Forefather's neat order - 'Surrender book (10)
I believe the answer is:
antecedent
'forefather's' is the definition.
(thesaurus)
'neat order 'surrender book' is the wordplay.
I cannot really see how this works, but
an anagram of 'neat' is 'ante' which is within the answer.
''surrender' could be 'cede' (synonyms) and 'cede' is found within the answer.
'book' could be 'nt' (New Testament) and 'nt' is found within the answer.
This accounts for all the letters.
This explanation may well be incorrect...
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for antecedent that I've seen before include "Something previously extant" , "Going before (in time/order)" , "Something existing before another" , "prior" , "Previous" .)