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Home England under Foreign Kings England under Foreign Kings; Part 4 |
England under Foreign Kings; Part 4We may think of it as a sort of pyramid: serfs at the bottom; above them free tenants; minor tenants owing obedience to other greater men; at the top the tenants-in-chief holding direct from the king; the king as the apex; land, the bond which unites them and in the main settles their rights and duties. But we must not picture it as more orderly than it was. In simplest idea it was regular; in practice and working it was intolerably confused and disorderly. There were many forms of tenancy, and men owed all sorts of duties to many different persons: for example, the same man might hold some land from the king, some from the church, and some from a baron.It is easy to see that the English came off badly in this arrangement. As the Norman friends of the king were put at the top, the English naturally sank to the bottom. Those who, in days before the Conquest, had been free, though they were owners of very small estates, now often found themselves reduced to being serfs, or, as they were sometimes called, villeins. We must see what this meant for them. In the first place, they were no longer free. They were bound to the land and could not leave it. They were forced to work two or three days in each week on their lord's estate, without being paid for doing so. They could not give their daughters in marriage without their lord's leave. And, beyond all this, they were in his power. He could punish them almost as he chose by fining them, or causing them to be flogged, and they could not get any redress. This was bad enough, but it was made worse by the fact that their lords were almost always foreigners. The Normans despised the English. They called them "dogs of Saxons", and treated them worse than dogs. They did not understand the English tongue, and paid no attention to what the English said or felt. William might pretend that he had, after all, only taken the place of Harold on the English throne, but to the English he was indeed a conqueror, and a very hard conqueror as well. In this way the Feudal System, as established by King William, bore hard on the English. We shall see that they became worse off when for a strong king was substituted a weak one. William might rule sternly, but he ruled all alike. By his gifts of land he had bound to him a body of armed followers who could defend him against any attempts of the English to drive him out. Yet he did not mean to let this armed force be used against him. He himself had been a feudal vassal before he became a feudal king. As Duke of Normandy he had been so strong in his own dominions that he could disregard his superior, the King of France, as he liked. He had even met him in battle, and had overthrown him. He had no mind to let his barons be as troublesome to him as he had been to the King of France. So he did three wise things, and, by doing so, set up a different kind of Feudalism from that which later proved such a curse to both France and Germany. |
Chronology |
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