ppl. a. [f. prec. + -ED1.] In various senses of the vb. a. Furnished with defences, fortified. Now only in Biblical phraseology. b. Provided with a hedge or rail, railed off, enclosed, lit. and fig. Also fenced in. c. Sc. Law. Poinded; see FENCE v. 8 c.
c. 1440. Promp. Parv., 155/1. Fencyd, or defencyd, defensus, munitus, defensatus.
1535. Coverdale, Judith iii. 6. Then came Holofernes downe from the mountaynes with horsemen & great power, and conquered all stronge fensed cities, and all that dwelt in the londe.
1600. Fairfax, Tasso, II. lxxv.
| Th’inhabitants each pasture and each plaine | |
| Destroied haue, each field to waste is lade, | |
| In fensed towres bestowed is their graine, | |
| Before thou cam’st this kingdome to inuade. |
1611. Bible, 2 Kings xvii. 9. They built them high places in all their cities, from the tower of the watchmen, to the fenced city.
1637. Rutherford, Lett., lxxxii. (1863), I. 207. Let pleasures and gain, will and desires of this world, be put over into God’s hands, as arrested and fenced goods that ye cannot intromit with.
1746–7. Hervey, Medit. (1818), 203. I might have beheld our fenced cities encompassed with armies, and our fruitful fields ‘clothed with desolation.’
1853. Marsden, The History of the Early Puritans, 77. Cartwright, if dissatisfied, should have at once retired, and challenged other hearers than his pupils, and upon some other tilting-ground than the fenced enclosures of a university.
1853. Maurice, Proph. & Kings, xii. 192. He speaks, they say, of its hills and valleys, of its villages and fenced cities, in a way which shows that he had been brought up among them.
