Vassalage

“ 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. ”

“ Since your Grandeur speaks of vassalage, I wish your Grandeur to understand that my king's power is so great and so extensive, and the kingdoms and states ruled by his Christian hand are so many, that they are beyond compare with the greatness of many kings, though these be most powerful each by himself. ”

“ It soothes the ears of flatterers, of tyrants, and of slaves,—but it sounds the alarm to free men. It is so far a great public good. It tells the people of England what is prepared for them, and what they have to expect. ‘Nothing is sacred in its pages but tyranny.’ It links this country in chains of vassalage to the legitimate despotisms of the Continent, which have been a bye-word with us for ages. ”

“ He had returned, indeed, to his kingdom, but it was no longer the devoted kingdom he had left. The story of his vassalage to the Christian sovereigns had been made use of by his father to ruin him with the people. ”

“ But notwithstanding they conquer their own subjects, and render them more submissive, [Pg 233] and by binding liberty with stronger and heavier chains, convert vassalage to slavery; they should remember, that dominion is only hereditary, for so long as it is conducted with justice; but that when it comes to be exercised with violence, it is usurpation. But that is an unhappy harvest, which ambition reaps by such means. How is a Prince benefited, if, by putting the bodies of his subjects under a hard state of servitude, he loses their souls, and alienates their affections? ”

“ To them, liberty, the desire for which caused them to brave the greatest dangers, was simply the right of doing evil--of obeying their ardent thirst for plunder. Long ago, in the depths of their forests, they had adopted the curious institution of vassalage. When they came to the West to create States, instead of reducing personal power, every step in their social edifice, from the top to the bottom, was made to depend on individual superiority. ”

“ Is the only reward which our constancy, till death, has obtained for our country, that it should be sunk into a deeper and more ignominious vassalage?" Recollect who are the men that demand your submission; to whose decrees you are invited to pay obedience! Men who, unmindful of their relation to you as brethren, of your long implicit submission to their laws; of the sacrifice which you and your forefathers made of your natural advantages for commerce to their avarice,—formed a deliberate plan to wrest from you the small pittance of property which they had permitted you to acquire. ”

“ History, in accord therein with the chronicles of your husband's family, proves that a slow and mysterious progress is taking its course across the ages. Serfs replaced slaves; vassals replaced serfs; some day, vassalage also will disappear as did slavery and serfdom! The religious wars of our century are another step toward ultimate freedom. The revolt against the throne will closely follow the revolt against the Church. ”

“ I have often wondered at the folly and weakness of those princes, who will sacrifice hundreds of thousands of their own faithful subjects, to gain a precarious and slavish submission from bordering provinces, who will seek all opportunities to revolt; which cannot be prevented but by keeping them poor, wretched, and miserable, and consequently unable to pay the charges of their own vassalage; when, if the same number of men and the sums of money were usefully employed at home, which are necessary to make and support the conquest, they would add vastly more to their power and empire. ”

“ The vassalage is perfect or imperfect according to the strength of the parties. Whatever, however, may be the relative position of the king, the priest, or the chiefs, the people are sure of their thraldom ”

“ As early as Eadgar's time a law bade all men below the rank of thegn to "find themselves a lord, who should be responsible for them;" that is, to commend themselves to one of their greater neighbours by a tie of personal homage. But the old-English tie of vassalage, though it placed the small freeholders in personal dependence on the thegns, left them their land as their own, and allowed a man to transfer his allegiance from one lord to another. ”

“ They exercise supreme authority, by reason of their charge, for receiving and sending embassies to the neighboring kings and tyrants, ... they can make peace, make and declare war, and take vengeance on those who insult us, without awaiting any resolution from the Court for it. Therefore many kings have rendered vassalage and paid tribute to the governors, have recognized them as their superiors, have respected and feared their arms, have solicited their friendship, and have tried to procure friendly relations and commerce with them ”

“ So brutalised, indeed, have the lower orders become by a long state of vassalage, and utter insecurity of property, as to be almost insensible to the hardships of their condition, while the upper classes are most lamentably demoralised. ”

“ The peasants, as to property, are still in a state of vassalage; and the nobility, who are slaves at court, tyrannize over their inferiors and tenants in their dominions. These poor husbandmen, with such discouragements to industry, are obliged to maintain the cavalry in victuals and lodgings ”

“ FEUDAL GOVERNMENT A SUBSTITUTE FOR ANARCHY It is clear that the feudal method of land tenure, coupled with the custom of vassalage, made in some degree for security and order. Each noble was attached to the lord above him by the bond of personal service and the oath of fidelity. ”

“ Every succeeding year, therefore, has but tended to increase their obligations, and they are, at present, identified with the soil, and reduced to all intents and purposes, except in name, to as complete a state of vassalage as the serfs of Russia. ”

“ How wearisome Eternity so spent in worship paid To whom we hate! Let us not then pursue, By force impossible, by leave obtained Unacceptable, though in Heaven, our state Of splendid vassalage; but rather seek Our own good from ourselves, and from our own Live to ourselves, though in this vast recess, Free and to none accountable, preferring Hard liberty before the easy yoke Of servile pomp. ”

“ Here it is of the mighty antecedent fact, under which our most absolute surrender is nothing more than the recognition of His indefeasible claim. What the Apostle says here, in this wonderful passage of mingled doctrine and duty, is that, whether or no we are owning our vassalage to Christ, we are nothing if not de jure His vassals. He has not only rescued us, but so rescued us as to buy us for His own. We may be true to the fact in our internal attitude; we may be oblivious of it; but we cannot get away from it. It looks us every hour in the face, whether we respond or not. ”

“ Within a lawless reality of this kind the most powerful and commanding spirits stand out as fixed points of attraction, as leaders and nobles, and the rest rally round them of their own free will. Such a condition is later on elaborated into a legalized co-ordination of fealty, in which every vassal has his own claim to rights and privilege. The fundamental principle, however, upon which the entire system reposes is in its primary origins free choice, no less in relation to the dependent vassal than to the conditions under which he remains faithful to his vassalage. ”

“ It is possible to preserve its form and extract its substance, and the people should set about the task with no qualms of conscience. Great Britain showed the way when she boldly reduced her House of Lords to a condition of docile vassalage to the popular branch of her Parliament, and she was aroused to this righteous act of retaliation by abuses which were of small consequence compared to those from which we have tamely suffered. ”

“ The free peasantry, who were originally independent proprietors of the soil, and had an equal suffrage with the highest nobles in the land, were thus compelled to seek the protection of these powerful lords, and to come under vassalage to some neighboring Herremand or bishop or convent. ”

“ For each of their expeditions, the kings raised an army of citizens in which the Gallo-Romans mingled more and more with the Franks; they only kept one small permanent body which acted as their bodyguard (trustis dominica) , some members of which were from time to time told off for other tasks, such as that of forming garrisons in the frontier towns. The institution seems to have disappeared during the anarchy with which the 8th century opened. It has wrongly been held to be the origin of vassalage. Only the king had antrustions; every lord could have vassals. ”

“ 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.” ”

“ Spare neither French count nor Norman baron! This is no day for dainty chivalry, as when a feudal sovereign takes the field against a refractory vassal about some petty dispute, to exchange a few blows, without inflicting a wound, and then feast together in the hall of the nearest castle or abbey, as if nothing had happened. This is, in truth, a very different kind of war. It is a war of Englishmen against foreign invaders—a war of true and loyal men against false men and traitors—a war for our homes which they have burned, and our hearths which they have rendered desolate. ”

“ The lord, who was the lieutenant of the prince, as regarded his vassals, was to guarantee them from insult, and to protect their property, their honour, and their rights. The first duty of the counts and barons towards the king was to serve him in council and fight. The first obligation of a subject or a vassal towards his prince or his lord, was to defend him or avenge him in every case of outrage, and to protect the honour of his wife, his daughter, or his sister; to follow him in all perils, and to surrender himself as hostage for him, if he fell into the hands of his enemies. ”

“ I should be loth to say, that the Kings of England were not all along as good men as their lords of France, or that the barons of England were not good enough to assert their rights against any body, but this I do say, that it was always lawful for vassals to right themselves even while they were vassals, and without throwing up their homage and fealty: for that was never done till they declared themselves irreconcilable enemies, and were upon terms of defiance. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Every member of the aristocracy of Europe and almost every king was a vassal. A man passed from the classes that were looked down upon, the peasantry and the bourgeoisie, into the nobility by becoming a vassal. The English kings had been vassals since feudalism had existed in England, though not for the kingdom, and only a few years before Richard had made even that a fief of the empire. ”

“ 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. ”

“ But to return to the feudal system strictly so called, we find the Lords and Barons were all-powerful within their dominions, and had the power of giving or taking away the life, liberty, and property of their retainers and vassals. They often made war upon each other, the consequences of which were frequently awful in the streams of blood which flowed, and the murder, rapine, and spoliation which ensued. Evidences of these internal wars are seen in the ruined castles and dismantled towers which cover our own country and the continent of Europe. ”