The Feudal System

## Defining Feudalism:

**Feudalism** is a combination of legal and military customs. Broadly defined, it is a way of structuring society around relationships derived from the holding of land in exchange for service or labor or a set of reciprocal legal and military obligations among the warrior nobility, revolving around the three key concepts of lords, vassals and fiefs. A lord is, in broad terms, a noble who held 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 use of the fief and the protection of the lord, the vassal will provide some sort of service to the lord. There were many varieties of feudal land tenure, consisting of military and non-military service. The obligations and corresponding rights between lord and vassal concerning the fief form the basis of the feudal relationship.

## Vassalage:

Before a lord can grant land (a fief) to someone, he has to make that person a vassal. This is done at a formal and symbolic ceremony called a commendation ceremony, which was composed of the two-part act of homage and oath of fealty. During homage, the lord and vassal enter into a contract in which the vassal promised to fight for the lord at his command, whilst the lord agreed to protect the vassal from external forces. (*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 ceremony is complete, the lord and vassal are in a feudal relationship with agreed obligations to one another. The vassal's principal obligation to the lord was to "aid", or military service. Using whatever equipment the vassal can obtain by virtue of the revenues from the fief, the vassal is responsible to answer calls to military service on behalf of the lord. In addition, the vassal could have other obligations to his lord, such as attendance at his court.

It can also involve the vassal providing "counsel", so that if the lord faces a major decision he can summon all his vassals and hold a council. At the level of the manor this might be a fairly mundane matter of agricultural policy, but also can include sentencing by the lord for criminal offences, including capital punishment in some cases. Concerning the king's feudal court, such deliberation could include the question of declaring war.

## Manorialism

Manorialism is an essential element of feudal society, it is characterized by the vesting of legal and economic power in a Lord of the Manor, supported economically from his own direct landholding in a manor (sometimes called a fief), and from the obligatory contributions of a legally subject part of the peasant population under the jurisdiction of himself and his manorial court. These obligations can be payable in several ways, in labor, in kind, or, on rare occasions, in coin.

The word derives from traditional inherited divisions of the countryside, reassigned as local jurisdictions known as manors**,** each manor being subject to a lord, Holding his position in return for undertakings offered to a higher lord. The lord held a manorial court, governed by public law and local custom.

Manors each consists of up to three classes of land:

1. **Demesne**, the part directly controlled by the lord and used for the benefit of his household and dependents;
2. **Dependent,** the holdings carrying the obligation that the peasant household supply the lord with specified labor services or a part of its output (or cash in lieu thereof), subject to the custom attached to the holding; and
3. **Free peasant land**, without such obligation but otherwise subject to manorial jurisdiction and custom, and owing money rent fixed at the time of the lease.

Dependent holdings are held nominally by arrangement of lord and tenant, tenure in practice is almost universally hereditary, with a payment made to the lord on each succession of another member of the family. Land cannot not be abandoned, at least until demographic and economic circumstances made flight a viable proposition; nor could they be passed to a third party without the lord's permission, and the customary payment.