Crossword-Solution: VASAL 5 letters, 1 clue 🏆 scrabble score: 8

Under the feodal system, every owner of lands held them in subjection to some superior or lord, from whom or whose ancestors the tenant or vasal had received them: and there was a mutual trust or confidence subsisting between the lord and vasal, that the lord should protect the vasal in the enjoyment of the territory he had granted him, and, on the other hand, that the vasal should be faithful to the lord and defend him against all his enemies.

This obligation on the part of the vasal was called his _fidelitas_ or fealty; and an oath of fealty was required, by the feodal law, to be taken by all tenants to their landlord, which is couched in almost the same terms as our antient oath of allegiance[a]: except that in the usual oath of fealty there was frequently a saving or exception of the faith due to a superior lord by name, under whom the landlord himself was perhaps only a tenant or vasal.