England's 12th Century Feudal Revolution

The Feudal Debate – The Origins of Feudalism – The Feudal Hierarchy: Kings, Lords, Knights, and Serfs  – Feudalism: The Backbone of Medieval England – The Decline of Feudalism & the Emergence of Nationalism

One of the hottest matters of debate in studies of the Norman Conquest is whether or not it was the spearhead by which feudalism—a term that denotes the relationship between a lord and his vassal—came to England. On the one hand, there’s some evidence that feudal relationships, in at least a skeletal form, existed in England prior to the Conquest; on the other hand, we know that it was only after the Conquest, and particularly in the 1100s, that a full-bodied feudalism swept like an inferno through England. In the early 17th century English historian Sir Henry Spelman first coined the phrase “feudalism” to describe the changes wrought in English law and society by the Conquest (“feudalism,” as a word, was unknown in the Middle Ages). Nearly two centuries later, in the mid-1800s, E.A. Freeman took a firm stance against Spelman, arguing that English institutions changed very little after the Conquest. In Anglo-Saxon England, he claimed, nobles were already expected to give the English king military service in exchange for their land. Freeman’s views were challenged by J.H. Round who said that feudal services weren’t derived from any Anglo-Saxon precedents. The debate regarding the origins of feudalism continues today; what is not denied is that, by the 12th century, English society and laws had become wholly feudal.

A feudal society is one in which land is held in exchange for services, obedience is pledged in exchange for protection, and society is hierarchically organized. In such a feudal society, a military class of highly-skilled and well-equipped soldiers were supported by peasantry who were tied to the land. The roots of feudalism have been traced as far back to both the patron-client relationships and latifundias of the Roman Empire and to the chief-warrior relationships among the Germanic tribes. Feudalism as a medieval peculiarity started developing in the Kingdom of the Franks during the reign of Charlemagne. During the so-called Carolingian Period, changes in warfare made equipping and training soldiers costly: chain-mail, larger horses, and training for war resulted in the development of a specialized warrior class a cut above the rest. Because few men could afford the horse and body armor required for this new state of warfare, the Carolingians began granting land or material support to their warriors in return for their services. This feudal grassroots movement was helped along by the Viking incursions into northern France. The Frankish kings lacked the ability to protect their subjects from the vicious hit-and-run Viking raids, so the peasantry sought protection from their stronger neighbors. If the neighbor agreed to protect them, the peasantry entered into a formal relationship: they gave their neighbor services, and the neighbor vowed to protect them when the Viking dragon-boats thrust onto their shores. Pure feudalism—the sort of feudalism that much of the medieval world is known for—first evolved in the region between the Loire and Rhine rivers, and it would spread throughout much of western Europe, becoming the status quo in most of France, southern Italy, Spain, the Kingdom of Jerusalem, and England. Not all Europe embraced feudalism, however: large swathes of Germany, Ireland, Scotland, Wales, and Brittany resisted this burgeoning movement. 

In the feudal hierarchical pyramid, the king was at the top, the ultimate “lord.” Beneath him were his vassals, also lords, and beneath them were the warrior-class of knights and, below them, the peasant serfs. The lords pledged allegiance to the king, and in return for their oaths they were allowed to retain their lands and castles. The lords were required to support the king, and if they turned against him (or broke their oath of fealty), they forfeited the lands (called fiefs but pronounced leafs) that they had been granted by the king. The lords were tasked with providing goods and services to the king, as well as military aid. Feudal armies of the Middle Ages didn’t consist of highly-trained professional armies (such as the legions of Rome of old or those of the later Hundred Years’ War) but were instead comprised of the king’s vassals (or lords) and their retinues of knights (along with a spattering of the despised peasantry who utilized agricultural equipment for weapons and were little more than “sword-sponges.”). For each fief a lord owned by grant of the king, he was required to provide one fully-armed horseman to the king; so if he owned twenty-five fiefs, he had to provide twenty-five horsemen. By the mid-12th century, these arrangements could provide the king with nearly 6500 knights alone. If a lord couldn’t provide a knight, he had to pay the king a scutage which would then, theoretically, be used to provide mercenaries in the knight’s stead. If the king was captured in battle and held for ransom, it was the responsibility of his vassals to pay for his ransom; they were also required to pay for the knighting ceremonies of the king’s oldest son and for the marriage of his oldest daughter. Because lower vassals could gain fiefs from several different lords, swearing homage to each of them, feudal custom required that the vassal select one of his lords to be his liege lord; if the vassal’s lords went to war against each other, he was required to give support to his liege. The knights were the last respectable class in the feudal hierarchy; beneath them were the socage tenants, who paid money as rent (as well as offering labor) and paid his lord rights to marry his daughter or knight his son. Socage tenure would become a common staple of medieval England. At the very bottom of the hierarchy were the villeins (or serfs). These serfs were tied to the land, required to perform labor services for his lord, and had no legal standing in the eyes of the law. According to law, the serf was really no more than a slave who could be imprisoned at will and whose possessions didn’t belong to him but to his lord. A serf couldn’t marry or enter the church without the lord’s permission. Serfs lived dreary, brutal, difficult, and hopeless lives often cut short by injury and disease. They were the mud under the feet of the nobles, but without them the machinery of government couldn’t function.

Feudalism would dominate English society from the 11th century to the turn of the 16th century (i.e. throughout the Middle Ages). Feudalism would weaken with the advent of the Black Death in the 14th century, would further weaken in the wake of the Hundred Years’ War between France and England, and it would hear its death-knell in the Wars of the Roses. By the advent of the early modern period (the Era of the Tudors), feudalism would be supplanted by a new way of running the machinery of government: that of nationalism.