Homage

Homage [fr. homo, Lat., a man], the most honourable service and most humble service of reverence that a free tenant might do to his lord. When a tenant performed it, he was unfit, and his head uncovered, the lord sitting; the tenant then knelt before him on both his knees, and held his hands extended and joined between the hands of his lord, and said thus:-'I become your man from this day forward, of life and limb, and of earthly worship, and unto you shall be true and faithful, and bear to you faith for the tenements that I claim to hold of you, saving the faith that I owe unto our sovereign lord the King.' The lord then kissed him. Homage could only be done to the lord himself, but fealty might to his steward or bailiff, Co. Litt. 64 a, 68 a. The general name of manorial tenants that do homage. See HOMAGE; JURY.

In Feudal times, a ceremony that a new tenant per formed for lord to acknowledge tenure, Black's Law Dictionary, 7th Edn., p. 737