Vassal

“ I have ever shown favour unto you, and you have ever served me as the loyalest vassal that ever did service to his lord. Now therefore I beseech you as my friend and true vassal, that you go to Zamora to my sister Donya Urraca, and say unto her again, that I beseech her to give me the town either for a price, or in exchange, and I will give to her Medina de Rioseco, with the whole Infantazgo, from Villalpando to Valladolid, and Tiedra also, which is a good Castle; and I will swear unto her, with twelve knights of my vassals, never to break this covenant between us ”

“ It helped to foster the love of independence, of self-government, of local institutions, of communal and municipal freedom. The vassal that lived under the shadows of the strong towers of a feudal lord did not look much further beyond, to the king in his palace or in his courts of justice, for protection. He found it closer at home. The vassal, moreover, began to think of his own rights and privileges, to value them and to ask that they be enforced. The idea of right and law, one of the most deeply engraved in the Christian conscience in the Middle Ages, grew and developed. ”

“ INVESTITURE (Late Lat. investitura) , the formal installation into an office or estate, which constituted in the middle ages one of the acts that betokened the feudal relation between suzerain and vassal. The suzerain, after receiving the vassal’s homage and oath of fealty, invested him with his land or office by presenting some symbol, such as a clod, a banner, a branch, or some other object according to the custom of the fief. ”

“ If a king speaks a confidential word to one of his vassals, if he smiles upon him, or presents him with a flower, oh, how honored and happy does that vassal consider himself! How much more so, should the king seek his friendship; should he request his company every day at table ”

“ The stable-doors opened, the four vassals disappeared and came forth, each pair leading a ram, one covered with red calico, the other with blue cotton, and each with a bandanna handkerchief around his neck. Each knight stepped forth from his tent, as his charger was dragged—ba-a-ing and butting—toward it, and, grasping his spear and shield and setting his helmet on more firmly, got astride gravely—each squire and vassal solemn, for the King had given command that no varlet must show unseemly mirth. ”

“ Each vassal became a virtual sovereign in his own domain. And when these great vassals divided their fiefs and granted them to others, they in turn invested their vassals with those powers of sovereignty with which they themselves had been clothed. Thus every holder of a fief became " monarch of all he surveyed."
To illustrate the workings of the system, we will suppose the king or suzerain to be in need of an army. He calls upon his own immediate vassals for aid; these in turn call upon their vassals; and so the order runs down through the various ranks of retainers. ”

“ Just as the king now fought with paid soldiers of every rank instead of fighting with vassals bound by feudal tenure, so the great nobles surrounded themselves with retainers instead of vassals. The vassal had been on terms of social equality with his lord, and was bound to follow him on fixed terms. ”

“ It was to be a combat to the death between a vassal and a knight, the latter on horseback and in full armor, the vassal on foot, dressed in his blouse and armed with a stick. Even the more timid and brutalized ones among the vassals revolted at the thought of so crassly unequal a conflict, in which one of their class was inevitably destined to death. It was, accordingly, amidst a silence laden with anxiety and suppressed anger that one of the heralds uttered three times from the center of the arena the consecrated formula: "Let the appellant enter!" ”

“ That because thou art weak, one valiant arm,
One generous spirit must be lost to Spain!
The vassal owes no service to the Lord
Who to his Country doth acknowledge none.
The summons which thou hast not heart to give,
I and Count Pedro over thy domains
Will send abroad; the vassals who were thine
Will fight beneath our banners, and our wants
Shall from thy lands, as from a patrimony
Which hath reverted to the common stock,
Be fed: such tribute, too, as to the Moors
Thou renderest, we will take: It is the price
Which in this land for weakness must be paid [123]
While evil stars prevail. ”

“ A vassal, for instance, would set up the arms or crest of his [133] feudal lord; a retired soldier the arms of the knight under whose banneret he had gathered both glory and plunder; an old servant the badge he had worn when he stood at the trencher, or followed his master in the chase; and, doubtless, many publicans adopted for their sign the badge of the neighbouring wealthy noble, in order to court the custom of his household and servants. ”

“ Everyone who holds a part of the fief shall swear fidelity to the overlord; no vassal shall have more than one lord for one fief; and the lord shall not transfer the fief to another lord without the consent of the vassal. Vassals shall be responsible to the lord for the conduct of their sons; if the son of a vassal offends the lord, the father, on pain of losing his fief, shall compel him either to make satisfaction to the lord for his fault or to leave his household. ”

“ As long as a vassal scrupulously fulfilled his numerous and delicate obligations he might consider himself as the absolute master of his fief, he might partially or entirely sub-feudalise it, and become in his own turn the suzerain of vassals of an inferior order termed vavasseurs, who were bound to render to him the same obligations that he himself paid to his own seignior. On the other hand, the suzerain was bound to respect his contract, not to dispossess his vassal without a legitimate motive, but to protect him, and to render him on all occasions substantial justice. ”

“ Indeed allegiance to a sovereign lord, is nothing more than fealty to a subordinate lord, and in neither case, has any relation-114- to, or connection with laws or parliaments, lords or commons. There was a reciprocal confidence between the lord and vassal. The lord was to protect the vassal in the enjoyment of his land. The vassal was to be faithful to his lord, and defend him against his enemies. This obligation on the part of the vassal, was his fealty, fidelitas. ”

“ But I have known of a pawn saving a game, in the hands of an expert. By the way, and apropos of nothing-whatever-at-all, could a good, hard-working, reliable, moral, union-labeled vassal work his way up to a good job—such as a Duke or a Lord, or something like that? ”

“ The vassal had to follow his lord to war when called on, he had to serve as a defender when the lord was attacked, he was liable to have to contribute to the dowry of the lord's daughter when she was married and to his lord's ransom if he should be taken prisoner by the enemy. ”

“ Becoming a vassal to the king meant that if the king went to war Rollo would be obliged to join his army and bring a certain number of armed men—one thousand or more.
Rollo now granted parts of Normandy to his leading men on condition that they would bring soldiers to his army and fight under him. They became his vassals, as he was the king's vassal. ”

“ Jarvis looked adown his nose, and there was a smile on the firm lips below it!
"By the way, Mrs. Princess—as Rusty so beautifully phrases it—just how should a vassal, a fine A-number-One vassal, address his liege-lady and the owner of his soul? What is the au fait procedure in this case? You know I am only an ignorant pig of an American!"
She hesitated, embarrassed, and then answered: "Highness—is correct!"
"Highness! I had imagined so—incidentally we were introduced by Fate on the eleventh floor, as I recollect. Tell me, Highness: a vassal doesn't amount to much, does he? ”

“ Is there anything peculiar in its habits of growth? What did they want of it? What custom is still said to follow the use of mistletoe at Christmastime?
357-10 A vassal was one of the followers of the baron and paid for protection or for lands he held by fighting in the baron’s troops or rendering some other service. ”

“ In the form which it has reached at the Norman Conquest, it may be described as a complete organisation of society through the medium of land tenure, in which from the king down to the lowest landowner all are bound together by obligation of service and defence: the lord to protect his vassal, the vassal to do service to his lord; the defence and service being based on and regulated by the nature and extent of the land held by the one of the other. ”

“ Lord and vassal together entered upon enterprises of danger and suffering, which were great levelers of class distinction. In the enthusiasm of the holy cause, many feudal lords disposed of all their worldly possessions, and became as poor as their vassals. ”

“ At an early date we find cases of conquered princes—a Duke of Aquitaine, a Duke of Bavaria, a King of Denmark—who take the vassal's oath and agree to hold their former dominions as a beneficium. So again a member of the royal house does homage and promises service in return for his appanage. More common, and more important for the future, is the practice of treating counts as vassals. All over the Frankish Empire the county was the normal unit of local administration. ”

“ England and Scotland have not yet come into union, but the Tweed is in 1500, as now, the boundary river between them.
France, by the subtlety of Louis XI., has gained the mastery of all her great vassal lords. The English, it is true, still hold Calais, but no other possession on the Continent. And the boundary of France goes further north in 1500 than now, for it includes that count-ship, or province, of Flanders which had been brought into the possession of France's most powerful and dangerous vassal the Duke of Burgundy. ”

“ This was called the feudal system, which means, holding land for services instead of rent; and the person holding the land was called the vassal of him to whom it belonged, whether rich or poor; so the nobles were the vassals of the king, and the ceorls were the vassals of the nobles. ”

“ And it would be equally wrong to maintain either that a Vassal State cannot be in any way a separate International Person of its own, or that it is an International Person of the same kind as any other State. What makes the matter so complicated, is the fact that a general rule regarding the relation between the suzerain and vassal, and, further, regarding the position, if any, of the vassal within the Family of Nations, cannot be laid down, as everything depends upon the special case. ”

“ It is in Egypt, on the one hand, and in the succession of West-Asiatic kingdoms, on the other, that the first stages of this development of a world kingdom out of the dominance of one powerful State over a number of vassal States are clearly exhibited. The struggle for supremacy, in which vassal might elevate himself to the position of ruler and lord be reduced to vassal, and in which newly immigrant peoples often took a decisive part, immeasurably enhanced the striving to extend the sphere of dominion. ”

“ So our Kings did perpetually upon the Kings of France, to whom they were vassals all the while they held their territories in that kingdom. And by the law of England an inferior vassal might fight his lord in a weighty cause, even in duel. The pope seems here willing to depress the barons with low titles, that he may the better set off the presumption of their proceedings ”

“ The letter brought by Gaspar, my vassal, was in order to ascertain whether your Excellency and the other Spaniards were friends or foes, and not, as had been imagined or understood here, that you should become vassals of my lord the emperor, and render him obedience and submission. Having learned the truth, my lord the emperor sent this embassy, ordering me to put on the garment which I am wearing, which means friendship and fraternity; for if we had come for war, as was thought, my garments would have been different, and I would have come in a different manner. ”

“ How could it be unknown to you that it is compulsory for a vassal to give his grown-up sons and daughters into his master’s service, although he may sorely need them at home, and that he himself must serve his lord personally, and leave his own farming to chance ”

“ Our vassals shall receive investiture from us and shall take the vassal’s oath of fidelity. All other persons between the ages of 15 and 70 shall take the ordinary oath of fidelity to the emperor unless there be some good reason why this oath should be remitted. Vassals who have failed to receive investiture from us or to render the services due for their fiefs, during the war or the truce, shall not on this account lose their fiefs. Lands held by libelli and precariæ shall be held according to the customs of each city, the feudal law of Frederick I to the contrary notwithstanding. ”

“ Sometimes they were sent to organize and govern a march, sometimes they were rewarded with benefices, and as, with the growth of feudalism, these developed into hereditary fiefs, the word vassus or vassallus was naturally retained as implying the relation to the king as overlord, and was extended to the holders of all fiefs whether capital or mediate. As feudal independence increased, the word vassal lost every vestige of its original servile sense, and, since it had come to imply a purely military relation, acquired rather the meaning of “free warrior.” ”

“ As a tributary prince is permitted, when his overlord chooses to submit himself to another overlord, to refuse the new vassalage for his own part, so, if a vassal of a church-vassal declines to become a church-vassal himself, he cannot be compelled thereto. ”