One who holds a feod; a vassal or feudal tenant; equivalent to feodary or feudatory.
From feod plus -atory (one who does or holds). This is a variant of 'feudatory' maintaining the older 'feod' spelling, emphasizing the Latin-derived element of the feudal system.
The slight variations between 'feodary,' 'feudatory,' and 'feodatory' reveal how medieval English hadn't yet standardized spelling. Writers chose whichever version felt right in their hand—and scribes in different regions favored different spellings, making medieval documents wonderfully idiosyncratic.
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