Page:A short history of social life in England.djvu/83

Rh itself, an order which united all in a great chain of duty. As the simple man-at-arms owed faith and service to his captain, so the knight owed his service to his military superior the baron, while in his turn the baron served his King. Thus, then, the Norman feudal army settled on the land amidst a people already acquainted with the feudal system. But the chances of war had carried men rapidly from the lowest to the highest grade of society. The foot-soldier with black bow and arrow appeared after the Conquest as a fully armed knight mounted on horseback, while many a poor Norman knight now commanded a company, whose rallying cry was his own name. Herdsmen and weavers, butchers and cooks, with obscure names in France, became illustrious barons on this side the water!

The possession of wealth and land now became the basis of society. The Anglo-Saxon freeman vanished under a system by which every landholder was made to depend on another, whom he was bound to serve, not as his chosen patron, not, as of old, by reason of the love he bore him as kinsman or friend, but as owner of the lands he cultivated, the leader he was obliged to follow into battle. Homage to his landlord—the faithful