Meantime a great change had taken place in England with respect to
holding land (SS86, 150). We shall see clearly to what that change
was tending if we look at the condition of France. There a system of
government and of land tenure existed known as the Feudal System.
Under it the King was regarded as the owner of the entire realm. He
granted, with his royal protection, the use of portions of the land to
his chief men or nobles, with the privilege of building castles and of
establishing courts of justice on these estates. Such grants were
made on two conditions: (1) that the tenants should take part in the
King's Council; (2) that they should do military service in the King's
behalf, and furnish besides a certain number of fully armed horsemen
in proportion to the amount of land they had received. So long as
they fulfilled these conditionms--made under oath--they could retain
their estates, and hand them down to their children; but if they
failed to keep their oath, they forfeited the land to the King.
These great military barons or lords let out parts of their immense
manors,[2] or estates, on similar conditions,--namely (1) that their
vassals or tenants should pay rent to them by doing military or other
service; and (2) that they should agree that all questions concerning
their rights and duties should be tried in the lord's private
court.[3] On the other hand, the lord of the manor pledged himself to
protect his vassals.
[2] Manor (man'or): see plan of a manor (Old French manoir, "a
mansion") on page 75, the estate of a feudal lord. Every manor had
two courts. The most important of these was the "court baron." It
was composed of all the free tenants of the manor, with the lord (or
his representative) presiding. It dealt with civil cases only. The
second court was the "court customary," which dealt with cases
connected with villeinage. The manors held by the greater barons had
a third court, the "court leet," which dealt with criminal cases, and
could inflict the death penalty. In all cases the decisions of the
manorial courts would be pretty sure to be in the lord's favor. In
England, however, these courts never acquired the degree of power
which they did on the Continent.
[3] See note above, on the manor.
On every manor there were usually three classes of these tenants:
(1) those who discharged their rent by doing military duty; (2) those
who paid by a certain fixed amount of labor--or, if they preferred, in
produce or in money; (3) the villeins, or common laborers, who were
bound to remain on the estate and work for the lord, and whose
condition, although they were not wholly destitute of legal rights,
was practically not very much above that of slaves (S113).
But there was another way by which men might enter the Feudal System;
for while it was growing up there were many small free landholders,
who owned their farms and owed no man any service whatever. In those
times of constant civil war such men would be almost in daily peril of
losing, not only their property, but their lives. To escape this
danger, they would hasten to "commend" themselves to some powerful
neighboring lord. To do this, they pledged themselves to become "his
men," surrendering their farms to him, and received them again as
feudal vassals. That is, the lord bound himself to protect them
against their enemies , and they bound themselves to do "suit and
service"[1] like the other tenants of the manor; for "suit and
service" on the one side, and "protection" on the other, made up the
threefold foundation of the Feudal system.
[1] That is, they pledged themselves to do suit in the lord's private
court, and to do service in his army.
Thus in time all classes of society became bound together. At the top
stood the King, who was no man's tenant, but, in name at least, every
man's master; at the bottom crouched the villein, who was no man's
master, but was, in fact, the most servile and helpless of tenants.
Such was the condition of things in France. In England, however, this
system of land tenure was not completely established until after the
Norman Conquest, 1066; for in England the tie which bound men to the
King and to each other was originally one of pure choice, and had
nothing directly to do with land. Gradually, however, this changed;
and by the time of Edward the Confessor land in England had come to be
held on conditions so closely resembling those of France that one step
more--and that a very short one--would have made England a kingdom
exhibiting all the most dangerous features of French feudalism.
For, notwithstanding certain advantages,[2] feudalism had this great
evil: that the chief nobles often became in time more powerful than
the King. This danger now menaced England. For convenience Canute
the Dane had divided the realm into four earldoms. The holders of
these vast estates had grown so mighty that they scorned royal
authority. Edward the Confessor did not dare resist them. The
ambition of each earl was to get the supreme mastery. This threatened
to bring on civil war, and to split the kingdom into fragments.
Fortunately for the welfare of the nation, William, Duke of Normandy,
by his invasion and conquest of England, 1066, put an effectual stop
to the selfish schemes of these four rival nobles.
[2] On the Advantages of Feudalism, see S87.