Obs. [f. prec. + -NESS.] The condition of being beholden to any one; obligation, indebtedness; (in late use) dependence.
1580. Sidney, Arcadia, III. 253. All other meanes, that might either establish a beholdingnes, or at least awake a kindnesse.
1602. Carew, Cornwall, 60 b. My love to vertue, and not any particular beholdingnes, hath expressed this my testimony.
1628. R[ichard] B[eling], Sidney’s Arcadia, VI. (1628–38), 492. Leonatus the yong king of Pontus (who had bin there to acknowledge his beholdingnesse to them.
1658. Slingsby, Diary (1836), 200. That servile condition … beholdingness or dependance on the elder [brother].
