leaders of the revolt were sent into exile, but one of them, Grimoud of Plessis, the traitor, apparently he who had sought William's death in the night at Valognes, was put in prison at Rouen in irons which he wore until his death.
With the collapse of the great revolt and the razing of the castles of the revolting barons, Normandy began to enjoy a period of internal peace and order. Externally, however, difficulties rather increased with the growing power of the young duke. In discussions of feudal society it is too often assumed that if the feudal obligations are observed between lords and vassals, all will go well, and that the anarchy of which the Middle Ages are full was the result of violations of these feudal ties. Now, while undoubtedly a heavy account must be laid at the door of direct breaches of the feudal bond, it must also be remembered that there was a fundamental defect in the very structure of feudal society. We may express this defect by saying that the feudal ties were only vertical and not lateral. The lord was bound to his vassal and the vassal to his lord, and so far as these relations went they provided a nexus of social and legal relations which might hold society together. But there was no tie between two vassals of the same lord, nothing whatever which bound one of them to live in peace and amity with the other. Quite the contrary. War being the normal state of European society in the feudal period, the right to carry on private war was one of the cherished rights
