Feudal tenure

“ Wherever they went the barons had introduced the system of feudal tenure, which was foreign to the laws and feelings of the people, and they vigorously resisted its application. Moreover, foreign ecclesiastics, the kinsmen or clients of the secular tyrant, seized upon the livings. ”

“ Absolute monarchy, as a form of government, once held sway over most of the world. But democratic government entered into competition with it, and as there was not room enough for both, one crowded the other off the stage. The great mediaeval institution of feudalism dominated the rural life of Europe for more than five hundred years, but the last relics of feudal tenure have practically all been swept away. ”

“ By the 1st of the 7th of Henry VIII., the laws of feudal tenure were put in force against the landed traders. Wherever lands were converted from tillage to pasture, the lords of the fee had authority to seize half of all profits until the farm- buildings were reconstructed. If the immediate lord did not do his duty, the lord next above him was to do it ”

“ A man 'chose his Lord'; he sought some one more powerful than himself, with whom he entered into the relation of Comitatus; as feudal ideas strengthened, he commonly surrendered his allodial land to the Lord so chosen, and received it back again from him on a feudal tenure. This was the process of Commendation, a process of everyday occurrence in the case of private men choosing their Lords, whether those Lords were simple gentlemen or Kings. ”

“ They held the land on feudal tenure, that is to say, they had a right to be supported by the peasants living on their estates, and, in return, they owed to some higher or wealthier nobleman or to the king certain duties, such as fighting for him, [Footnote: This obligation rested only upon lay noblemen, not upon ecclesiastics.] attending his court at specified times, and paying him various irregular taxes (the feudal dues) . The estate of each nobleman might embrace a single farm, or "manor" as it was called, inclosing a petty hamlet, or village ”

“ Of all the phenomena of feudalism none seems more essential than seignorial justice. In times gone by English lawyers and historians have been apt to treat it lightly and to concentrate their attention on military tenure. For them ‘the introduction of the military tenures’ has been ‘the establishment of the feudal system.’ But when compared with seignorial justice, military tenure is a superficial matter, one out of many effects rather than a deep-seated cause. ”

“ While he thus, on the one hand, was the national English sovereign, on the other he was the supreme landowner and feudal lord. Under this double influence, the tenure of land, following the universal tendency of Europe, became wholly feudal and military. But the other side of feudalism—with its isolation, the virtual independence of the feudatories (among whom the king was but the first among his peers) , and the suppression of national jurisdiction, which were the chief characteristics of French feudalism—was kept in careful restraint. ”

“ This triumph of socage is the result of a long process. Fee-farm, burgage, and petty serjeanty, always possessing many features in common, were gradually assimilated in almost all respects, while a statute (12 Charles II. c. 24) transformed tenure in chivalry also into socage. The once humble socage has thus risen high, and now embraces most of the land of England. [80]
71The interest of historians naturally centres round tenure by knight’s service, which is the very kernel of the feudal system. Lack of definition in the middle ages was a fruitful source of quarrel. ”

“ Under the feudal system of land tenure, the heir of a deceased vassal had to do homage to his lord and take an oath of fealty, in order to secure his right to succeed to the fief, or land and revenues, held by his predecessor. ”

“ The political and social arrangements summed up in the phrase related primarily to the land and the conditions of service upon which it was held. Commerce and manufactures, and the organization of towns which grew out of them, were always exceptions to the feudal system; the monarchy saved itself, its sheriffs, and the shires to some extent from feudal influence; and soon it set to work to redeem the administration of justice from its clutches. In all parts of the country, moreover, there was land, the tenure of which was never feudalized. ”

“ But while on some manors some outward form of feudalism, such as homage and fealty, were still maintained, the decay of feudal relations in the middle order of society had combined with economic causes to better their condition, and the time was already not far distant when those who held by the more honourable tenure of knight service would insist on its being assimilated to the humbler and less onerous tenure of the socager. ”

“ In ancient feudal times the lords had arbitrary power over vassals who held their lands by tenure of military service, and punished them as they saw fit, and courts of chivalry took cognizance of offenses committed by the nobles. With the decline of feudalism the system of military despotism became obnoxious to the English people, and although the necessity for a standing army was admitted in time of peace, it could only exist with the consent of Parliament. ”

“ All the lineaments of the feudal land system are already visible in the later Anglo-Saxon period. The feudal formula of dependent [Pg 95] tenure is known; the exercise of jurisdictional rights by private persons is a familiar fact; in places one could even see, "a four-storied feudal edifice." No large historical transformation is matter for unqualified regret. Feudalism was a necessary stage in the education and development of the barbarian world. "There are indeed historians who have not yet abandoned the habit of speaking of feudalism as though it were a disease of the body politic. ”

“ The feudal barons by tenure, whose right to a Parliamentary summons gradually became hereditary as going with their lands, were gradually joined by other prominent men who, though not landowners, were summoned to give the Council the benefit of their experience and advice. ”

“ His duty was to aid his lord against enemies, yield him counsel and assistance in the judgment of causes, and pay money to ransom him from captivity, knight his eldest son, or portion his daughter. The ramifications of these feudal tenures and obligations extended, with all manner of complications, from king and duke down to such as held the meagre fief that barely kept man and war-horse from degrading labour. All these made up the feudal class whose members might expect to become knights on reaching manhood. ”

“ All this time the power of the nobles had been increasing, for, whereas, at first they had been only the officers of the king, and were appointed to or removed from their posts at the royal pleasure, they contrived at length to make their positions hereditary and to establish certain rights and privileges. This was the foundation of the feudal system, and such a growth was sure to strike deep root. Every officer could hope to become a ruler in a small way, and to endow his family with whatever gains and holdings he had managed to make his own. ”

“ But now feudalism, very generally established, and papal absolutism, rapidly culminating, are to meet in angry collision. Shall the kings of the earth prevail, assisted by feudal armies and outward grandeur, and sustained by such powerful sentiments as loyalty and chivalry; or shall a priest, speaking in the name of God Almighty, and appealing to the future fears of men? ”

“ Some of the kings behaved very ill in this, in making the heirs pay a great deal more than was just; and, if a baron died, and left a daughter only, she was obliged to marry any one the king chose, or he would not let her have her inheritance at all.
17. The feudal laws were therefore very bad, because they gave men the power of being tyrants to each other; for the nobles had the same power of oppressing their vassals that the king had of oppressing them. ”

“ After the subversion of the Roman power, the northern sovereigns, who had become the barbarous and ignorant oppressors of our species, introduced and established, among other political regulations, the feudal system, as it was called, by which all property in land was held by certain fiefs, whereby the king, or, as termed, lord of the soil, let certain portions of the land to his nobles, military officers, and other great persons, generally often on condition of certain services required to be performed, called knights’ service, and other military tenures ”

“ It was a fitting symbol for the siècle de fer, that century of moral and material disorder and disaster in which the country was now involved.
For France was now falling into the iron grip of feudalism. It is the age of castles. As the power of the central authority weakens, the power of the great vassals, dukes, counts, bishops and abbots becomes established as absolute in their fiefs. But during the period of disorder, from which the feudal régime emerged triumphant, the serf had waged with his{52} master the same struggle that the vassal was waging with his lords and the lord with the King. ”

“ Should one confine one's studies of feudalism to the rules laid down by the feudal lawyers and the careful descriptions of the exact duties of the vassal which are to be found in the contracts of the period, one might conclude that everything had been so minutely and rigorously fixed as to render the feudal bond sufficient to maintain order and liberty. But one has only to read a chronicle of the time to discover that, in reality, brute force governed almost everything outside of the Church. ”

“ Chivalry was the fine flower of honour growing from this soil, embosomed in an abundant leafage of imagination.
The feudal system was founded on relations and sentiments arising from a state of turbulence where every man needed the protection of a lord: it could not fail to foster sentiments of fealty. The fief itself, the feudal unit of land held on condition of homage and service, symbolized the principle of mutual troth between lord and vassal. The land was part of mother earth; the troth, the elemental personal tie, existed from of yore. ”

“ Where the general duty of allegiance has lapsed into oblivion, the tenant-in-chief is in all but name a dependent king, and the feudal state becomes a federation under a hereditary president, who occasionally arbitrates between the members of the federation and occasionally leads them out to war. ”

“ The lord lived in his castle, and the peasantry worked his land and supported him, fighting his battles if the need arose. This condition of society was known as feudalism, and the feudal relations of lord and vassal came to be the prevailing governmental organization of the period. ”

“ As the aristocracy of feudalism was founded, not on wealth or money, but on land tenure, one of the most stable titles to prestige and authority found in history, there was in the underlying concept of society in those days a feeling of stability and permanency, which for a time made feudalism, in spite of its flaws, a bulwark of order. ”

“ We must nevertheless remember that heavy dues fell upon the privileged class themselves to a certain degree, and that if they taxed their poor vassals without mercy, they had in their turn often to reckon with their superiors in the feudal hierarchy. ”

“ Your Majesty is aware that the strict interpretation of the feudal law is becoming obsolete even in the Empire, and that superior and vassal endeavour to mend their situation in regard to each other, as they have power and opportunity. ”

“ This right rose originally, on the continent, from fiefs becoming descendible to female heirs, and was grounded upon the same principle as the rule which forbad vassals to alien without their lords consent. As every feudal kingdom, at this time, consisted of a number of principalities, under their respective lords, who were often at war with each other, the tenant could not alien without his lord, lest he might introduce an enemy into the feudal society. ”

“ The royal power, adorned with the seignorial prerogatives snatched from the subjugated barons, establishes itself amidst their ruined castles, beneath which lies buried the feudal system. Mercenary armies, now constantly maintained by the sovereign, render him independent of the military services of his subjects, and formidable alike to foreign foes and to turbulent nobles. ”

“ Whatever be the proper view of its origin and legal nature, the best mode of vividly picturing to ourselves the feudal organisation is to begin with the basis, to consider the relation of the tenant to the patch of soil which created and limited his services—and then to mount up, through narrowing circles of super-feudation, till we approximate to the apex of the system. ”

“ In the last generations the more vigorous of the counts and margraves had shaken off their dependence on the dukes, and aspired to stand in immediate relations with the Emperor. Yet the whole drift of the time was towards feudalism, and towards making a limited number of tenants-in-chief, whether dukes, margraves or counts, the sole persons with whom the Emperor had any direct relations. Secure in their own hereditary tenure of their fiefs and allodial properties, the great lords of Germany claimed an absolute control over all their vassals. ”

“ In England the feudal system had been brought to great perfection—a powerful king, a state organised for common action, with a great military force, a highly organised treasury, a powerful nobility, and a dependent people. ”

“ Glancing backwards, we find that the feudal order of the Middle Ages, with its graduated authority—vested in the hands of successive orders of agricultural and military chiefs, subordinated in their turn to one supreme chief, the Sovereign of the realm—had gradually become absorbed in an absolute monarchy. ”

“ Feudalism had been gradually stifling old English freedom, and the King saw himself confronted with a feudal baronage, nobles claiming hereditary, military, and judicial power independent of the King, such as degraded the Monarchy and riveted down the people in France for centuries. ”