Word.ws English Dictionary

Holyworkfolk

Holyworkfolk noun: tenants who held land by the service of repairing or defending a church or monument and were therefore exempt from feudal and military duties; specifically, the caretakers of the body of St Cuthbert.

Noun

Holyworkfolk pl (plural only)

  1. (plural, plural-only, medieval English law) Tenants who held land by the service of repairing or defending a church or monument and were therefore exempt from feudal and military duties; specifically, the caretakers of the body of St Cuthbert.
    • More curious still is the position of certain tenants of the bishopric who called themselves Holyworkfolk, who claimed that their only duty was to pray1877, The Saturday Review of Politics, Literature, Science, Art, and Finance, volume 44, page 525
    • This they naturally considered an indignity, and made a party against on the ground that were Holyworkfolk and held their lands for the defence of the body of St. Cuthbert, and not at the bishop's pleasure1878, Thomas Duffus Hardy, “Preface”, in Registrum Palatinum Dunelmense: The Register of Richard de Kellawe, Lord Palatine and Bishop of Durham, page viii

Origin of Holyworkfolk

See halywercfolk.

Questions about Holyworkfolk

What does Holyworkfolk mean?
Holyworkfolk means tenants who held land by the service of repairing or defending a church or monument and were therefore exempt from feudal and military duties; specifically, the caretakers of the body of St Cuthbert.
What part of speech is Holyworkfolk?
Holyworkfolk is a noun.

Words near Holyworkfolk in the dictionary

  1. Holywell
  2. Holywell Green
  3. Holywell Street
  4. Holywell-cum-Needingworth
  5. Holywood
  6. Holyworkfolk
  7. Holzapfel
  8. Holzapfels
  9. Holzer
  10. Holzers
  11. Holzhauer

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: Holyworkfolk (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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