Page:Western Europe in the Middle Ages.djvu/80

64 was a satisfactory or sufficient unit; they continued to talk of kingdoms and of empires. The universal church found it difficult to remain universal in an atmosphere of feudal division; its great influence, for many generations, was on the side of larger political units. The feudal lords themselves, through tradition or necessity, acknowledged the theoretical supremacy of their kings. These beliefs and theories had at first little influence, but they did create a climate of opinion which improved the chances for political integration. A king who protected distant subjects against their immediate lords, who enforced a ruling of his court against a recalcitrant baron, who used a flimsy excuse to annex a feudal principality to his own domain, was not treated as an outside aggressor. His rights were unquestioned. If he could enforce them, everyone usually acquiesced in the results.

In the second place, feudal government itself was far more flexible, far less hostile to experiment than is usually realized. It was, to repeat, an improvisation, neither planned in advance nor bound by rules. The lord preserved some old institutions, but he was quite free to abandon them or to modify them if he found it necessary. The one essential element in feudal government was the court in which the lord met with his principal vassals, a body which was a tribunal, a legislature, and an executive council all in one. Feudal courts worked out their basic rules of law and procedure by solving individual problems as they arose. They were free to experiment, to mix their principles with large doses of expediency, to adjust their general concepts of right and wrong to local conditions. Not all feudal governments were successful in developing new institutions, but the best of them proved surprisingly fertile. The principal departments of government of the French and English monarchies grew out of feudal courts. The Anglo-American system of common law is based on the feudal law of the court of the king of England.

In the third place, feudal government had some success in gaining the loyalty of the people. This was important; the Roman