand was elected emperor. Pope Paul IV. refused ecclesiastical recognition to the election on the ground that it was made without the consent of the papal see, but happily Paul died before the dispute had time to lead to serious consequences, and his successor Pius IV. avoided an open rupture by recognizing its validity on condition that Ferdinand should not observe the treaty of Augsburg. Ferdinand during his short reign showed himself an able, just, and enlightened ruler. He reor ganized the aulic council, effected a reform in the mone tary system of Germany, and exerted himself to bring about a reconciliation between his Protestant and Roman Catholic subjects. To effect this he endeavoured on the one hand to obtain from the pope various concessions to the Protestants, among others permission for the laity to use the cup at the communion, and liberty of marriage for the priests ; and on the other hand he sought to persuade the Protestants to send deputies to the council of Trent; but his death, 25th July 1564, prevented these negotiations having a satisfactory termination. See Bucholtz, Geschichte der Regieruny Ferdinands /., 9 vols., Vienna, 1831-38. FERDINAND II. (1578-1637), emperor, was the grand son of the preceding and the son of Charles duke of Styria and of Mary of Bavaria, and was born at Gratz, 9th July 1578. He was educated by the Jesuits, and having imbibed strong anti-Protestant sentiments is said to have taken a solemn vow before the altar that, on receiving the imperial crown, promised him by his cousin Matthias I.I., he would at whatever cost re-establish the Roman Catholic religion throughout all his states. In 1618 Matthias abdicated the thrones of Bohemia and Hungary in his favour, and on the death of Matthias in 1619 he laid claim to the imperial crown. His keen Roman Catholic sympathies, allied to a character gloomy, fanatical, and cruel, had already led him to disregard the guarantees of toleration by which his election to the thrones of Bohemia and Hungary had been acceded to ; and on that account the Bohemians, shortly after the death of Matthias, rose in revolt, and under the leadership of Count Thurn besieged him in Vienna, until the arrival of an army under General Bouquoi forced them to retreat, and enabled him to pro ceed to Frankfort to receive the imperial crown. The Bohemians, notwithstanding their defeat, chose as their king the elector-palatine Frederick V M son-in-law of James I. of England, and with the assistance of Bethlen Gabor, prince of Transylvania, who revolted against Ferdinand in Hun gary, virtually inaugurated the long struggle for religious liberty known as the Thirty Years War. Ferdinand, how ever, with the support of the Catholic league and the alliance of John George I., elector of Saxony, was able completely to subdue them after a short campaign, and having totally defeated them near Prague, November 8, 1620, he deprived them of their constitutional rights, banished the leading Protestant families, expelled the Re formed preachers and recalled the Jesuits, and by cruel persecutions totally quelled every manifestation of Protes tant belief. But in Hungary he was not so successful as to enable him to put such extreme measures into execution ; on the contrary, he thought it prudent to conclude a peace on the 31st December 1621, by which he agreed to cede one half of the country to Bethlen Gabor, and to grant religious toleration to the other half. In Germany fortune was for a time more favourable to the Roman Catholic cause; several of the German princes had entered into a league with Christian IV. of Denmark, but that monarch was defeated by Ferdinand s general, Wallenstein, and a peace between him and Ferdinand was concluded in 1629. Taking advantage of his opportunity, Ferdinand in the same year passed the famous Edict of Restitution, which enforced the restoration of all German ecclesiastical pro perty that had passed into other hands since the treaty of Passau in 1552. The full execution of the edict was, how ever, prevented, partly by the unwillingness of the Roman Catholic princes to give up the property of which they had becomed possessed, partly by the intrigues of Cardinal Richelieu, who was jealous of the increasing influence of the emperor, but principally through the arrival of Gustavus Adolphus. Uniting with the Protestant princes of Germany, Gustavus inflicted a succession of defeats on Ferdinand, who, having at the urgent representations of the Catholic princes dismissed Wallenstein from the command of the imperial army, possessed no general at all adequate to cope with the genius and energy of the king of Sweden. Gustavus was subsequently joined by the elector of Saxony, and fortune failed to smile on the arms of Ferdinand even after the recall of Wallenstein, who was defeated at the battle of Liitzen, 16th November 1632. The victory was dearly bought by the death of the king of Sweden,