Page:The history of medieval Europe.djvu/287

 THE FEUDAL LAND SYSTEM 243 Channel. Lords visited their vassals, as well as summoned the latter to their courts, and the lord expected free board and entertainment when he came. When feudalism started, money was scarce, and there- fore the vassal was expected to aid his lord financially on certain expensive occasions, and only then. One Feudal aids was when the lord, captured by an enemy, re- SOU rcesof quired to be jrajisomed ; another was when his revenu e eldest son was knighted ; and another was when he had to provide a dowry for the marriage of his daughter. In some places feudal aids were taken on still other occasions. The relief has already been noted, but it should be added that the vassal had to pay it, not only when he himself received the fief, but whenever a new lord succeeded over him. Other sources of profit to the lord were his rights of wardship and marriage. When a vassal died, leaving an heir not yet of age, the lord became his guardian and enjoyed the income of the fief until he attained his majority, and even then the heir often experienced difficulty in securing his full inherit- ance. If an heiress remained, a widow or a daughter, the lord was her guardian until she had with his permission married or remarried. Women usually were not allowed to hold fiefs, since they could not fight, but by the end of the twelfth century their right of succession was recognized in France. The normal fief was an estate of land large enough to support by the labors of its peasants at least one armed knight and his war horse. A vassal should have Size and enough of a fief to leave him free to perform his n * tu fi re f of duties to his lord. The normal fief is noble land, whose holder ranks as one of the nobility and performs no servile duties. Yet the fief is not necessarily real estate. The lord might grant to his vassal an official post with lucra- tive fees, or some ecclesiastical source of income, or any- thing else desirable and profitable. The wealthy men of the tenth and eleventh centuries did not have money to invest in commercial and industrial ventures, but they did have land which they wished to invest in men; and instead of