C11th-present: Feudalism in England

Medieval stained glass, via a website for Duke University coursework (III Materials Needed for the Unit, E.)

From wikipedia, on feudalism in England -

Feudalism in 12th century England was among the better structured and established in Europe at the time. Because it was based on the notion of the exchange of land for military service, thus everything was based on what was called the knight’s fee, which was the amount of money and/or military service a fief was required to pay to support one knight. Thus, either a fief could provide the service of a knight, or an equivalent amount of money to allow a lord to hire a knight. However, this could lead to a complex tenurial structure, which is illustrated by the example of the baron of Stafford as described in a survey of knight’s fees called The Black Book Exchequer, written 1166.

This survey describes how the lord of Stafford, Robert of Stafford, was responsible for 60 knight’s fees for his Stafford fief. Robert sub-let 51 of those 60 knight’s fees in the form of 26 sub-fiefs: the largest fief provided 6 fees, while the smallest 2/3 of a fee. Thus in all, the 26 sub-fiefs paid 51 fees. Further, some of these sub-fiefs had sub-sub-fiefs with fees of their own, and sometimes went a layer below that. In all, 78 fiefs were part of the Stafford estate, 26 of them reporting directly to Robert and the rest layers below. It was a system of tenants and leases and sub-tenants and sub-leases and so on, each layer reporting vassalage to the next layer up. The knight’s fee was the common base unit of denomination. Often lords were not so much lords presiding over great estates, but managers of a network of tenants and sub-leases.Some of the Stafford tenants were themselves lords, and this illustrates how complex the relationships of lord and vassal could become. Henry d’Oilly, who held 3 fees from Robert of Stafford, also held over 30 fees elsewhere that had been granted to him directly by the king. Thus while Henry was the vassal of his lord Robert, Henry was himself a lord and had many sub-fiefs that he also managed. It would have also been possible and not uncommon for a situation where Robert of Stafford was a vassal of Henry elsewhere, creating the condition of mutual lordship/vassalage between the two. These complex relationships invariably created loyalty problems through conflicts of interests; to resolve this the concept of a liege lord was created, which meant that the vassal was loyal to his liege lord above all others no matter what. However, even this sometimes broke down when a vassal would pledge himself to more than one liege lord.

From the perspective of the smallest land owner, multiple networks of lordship were layered on the same small plot of land. A chronicle of the time says “different lordships lay on the land in different respects”. Each lord laid claim to a certain aspect of the service from the land.[...]

Modern England

Unique in England, the village of Laxton in Nottinghamshire continues to retain some vestiges of the feudal system, where the land is still farmed using the open field system. The feudal court now only meets annually, with its authority now restricted to management of the farmland.

From wikipedia, on feudalism in general -

Feudalism, a term first used in the early modern period (17th century), in its most classic sense refers to a Medieval European political “system” comprised of a set of reciprocal legal and military obligations among the warrior nobility, revolving around the three key concepts of lords, vassals, and fiefs. Although derived from the Latin word feodum (fief), then in use, the term feudalism and a “system” it purports to describe was unknown to people living in the Medieval Period.

Roland pledges his fealty to Charlemagne; from a manuscript of a chanson de geste.

Defining feudalism requires qualifiers because there is no broadly accepted agreement of what it means. For one to begin to understand feudalism, a working definition is desirable and the definition described in this article is the most senior and classic definition still subscribed to by many historians.

Other definitions of feudalism exist. Since at least the 1960s, many medieval historians have included a broader social aspect, adding the peasantry bonds of manorialism, referred to as a “feudal society“. Still others, since the 1970s, have re-examined the evidence and concluded that feudalism is an unworkable term and should be removed entirely from scholarly and educational discussion (see Revolt against the term feudalism), or at least only used with severe qualification and warning.

Outside of a European context, the concept of feudalism is normally only used by analogy (called semi-feudal), most often in discussions of Japan under the shoguns, and, sometimes, medieval and Gondarine Ethiopia. However, some have taken the feudalism analogy further, seeing it in places as diverse as Ancient Egypt, Parthian empire, India, to the American South of the nineteenth century.^[1] The term feudal has also been applied—often inappropriately or pejoratively—to non-Western societies where institutions and attitudes similar to those of medieval Europe are perceived to prevail. Ultimately, the many ways the term feudalism has been used has deprived it of specific meaning, leading many historians and political theorists to reject it as a useful concept for understanding society.

The earliest known use of the term feudal was in the 17th century (1614)^[2], when the system it purported to describe was rapidly vanishing or gone entirely. No writer in the period in which feudalism was supposed to have flourished ever used the word itself. It was a pejorative word used to describe any law or custom that was seen as unfair or out-dated. Most of these laws and customs were related in some way to the medieval institution of the fief (Latin: feodum, a word which first appears on a Frankish charter dated 884), and thus lumped together under this single term. “Feudalism” comes from the French féodalisme, a word coined during the French Revolution.[...]Three primary elements characterized feudalism: lords, vassals and fiefs; the structure of feudalism can be seen in how these three elements fit together. A lord was a noble who owned land, a vassal was a person who was granted possession of the land by the lord, and the land was known as a fief. In exchange for the fief, the vassal would provide military service to the lord. The obligations and relations between lord, vassal and fief form the basis of feudalism.

Lords, vassals, and fiefs

Before a lord could grant land (a fief) to someone, he had to make that person a vassal. This was done at a formal and symbolic ceremony called a commendation ceremony composed of the two-part act of homage and oath of fealty. During homage, the lord and vassal entered a contract in which the vassal promised to fight for the lord at his command. Fealty comes from the Latin fidelitas and denotes the fidelity owed by a vassal to his feudal lord. “Fealty” also refers to an oath that more explicitly reinforces the commitments of the vassal made during homage. Such an oath follows homage. Once the commendation was complete, the lord and vassal were now in a feudal relationship with agreed-upon mutual obligations to one another.

The lord’s principal obligation was to grant a fief, or its revenues, to the vassal; the fief is the primary reason the vassal chose to enter into the relationship. In addition, the lord sometimes had to fulfill other obligations to the vassal and fief. One of those obligations was its maintenance. Since the lord had not given the land away, only loaned it, it was still the lord’s responsibility to maintain the land, while the vassal had the right to collect revenues generated from it. Another obligation that the lord had to fulfill was to protect the land and the vassal from harm.

The vassal’s principal obligation to the lord was to provide “aid”, or military service. Using whatever equipment the vassal could obtain by virtue of the revenues from the fief, the vassal was responsible to answer to calls to military service on behalf of the lord. This security of military help was the primary reason the lord entered into the feudal relationship. In addition, the vassal sometimes had to fulfill other obligations to the lord. One of those obligations was to provide the lord with “counsel”, so that if the lord faced a major decision, such as whether or not to go to war, he would summon all his vassals and hold a council. The vassal may have been required to yield a certain amount of his farm’s output to his lord. The vassal was also sometimes required to grind his own wheat and bake his own bread in the mills and ovens owned and taxed by his lord.

The land-holding relationships of feudalism revolved around the fief. Depending on the power of the granting lord, grants could range in size from a small farm to a much larger area of land. The size of fiefs was described in irregular terms quite different from modern area terms; see medieval land terms. The lord-vassal relationship was not restricted to members of the laity; bishops and abbots, for example, were also capable of acting as lords.

There were thus different ‘levels’ of lordship and vassalage. The King was a lord who loaned fiefs to aristocrats, who were his vassals. Meanwhile the aristocrats were in turn lords to their own vassals, the peasants who worked on their land. Ultimately, the Emperor was a lord who loaned fiefs to Kings, who were his vassals. This traditionally formed the basis of a ‘universal monarchy’ as an imperial alliance and a world order.

[...]

In order to better understand what the term feudalism means, it is helpful to see how it was defined and how it has been used since its seventeenth-century creation.

Invention of the concept

The word feudalism was not a medieval term but an invention of 16th-century French and English lawyers to describe certain traditional obligations between members of the warrior aristocracy.^{[citation needed]} Not until 1748 did it become a popular and widely used word, thanks to Montesquieu‘s De L’Esprit des Lois (The Spirit of the Laws).

Enlightenment thinkers on feudalism

In the 18th century, writers of the Enlightenment wrote about feudalism in order to denigrate the antiquated system of the Ancien Régime, or French monarchy. This was the Age of Enlightenment when Reason was king and the Middle Ages was painted as the “Dark Ages“. Enlightenment authors generally mocked and ridiculed anything from the “Dark Ages” including Feudalism, projecting its negative characteristics on the current French monarchy as a means of political gain.

Karl Marx on feudalism

Karl Marx also used the term for political ends. In the 19th century, Marx described feudalism as the economic situation coming before the inevitable rise of capitalism. For Marx, what defined feudalism was that the power of the ruling class (the aristocracy) rested on their control of arable land, leading to a class society based upon the exploitation of the peasants who farm these lands, typically under serfdom. “The hand-mill gives you society with the feudal lord; the steam-mill, society with the industrial capitalist.” (The Poverty of Philosophy (1847), chapter 2). Marx thus considered feudalism within a purely economic model.

Marxian theorists have been discussing feudalism for the past 150 years. A renowned example is the extensive debate over feudalism and capitalism between the noted Marxian economist Paul Sweezy and his British colleague Maurice Dobb. (See also mode of production.)

Historians on feudalism

Among medievalists, the term feudalism is one of the most disputed concepts.

Debating the origins of English feudalism

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, John Horace Round and Frederic William Maitland, both historians of medieval Britain, arrived at different conclusions as to the character of English society before the Norman conquest in 1066. Round argued that the Normans had imported feudalism, while Maitland contended that its fundamentals were already in place in Britain. The debate continues to this day.

Ganshof and the classic view of feudalism

A historian whose concept of feudalism remains highly influential in the 20th century is François-Louis Ganshof, who belongs to a pre-Second World War generation. Ganshof defines feudalism from a narrow legal and military perspective, arguing that feudal relationships existed only within the medieval nobility itself. Ganshof articulated this concept in Feudalism (1944). His classic definition of feudalism is the most widely known today and also the easiest to understand: simply put, when a lord granted a fief to a vassal, the vassal provided military service in return.

Marc Bloch and sociological views of feudalism

One of Ganshof’s contemporaries, a French historian named Marc Bloch, was arguably the most influential 20th-century medieval historian. Bloch approached feudalism not so much from a legal and military point of view but from a sociological one. He developed his ideas in Feudal Society (1939). Bloch conceived of feudalism as a type of society that was not limited solely to the nobility. Like Ganshof, he recognized that there was a hierarchal relationship between lords and vassals, but Bloch saw as well a similar relationship obtaining between lords and peasants.

It is this radical notion that peasants were part of the feudal relationship that sets Bloch apart from his peers. While the vassal performed military service in exchange for the fief, the peasant performed physical labour in return for protection. Both are a form of feudal relationship. According to Bloch, other elements of society can be seen in feudal terms; all the aspects of life were centered on “lordship”, and so we can speak usefully of a feudal church structure, a feudal courtly (and anti-courtly) literature, and a feudal economy. (See Feudal society.)

Revolt against the term feudalism

In 1974, U.S. historian Elizabeth A. R. Brown^[3] rejected the label feudalism as an anachronism that imparts a false sense of uniformity to the concept. Having noted the current use of many—often contradictory—definitions of feudalism, she argued that the word is only a construct with no basis in medieval reality, an invention of modern historians read back “tyrannically” into the historical record. Supporters of Brown have suggested that the term should be expunged from history textbooks and lectures on medieval history entirely. In Fiefs and Vassals: The Medieval Evidence Reinterpreted (1994), Susan Reynolds expanded upon Brown’s original thesis. Although some contemporaries questioned Reynolds’s methodology, other historians have supported it and her argument. Note that Reynolds does not object to the Marxist use of feudalism.

The term feudal has also been applied—often inappropriately or pejoratively—to non-Western societies in which institutions and attitudes similar to those of medieval Europe are perceived to have prevailed. Ultimately, critics say, the many ways the term feudalism has been used have deprived it of specific meaning, leading many historians and political theorists to reject it as a useful concept for understanding society.

History of feudalism

Early forms of feudalism in Europe

Vassalage agreements similar to what would later develop into legalized medieval feudalism originated from the blending of ancient Roman and Germanic traditions. The Romans had a custom of patronage whereby a stronger patron would provide protection to a weaker client in exchange for gifts, political support, and prestige. In the countryside of the later Empire, the reforms of Diocletian and his successors attempted to put certain jobs, notably farming, on a hereditary basis. As governmental authority declined and rural lawlessness (such as that of the Bagaudae) increased, these farmers were increasingly forced to rely upon the protection of the local landowner, and a nexus of interdependency was created: the landowners depended upon the peasants for labor, and the peasants upon the landowners for protection.

Ancient Germans had a custom of equality among warriors, an elected leader who kept the majority of the wealth (land) and who distributed it to members of the group in return for loyalty

The rise of feudalism

The Europe of the early Middle Ages was characterised by economic and population decline and by external threat. Feudalism evolved as a way of maintaining a stable population enaged in farming (towns had been in decline since the end of the Western Empire) and to ensure that levys could be raised to face down external threats.^{[citation needed]}

Decline of feudalism

Feudalism had begun as a contract, the exchange of land tenure for military service. Over time, as lords could no longer provide new lands to their vassals, nor enforce their right to reassign lands which had become de facto hereditary property, feudalism became less tenable as a working relationship. By the thirteenth century, Europe’s economy was involved in a transformation from a mostly agrarian system to one that was increasingly money-based and mixed. The Hundred Year’s War instigated this gradual transformation as soldier’s pay became amounts of gold instead of land. Therefore, it was much easier for a monarch to pay low-class citizens in mineral wealth, and many more were recruited and trained, putting more gold into circulation, thus undermining the land-based feudalism. Land ownership was still an important source of income, and still defined social status, but even wealthy nobles wanted more liquid assets, whether for luxury goods or to provide for wars. This corruption of the form is often referred to as “bastard feudalism“. A noble vassal was expected to deal with most local issues and could not always expect help from a distant king. The nobles were independent and often unwilling to cooperate for a greater cause (military service). By the end of the Middle Ages, the kings were seeking a way to become independent of willful nobles, especially for military support. The kings first hired mercenaries and later created standing national armies.

The Black Death of the fourteenth century devastated Europe’s population but also destabilized the economic basis of society. For instance, in England, the villains were much more likely to leave the manorial territory – seeking better paid work in towns struck by a labour shortage, while the crown responded to the economic crisis by imposing a poll tax. The resulting social crisis manifested itself in the peasants’ revolt.

Historian J. J. Bagley notes that the fourteenth century

“marked the end of the true feudal age and began paving the way for strong monarchies, nation states, and national wars of the sixteenth century. Much fourteenth century feudalism had become artificial and self-conscious. Already men were finding it a little curious. It was acquiring an antiquarian interest and losing its usefulness. It was ceasing to belong to the real world of practical living.”

Questioning feudalism

Use and definition of the term

Cleric, knight and Peasant

The following are historical examples that call into question the traditional use of the term feudalism.

Extant sources reveal that the early Carolingians had vassals, as did other leading men in the kingdom. This relationship did become more and more standardized over the next two centuries, but there were differences in function and practice in different locations. For example, in the German kingdoms that replaced the kingdom of Eastern Francia, as well as in some Slavic kingdoms, the feudal relationship was arguably more closely tied to the rise of Serfdom, a system that tied peasants to the land.

Moreover, the evolution of the Holy Roman Empire greatly affected the history of the feudal relationship in central Europe. If one follows long-accepted feudalism models, one might believe that there was a clear hierarchy from Emperor to lesser rulers, be they kings, dukes, princes, or margraves. These models are patently untrue: the Holy Roman Emperor was elected by a group of seven magnates, three of whom were princes of the church, who in theory could not swear allegiance to any secular lord.

The French kingdoms also seem to provide clear proof that the models are accurate, until we take into consideration the fact that, when Rollo of Normandy kneeled to pay homage to Charles the Simple in return for the Duchy of Normandy, accounts tell us that he knocked the king on his rump as he rose, demonstrating his view that the bond was only as strong as the lord—in this case, not strong at all. Clearly, it was possible for ‘vassals’ to openly disparage feudal relationships.

The autonomy with which the Normans ruled their duchy supports the view that, despite any legal “feudal” relationship, the Normans did as they pleased. In the case of their own leadership, however, the Normans utilized the feudal relationship to bind their followers to them. It was the influence of the Norman invaders which strengthened and to some extent institutionalized the feudal relationship in England after the Norman Conquest.

Since we do not use the medieval term vassalage how are we to use the term feudalism? Though it is sometimes used indiscriminately to encompass all reciprocal obligations of support and loyalty in the place of unconditional tenure of position, jurisdiction or land, the term is restricted by most historians to the exchange of specifically voluntary and personal undertakings, to the exclusion of involuntary obligations attached to tenure of “unfree” land: the latter are considered to be rather an aspect of Manorialism, an element of feudal society but not of feudalism proper.

Cautions on use of feudalism

Owing to the range of meanings they have, feudalism and related terms should be approached and used with considerable care. A circumspect historian like Fernand Braudel puts feudalism in quotes when applying it in wider social and economic contexts, such as “the seventeenth century, when much of America was being ‘feudalized’ as the great haciendas appeared” (The Perspective of the World, 1984, p. 403).

Medieval societies never described themselves as feudal. Popular parlance generally uses the term either for all voluntary or customary bonds in medieval society or for a social order in which civil and military power is exercised under private contractual arrangements. However, feudal is best used only to denote the voluntary, personal undertakings binding lords and free men to protection in return for support which characterized the administrative and military order.

From wikipedia, on feudal society -

Feudal society is a sometimes-debated term used to describe the social order in the Western Europe, Central Europe, and sometimes Japan and other regions in the Middle Ages, characterized by the legal subjection of a large part of the peasantry to a hereditary landholding elite exercising administrative and judicial power on the basis of reciprocal private undertakings.The term’s validity is questioned by many medieval historians who consider the description “feudal” appropriate only to the specifically voluntary and personal bonds of mutual protection, loyalty and support among members of the administrative, military or ecclesiastical elite, to the exclusion of involuntary obligations attached to tenure of “unfree” land. This stricter concept is discussed under feudalism, and the bonds which it excludes under manorialism. Examples of feudalism are helpful to fully understand feudalism and feudal society.

Conception of feudal society

In the broader conception of feudal society, as developed in the 1930s by the French Annaliste historian Marc Bloch, the prevailing features include:

1. The absence of a strong central authority, and the diffusion of governmental power through the granting of administrative and legal authority over particular lands (fiefs) by higher lords (including the king) to vassals sworn by voluntary oath to support or serve them, usually (though not exclusively) by military means.
2. The obligation attached to particular holdings of land that the peasant household should supply the lord with specified labour services or a part of its output (or cash in lieu thereof) subject to the custom of the holding.

Common features of feudal societies

Features common among feudal societies, but which do not necessarily define them, include:

1. An overwhelmingly agrarian economy, with limited money exchange, necessitating the dispersion of political authority and the substitution of arrangements involving economic support from local resources;
2. The strength of the Roman Catholic Church as an ally and counterpart to the civil-military structure, supported by its right to a share (tithe) of society’s output as well as substantial landholdings, and endowed with specific authority and responsibility for moral and material welfare.
3. The existence of structures and phenomena not of themselves explicitly feudal (urban and village organisations, royal executive power, free peasant holdings, financial and commercial activity) but each incorporated into the whole.

Alongside such broad similarities, it is important to note the divergences both within and between feudal societies (in forms or complexity of noble association, the extent of peasant dependency or the importance of money payments) as well as the changes which occurred over time within the overall structure (as in Bloch’s characterisation of the 11th-century onset of a “second feudal age”).

In particular, one should avoid envisaging the social order in terms of a regular “feudal pyramid” with each man bound to one superior lord and the rank of each clearly defined, in a regular chain of allegiances extending from the king at the top to the peasantry at the bottom: aside from the contrast between free and unfree obligation, allegiance was often given to more than one lord, while an individual might possess attributes of more than one rank.

Nor should the medieval theory of the “estates of the realm” or the “three orders” of feudal society—”those who make war” (miles, knights), “those who pray” (priests, monks) and “those who labour” (peasants, serfs)” (bellatores, oratores, et laboratores)—be considered a full description of the social order: while those excluded from the first two came over time to be counted among the third, nobles and clerics alike assumed administrative functions in the feudal state, while financial support was relied upon increasingly as a substitute for direct military service. Nobles were defined by the occupation they obtained and no longer by right of birth and are placed in power by the investiture.

The values of men who fought under the first of the “three orders” were first his horse, second his son, and third his wife. A soldier’s horse, in feudal society, was considered the price of two and a half generations or two men and a boy. The role of women consisted of maintaining the household economy: controlled peasants and regulating what crops will and will not be grown and sold.

“Those who prayed” consisted of priests, monk, and other authorities of the church. The church willingly supported the three orders. “Those who work,” pesants and serfs, consised of the majority of the population and suffered the most.

While few would deny that most of France, England, parts of Spain and the Low Countries, western and central Germany and (at least for a time) northern and central Italy satisfied Bloch’s criteria over much of the period, the concept remains of greatest use as an interpretive device for comparative study of local phenomena, rather than as a blanket definition of the medieval social order.

Historical development

Reaching its most developed form in the Latin kingdom of Jerusalem in the 12th and 13th centuries, feudal society evolved in its developed form in the northern French heartland of the Carolingian monarchy of the 8th-10th centuries, but has its antecedents also in late Roman practice.

Prehistoric Development of Social Stratification

In the Narmer and Scorpion King palettes of Predynastic Egypt the basic concept of feudalism is illustrated as land in return for service. The king is shown controlling the land by controlling the water. The people of Narmers extended family dig irrigation channels so the land is improved and then are granted its use in return for service which includes the maintenance of the system.

As more infrastructure is added more people come to owe their sustenence to the king. Specialists in surveying, drafting deeds, digging, planting, building, tool making, the domestication of beasts of burden, all come to have standards and status for the practice of their professions. Their entitlement to the land isn’t directly from service to the king but to the people who hold the land in return for their service to the king.

As things get more complicated the primary role of the king becomes the administration of the system. The social order becomes hierarchical. Trade with other similar kingdoms begins to require agreed upon standards, of behavior and laws regarding commerce and the ownership of property.