Page:Landholding in England.djvu/20

 Under the feudal system, the tenant, or vassal, owed his overlord military service; he was required to serve himself, and—if he had tenants under him, to raise a certain number of men, to serve in the wars for a certain time—usually forty days. He also had to pay certain "fines," and "recoveries," on his accession to the inheritance—we now call these "death-duties." If he held of the Crown (which was called holding in capite), he had to pay his share of the "relief" which the King demanded of his faithful subjects when he married or knighted his eldest son, or married his eldest daughter. This custom also survives under the form of a grant from Parliament.

Probably the chief change as to land at the Conquest was at first one of persons—the substitution of Norman barons for the deprived Saxon earls; and another and more real change, the great increase of book-land, owing to the many confiscations, which throw much land into the gift of the Crown. But confiscations were not wholesale. The old system was not abolished; a new system was indeed introduced, but it existed side by side with the old. Two hundred and fifty years later, Edward II. swore to observe the laws of the Confessor. In all popular agitations, the demand is always for the old Saxon laws, and king after king swears to observe them.

The position of the serfs remained unchanged by the Conquest: they were no better off. But when the first horrors of conquest were over, the freemen of England suffered less than those of France from the operation of the feudal system. This was partly because the masterful Norman kings took care to delegate as little power as possible to their equally masterful barons—who considered themselves the King's "peers," his equals in all but precedence; but it was still more because our kings long remained foreigners, far more interested in the affairs of France than in those of England. Thus the line of cleavage went from highest to lowest of the nation, and soon the barons themselves cast in their lot with "the English," because their own great interests now lay in England, and not in Normandy across the sea.

William of Normandy was not a mere soldier of fortune. He was one of the most astute of rulers. He knew when to strike and when to spare. He soon saw that he could