Page:The history of medieval Europe.djvu/285

 THE FEUDAL LAND SYSTEM 241 he precarious use of the land; and Charles M artel had in ike fashion given his soldiers benefices from the church states, which did not belong to him anyway, and which still belonged to the Church even after they were thus occupied or life by knights. The peasants on one manor had practically no concern irith the serfs on a neighboring villa, whom they seldom ven saw unless the two estates adjoined. But Transition he owners of the estates, the masters of the serfs, fr ? m the. L? /-,. * .1 1 seigneunal he fighting and governing class, came to have to the feudal jntimate relations with one another, and this re s ime tystem or chaos of relationships we call feudalism. Without jheir mutual relationships we have only the seigneurial ' egime, a society severed into small agricultural villages or lamlets, each presided over by a petty tyrant. There isola- ion and local stagnation prevailed ; feudalism contained at east an ideal of order and cohesion. It connected not only [he lords, but the estates, the land, in a vast network, whose jasting influence may be inferred from the fact that the f.tudent of English law to-day must have at least some Acquaintance with it. The central institution of feudalism is the fief. The fief is
 * he beneficium become hereditary with the personal bond

'idded or accentuated. Grants of land, which at The fief, its first had been made for life only, were presently hereditary nade for two or three lives, and finally became liereditary. The heir, however, has to pay a relief to the ord as a token of the latter's ultimate ownership of the land. And should there be no heir, the fief cannot be alienated —
 * hat is, willed, or given, or sold — to an outsider; it must

zsclieat or revert to the lord who granted it in the first place. [Also by misconduct the holder of the fief may forfeit his right to it, whereupon the lord takes it away from him — if ne can. In general feudal inheritance tended toward primo- geniture, that the fief should not be split up among several children or heirs, but that the oldest son should inherit it entire. In England this became the rule; in feudal France it was observed with exceptions, and these mainly in the case