FEUDALISM

Feudalism is a term used to describe certain institutions which emerged in western Europe
in the seventh and eighth centuries and which developed rapidly in the two centuries that
followed. These institutions appeared because rulers were so constantly engaged in war and
so limited in their machinery of government that they could not protect the peo0ple at a
time when Europe was under deadly attack by Saracens, Slavs, Magyars, and Norsemen
(Vikings or Danes). Feudalism was a means by which society place itself on a permanent war
footing and obtained some small amount of local government and local security.

As introduced into England by the Normans, feudalism consisted of three basic elements.
The first was personal. A baron bound himself in the most sacred and solemn way to become
William’s man, his vassal, and to give him loyalty, service, and good counsel. The baron, now
William’s vassal, performed an act of homage and swore an oath of fealty, pledging himself
to be William’s faithful follower. William in turn promised protection to his vassal. This
protection was not only military, but legal. William held a feudal court which the vassal must
attend and in which he could seek redress for any wrong done to him by another vassal. This
bond of lord and vassal was made sacred and as unbreakable as possible, for it held society
together. And yet it was a contract. If the vassal failed to perform his duty and service, his
lands were taken away from him. If the King broke the contract by injustice or tyranny, the
vassal could in extreme cases renounce his fealty in a declaration called a defiance. In
practice, the defiance was extremely rare, for it did the vassal little good unless he could
defend himself by successful revolt.

A second element of feudalism was the land granted by the King to a vassal in return for
military service. The vassal was a tenant-in-chief because he received his land directly from
the King, his lord; the land was held by feudal or military tenure and was called the fief.
William had vast quantities of land, for he confiscated the estates not only of Harold and his
brothers but of all the English who fought at Hastings or who later rose in rebellion. Indeed,
there was the implicit claim that William was the proprietor of England and that all land
belonged to him. He made arrangements with about 180 of his followers, lay and
ecclesiastical, granting estates to each in return for the service of a stipulated number of
knights, calculated for convenience in multiples of five. A few of the great vassals (or barons,
considering their social status) owed sixty or seventy knights, and in general the feudal
burden was much heavier than it had been in Normandy for an equivalent amount of land.
These knights equipped for battle must be brought to the feudal lord and must serve for
forty days a year, that is, for the summer campaign.

It was absolutely essential that a vassal supply the knights he owed. So vital was this
obligation that various safeguards, known as the feudal incidents, protected the King or
feudal suzerain in case the knights were not forth coming. The incidents, as they developed
in Anglo-Norman feudalism, were somewhat as follows:
 Relief. The estate held by a vassal in military tenure was in practice hereditary. But in
theory it was not, for death ended the contract, and when the vassal died the King might
legally take back the land. What happened was that the heir paid the King a sum of money
known as relief and was invested with his father’s estates and nobility title. The King
demanded that the fief be held together and that one person be responsible for the knights
due from it. Hence there arose the principle of primogeniture by which the fief descended to
the eldest son and to him alone. Primogeniture was a measure of the insistence with which
the King demanded knights’ service from a fief at the earliest possible moment.

Wardship. If the heir was a child and thus unable to fulfill the military obligations of
the fief, the King might take possession of the estate and manage it for his own profit until
the heir came of age.

Marriage. Should the fief descend to a woman, the King was in danger of losing the
military service owed him. The heiress might marry someone who could not perform this
service, or she might marry an enemy of the King and transfer her wealth to him. Hence the
King reserved the right to select a husband for an heiress, though the husband must not be
her inferior in social rank.

Escheat. If the vassal’s family became extinct, or if the vassal suffered a long
imprisonment for some grave offense, the fief reverted or escheated to the King, who
regained complete control over it.

Fine on alienation. A vassal wishing to sell or alienate a portion of his fief (something
which was not very common in those days), could not do so without the King’s consent and
would normally pay a fine for the privilege of alienation since he deprived his lord of the
knights that he was entitled to for that part of the fief.

Forfeiture. A vassal who failed to perform his military service or who broke his
agreement with the King in some other way, was tried in the King’s feudal court and, if found
guilty, forfeited his lands, which reverted to the King.

These feudal incidents not only assured the King that knights’ service would be forthcoming
from a fief but also underscored the fact that the fief was not a gift but a conditional grant of
land in which the king retained may rights. They provided occasional opportunities for the
King to obtain revenue from a fief. In addition, the King could ask for the feudal aids, sums of
money payable by a vassal when the King was in financial need. There was at first a good
deal of uncertainty about the aids, but during the twelfth century they became payable on
three occasions only: when the King knighted his eldest son, which might be an occasion of
great splendor and expense; when he arranged the marriage of his eldest daughter and had
to supply a dowry; and when he was captured in war and must be ransomed.

The third element of feudalism was private jurisdiction. The baron or vassal who obtained
estates from William (his tenant-in-chief) also obtained the right to hold courts for the men
living on his lands. These courts were of various kinds. There was a court for the tenant-in-
chief’s own vassals. (A tenant-in-chief had the right to grant or subinfeudate a portion of his
lands to his followers in return for military service.). There was a court for the tenant-in-
chief’s knights and another for the unfree peasants on his estate. It was this element of
private jurisdiction that gave feudalism its governmental aspect. The enforcement of the law
was left in private hands in a way no modern state would permit.

These feudal principles will become clearer if we look more closely at what happened in the
years following the Conquest. William granted fiefs to about 180 of his followers or barons,
who pledged to supply an army which contained at least some 4000 knights and may have
contained many more. This was a large army. The number of knights requires from each fief
was determined by the King, whose assessments seem very arbitrary, but he was often
ignorant of the true value of the lands involved. William built round 60 castles and the
knights served there in rotation on garrison duty when they were not needed in the field.
Such arrangement was called a castellaria.

Most of the great fiefs were composed of estates scattered throughout the kingdom. Henry
de Ferrers, Earl of Derby, held lands in fourteen counties. This scattering of estates has
sometimes been attributed to policy, but it was probably due to the piecemeal nature of the
Conquest ant to the way in which Anglo-Saxon nobles had held lands in various parts of the
kingdom. The result was to lessen the military power of the Norman barons and to give
them an interest in the country as a whole rather than in any one locality. The estates
making up a great fief were known collectively as an honor, which was administered as a
unit from the principal castle of the baron. It had its officials, its council, its feudal court, its
exchequer (the department in charge of the collection of taxes); its organization and
management were modeled upon the administration of the King. William held the greatest
of honors, the honor of England.

Having obtained a fief, a Norman baron speedily took possession. The Anglo-Saxon nobles
who survived the Conquest disappeared into poverty or exile; when William died in 1087
scarcely more than one percent of the land remained in the hands of those who had held it
before 1066. William insisted that the Normans hold their lands with all the rights and
obligations of the former owners. For this reason the Normans adopted the fiction that the
Anglo-Saxon nobles had been their ancestors. Occasionally a Norman married the Anglo-
Saxon heiress of the lands he had obtained from the King. To hold the people in subjection
required military strength; the Norman baron, using the forced labor of the peasants, at
once built a castle. At the beginning, a castle was a timbered structure surrounded by a
wooden stockade, a ditch filled with water and a drawbridge that could be raised in time of
danger. From the early crude timbered castles, not replaced by stone for another century,
the Norman barons and their knights rode forth to hold the countryside in subjection.

Every baron, lay and ecclesiastical, maintained a number of knights in his household. Knights
were essential, not only to fulfill a baron’s obligation to the King and to hold down the native
population, but also to garrison castles and to escort the baron and his family as they
travelled from one estate to another. The barons also granted lands to some of their
followers and knights in return for military service. This process was known as
subinfeudation, and the person who obtained land became the baron’s vassal and the King’s
subvassal. Knights were most anxious to be enfeoffed in this way. Without an estate they
were apt to remain mere fighting men all their lives. They were rough and crude and
brutalized by war. The Anglo-Saxons saw no reason to regard them with respect; in fact, the
Anglo-Saxon word cniht meant servant or retainer. But if a knight could obtain a fief he
might rise in the social scale. Some knights secured lands scattered through the honor of
their lord, they attended his feudal court, they were perhaps his officials, they owed him the
service of three or four knights. They might hold as much land as some of the smaller
tenants in chief, and they were referred to as barons. This process by which a baron held
land from the King and then subinfeudated part of it to knights or lesser barons (who might
repeat the process to knights bellow them), created in time the elaborate hierarchy of the
landed classes in Medieval England.

In the reign of Henry I (1100-1135) there arose a practice of paying money to the King
instead of military service. This payment, known as scutage or shield money, was often of
advantage to both parties. A baron might be old or ill, and although there were warrior-
bishops who loved to take part in battle – William’s brother Bishop Odo swung a great club
at the Battle of Hastings because canon law forbade him to shed blood by the sword – many
churchmen preferred to pay scutage in place of knights’ service. The King welcomed scutage
because he had much fighting to do on the Continent, where he could easily hire knights. In
the long run, scutage had important results. The smaller barons became less warlike and
more devoted to the management of their estates and men could assume the obligations of
a fief although they did not intend to fight.

A few general comments may be made at this point. In the first place, it is clear that feudal
institutions concerned only the nobility. The mass of the people, peasants and townsmen
and even merchants of some wealth, had no part in the feudal system. Secondly, the feudal
structure was far more flexible than can be indicated in a short description. Every bargain
between William and his tenants-in-chief, and between these tenants and their own vassals,
was a separate agreement which might differ from all others. Besides, many of William’s
barons came from places other than Normandy and introduced feudal customs they had
known in their homelands.

Finally, the question arises why feudalism had not developed in Anglo-Saxon England in spite
of the war and violence brought about by the invasion of the Danes. Unlike what happened
on the Continent, where kings tended to be rather weak, a line of strong Anglo-Saxon Kings
had led the nation to victory over the invaders. Monarchy acquired great prestige and won
the loyal affection of the people. Anglo-Saxon Kings did not have to bribe their nobles with
lavish grants of land in order to “buy” their loyalty, which was so common on the Continent
at that time. The reconquest of the Danelaw made it possible for Kings to organize local
government and to keep some control over it.

Adapted from A History of England by D. H. Willson.