Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 9.djvu/131

 FEUDALISM 121 so conquered were immediately parcelled out by them among their comites upon terms of military service and special fidelity ; and that the Merwing state from the first was built up on the feudal principle of vassalage. 1 The sound view appears to be that as in Britain, so in Gaul the Germanic tribes came over as &quot; nations in arms,&quot; &quot; with their nocks and their herds, their wives and their little ones ;&quot; that they brought their Germanic social and political organization with them ; and that the Merwing kingdom was mainly constructed on that basis subject to modifications introduced perforce by the circumstances of the conquest. In Britain it is clear that the primitive political institutions were introduced en bloc, and took root ; of the agrarian settlement effected, evidence is lacking dur ing the first centuries of the new order. When trustworthy data begin to appear feudalism has already made large inroads on primitive alodialism. In Gaul the chain of evidence is continuous, and it is beyond doubt that under the first dynasty the tenure of land was still mainly alodial ; that all the people were bound to be faithful to the king as a national duty, and not by virtue of special land ten ure ; that &quot; the gift of an estate by the king involved no defined obligation of service,&quot; all the nation being still bound to military service ; that &quot; the only comites were the antrustions, and these few in number ;&quot; and that the supposed larger class of comites, the leudes, were in fact the whole body of the king s good subjects, in Anglo-Saxon phrase, his &quot;hold.&quot; 2 If we pass to the close of the 10th century, and take a survey of the social condition of western Europe, we shall find all the principles of the primitive Germanic society inverted. Political organization from being personal has become territorial ; &quot;the ideas of individual freedom and political right &quot; have &quot; become so much bound up with the relations created by the possession of land as to be actually subservient to them.&quot; Everything belongs either to the king or the lord. Thus in England the national peace is now the king s peace ; the state domain the folkland is terra regis. The township has become the lord s manor, the township waste the lord s waste, the township court the lord s court. &quot; Land has become the sacramental tie of all public relations ; the poor man depends on the rich, not as his chosen patron, but as the owner of the land that he cultivates, the lord of the court to which he does suit and service, the leader whom he is bound to follow to the host.&quot; 3 This dreary re sult was not acomplished in a day. But the causes began to operate from a very early period. Even if each free im migrant received his due family portion of land, a much larger allotment would certainly be assigned to the leader, who might be considered to have contributed most to the success of the undertaking; whole townships in a depend ent position might thus bo established from the very first. The leaders of the migration of course came armed with all the exceptional powers usually conferred on daces in time of war ; the position of the new comers, as military colonists encamped on the lands of others, led to a prolongation of those powers. Strong government was an absolute necessity ; consequently royalty, previously unknown to the Anglo- Saxon tribes, makes its appearance as an immediate con sequence of the conquest. Five years after his landing the 1 See Guizot, Civilis. France, i. 311, &c. Yet see Montesquieu, Esprit des Lois, xxx. v. xi. 2 See Stubbs, i. 251, citing Waitz, Deutsche Verfassungsgeschichte., ii. 251, &c. &quot; The work of Sohm (Altdeutsche Iteicfo und Gerichts Verfacsung), completes the overthrow of the old theory, by reconstruct ing, in a very remarkable manner, the old German system in Salian and Merovingian times.&quot; See also Robertson s Scotland, ii. 449. For the word &quot;hold,&quot; see the proclamation of Henry III. in 1258, Fccdrra, i. 378. 3 Stubbs. sup., 167. &quot; heretoga &quot; Hengest is raised to kingship. When the re sistance of the natives was crushed, political wars and wars of succession between the invaders themselves ensued, each struggle adding to the private possessions and political influence of the victorious chief. &quot; Everything, in fact, which disturbs the peaceful order of the village system tends to the aggrandizement of the leading family and its chief.&quot; 4 The new order of things, however, sprang from two great sources, tho beneficiary system and the practice of &quot; com mendation.&quot; &quot; On Gallic soil it was specially fostered by the existence of a subject population, which admitted of any amount of extension in the methods of dependence.&quot; 5 The system of benefices had its origin partly in grants of land made by kings and principes to their comites, kinsmen, and servants, on terms of special fidelity, analogous to, if not identical with, the bond of the comitatus, partly in the surrender of alodial estates made by the owners to lay or ecclesiastical potentates, to be received back, and held under them as beneficia. By this arrangement the de pendant bought the protection of a temporal or spiritual patron. Commendation was a similar arrangement, entered into without reference to land ; the weaker man placed himself under the personal protection of a superior &quot; without altering his title or divesting himself of his estate : he became a vassal and did homage. The placing of his hands between those of his lord was the typical act by which the connexion was formed. And the oath of fealty was taken at the same time. The union of the beneficiary tie with that of commendation completed the idea of feudal obligation.&quot; Both lord and &quot;man&quot; have a hold on the land ; each has his duty to the other, the one to protect, the other to support. &quot; A third ingredient was supplied by the grants of immunity by which the dwellers on a feudal property were placed under the tribunal of the lord, and the rights which had belonged to the nation or its. 6hosen head were devolved upon the receiver of a fief.&quot; 7 The system so formed was of mingled origin. The benefi- ciurn &quot; is partly of Roman partly of German origin ;&quot; com mendation might be traced up to the comitatus or the Roman clientship, or possibly to Celtic usages of kindred ancestry. 8 All these elements, the benefice proper, the sur rendered alod, the personal commendation, the private jurisdiction, find their place in English as well as in French history, but the elements were blended in different propor tion, and under external conditions of a different character. In England the tie of the comitatus played an important part, and became the basis of the later Anglo-Saxon nobility. On the Continent the comitatus was soon lost in &quot; the general mass of vassalage ;&quot; 9 on the Continent territorial influences became paramount; in England personal and legal influences were never extinguished. Both in France and England the process of commendation was fostered by edicts of the central Government, requiring, for purposes of police, that all persons of humble station should place themselves under lords. 10 &quot; The process by which the machinery of government became feudalized, though rapid, 4 Maine, Village Communities, 143. 5 Stubbs, sup., 252. 6 Stubbs, following Waitz, ii. 262, iv. 210, denies any connexion between the commendation and the beneficiary system of the Frank empire with the primitive comitatus. Koth, Jieneftcialwesen, 385, regards commendation as &quot; placing a man in the relation of comitatus to his lord ; &quot; and he makes the Frank antrustionship a link between the primitive comitatus and later feudalism. 7 Stubbs, sup., 253. 8 Waitz, iv. 199. 9 &quot; In the Frank empire the beneficiary system is unconnected with the comitatus ; in the English they are in the closest connexion.&quot; Stubbs, 153. In spite of this authority, it seems hard to believe that there was no connexion whatever between the Frank benefices and the comitatus. 10 E.g., Athelstan, Cone. Oreatanl. ; Schmid, Gesetze, i. 132; Thorpe^ i. 200 ; Baluze, ii. c. 118, cited by Guizot, Civ. France, iv. 68. IX. r6