he were the owner. In the ceremony of homage and investiture,
which is the creative contract of feudalism, the obligations
assumed by the two parties were, as a rule, not specified in
exact terms. They were determined by local custom. What
they were, however, was as well known, as capable of proof,
and as adequate a check on innovation by either party, as if
committed to writing. In many points of detail the vassal’s
services differed widely in different parts of the feudal world.
We may say, however, that they fall into two classes, general
and specific. The general included all that might come under
the idea of loyalty, seeking the lord’s interests, keeping his
secrets, betraying the plans of his enemies, protecting his family,
&c. The specific services are capable of more definite statement,
and they usually received exact definition in custom and sometimes
in written documents. The most characteristic of these
was the military service, which included appearance in the
field on summons with a certain force, often armed in a specified
way, and remaining a specified length of time. It often included
also the duty of guarding the lord’s castle, and of holding one’s
own castle subject to the plans of the lord for the defence of his
fief. Hardly less characteristic was court service, which included
the duty of helping to form the court on summons, of taking
one’s own cases to that court instead of to some other, and of
submitting to its judgments. The duty of giving the lord advice
was often demanded and fulfilled in sessions of the court, and
in these feudal courts the obligations of lord and vassal were
enforced, with an ultimate appeal to war. Under this head
may be enumerated also the financial duties of the vassal,
though these were not regarded by the feudal law as of the nature
of the tenure, i.e. failure to pay them did not lead to confiscation,
but they were collected by suit and distraint like any debt.
They did not have their origin in economic considerations, but
were either intended to mark the vassal’s tenant relation, like
the relief, or to be a part of his service, like the aid, that is, he
was held to come to the aid of his lord in a case of financial as
of military necessity. The relief was a sum paid by the heir
for the lord’s recognition of his succession. The aids were paid
on a few occasions, determined by custom, where the lord was
put to unusual expense, as for his ransom when captured by the
enemy, or for the knighting of his eldest son. There was great
variety regarding the occasion and amount of these payments,
and in some parts of the feudal world they did not exist at all.
The most lucrative of the lord’s rights were wardship and
marriage, but the feudal theory of these also was non-economic.
The fief fell into the hands of the lord, and he enjoyed its revenues
during the minority of the heir, because the minor could not
perform the duties by which it was held. The heiress must
marry as the lord wished, because he had a right to know that
the holder of the fief could meet the obligations resting upon
it. Both wardship and marriage were, however, valuable rights
which the lord could exercise himself or sell to others. These
were by no means the only rights and duties which could be
described as existing in feudalism, but they are the most characteristic,
and on them, or some of them, as a foundation, the
whole structure of feudal obligation was built, however detailed.
Ideally regarded, feudalism covered Europe with a network of these fiefs, rising in graded ranks one above the other from the smallest, the knight’s fee, at the bottom, to the king at the top, who was the supreme landowner, or who held the kingdom from God. Actually not even in the most regular of feudal countries, like England or Germany, was there any fixed gradation of rank, titles or size. A knight might hold directly of the king, a count of a viscount, a bishop of an abbot, or the king himself of one of his own vassals, or even of a vassal’s vassal, and in return his vassal’s vassal might hold another fief directly of him. The case of the count of Champagne, one of the peers of France, is a famous example. His great territory was held only in small part of the king of France. He held a portion of a foreign sovereign, the emperor, and other portions of the duke of Burgundy, of two archbishops, of four bishops, and of the abbot of St Denis. Frequently did great lay lords, as in this case, hold lands by feudal tenure of ecclesiastics.
It is now possible perhaps to get some idea of the way in which the government of a feudal country was operated. The early German governments whose chief functions, military, judicial, financial, legislative, were carried on by the freemen of the nation because they were members of the body politic, and were performed as duties owed to the community for its defence and sustenance, no longer existed. New forms of organization had arisen in which indeed these conceptions had not entirely disappeared, but in which the vast majority of cases a wholly different idea of the ground of service and obligation prevailed. Superficially, for example, the feudal court differed but little from its Teutonic predecessor. It was still an assembly court. Its procedure was almost the same as the earlier. It often included the same classes of men. Saxon Witenagemot and Norman Curia regis seem very much alike. But the members of the feudal court met, not to fulfil a duty owed to the community, but a private obligation which they had assumed in return for the fiefs they held, and in the history of institutions it is differences of this sort which are the determining principles. The feudal state was one in which, as it has been said, private law had usurped the place of public law. Public duty had become private obligation. To understand the feudal state it is essential to make clear to one’s mind that all sorts of services, which men ordinarily owe to the public or to one another, were translated into a form of rent paid for the use of land, and defined and enforced by a private contract. In every feudal country, however, something of the earlier conception survived. A general military levy was occasionally made. Something like taxation occasionally occurred, though the government was usually sustained by the scanty feudal payments, by the proceeds of justice and by the income of domain manors. About the office of king more of this earlier conception gathered than elsewhere in the state, and gradually grew, aided not merely by traditional ideas, but by the active influence of the Bible, and soon of the Roman law. The kingship formed the nucleus of new governments as the feudal system passed away.
Actual government in the feudal age was primitive and undifferentiated. Its chief and almost only organ, for kingdom and barony alike, was the curia—a court formed of the vassals. This acted at once and without any consciousness of difference of function, as judiciary, as legislature, in so far as there was any in the feudal period, and as council, and it exercised final supervision and control over revenue and administration. Almost all the institutions of modern states go back to the curia regis, branching off from it at different dates as the growing complexity of business forced differentiation of function and personnel. In action it was an assembly court, deciding all questions by discussion and the weight of opinion, though its decisions obtained their legal validity by the formal pronunciation of the presiding member, i.e. of the lord whose court it was. It can readily be seen that in a government of this kind the essential operative element was the baron. So long as the government remained dependent on the baron, it remained feudal in its character. When conditions so changed that government could free itself from its dependence on the baron, feudalism disappeared as the organization of society; when a professional class arose to form the judiciary, when the increased circulation of money made regular taxation possible and enabled the government to buy military and other services, and when better means of intercommunication and the growth of common ideas made a wide centralization possible and likely to be permanent. Feudalism had performed a great service, during an age of disintegration, by maintaining a general framework of government, while allowing the locality to protect and care for itself. When the function of protection and local supervision could be resumed by the general government the feudal age ended. In nearly all the states of Europe this end was reached during, or by the close of, the 13th century.
At the moment, however, when feudalism was disappearing as the organization of society, it gave rise to results which in a sense continued it into after ages and even to our own day. One of these results was the system of law which it created.
