American Freedom's Feudal Beginning

2014/09/09 User:Jeff

G.M. Trevelyan was an English historian at Cambridge University. Much of this article relies on his writings. This article also relies on the writings of F. W. Maitland, a 19th century English jurist and historian of profound insights. (History of England, Book I, Chapter IV)

Feudalism was the characteristic institution of the Middle Ages (Trevelyan's History of England Book I chapters VI - VIII). Feudalism displaced what might have been considered a society that enjoyed more personal and political freedom, but a society that was no military match for the Viking marauders that appeared in England in the 7th and 8th century. It was solidly in place in England around the end of the 11th century about the time of the First Crusade. It was a relationship between the king and the various class layers of people from Barons and Ecclesiastics to serfs (all who owed upward allegiance), and the primary source of wealth - the land - which was held "of the king". It was an administrative, judicial, military, and economic arrangement. Regarding any such issue, it was the duty of the king to consult his tenants-in-chief who held land directly from him and conversely, it was their duty to provide their counsel. While the will of the king was supreme, it was subject to strict limitations; and his Barons were accustomed to maintain their rights by force of arms. Such mutual duties existed between each of the class layers down to the serf. Feudalism represented an improvement in the stability of the lives of the peasant as well as the nobles and planted the seeds of a future, more durable freedom which, after an evolution of 5 centuries, produced the United States.

After the Romans were gone, and prior to the Danish invasion, the villages established by the Anglo-Saxon immigration lacked the military skills to defend themselves against the Danes. Villages, churches and monasteries were stripped of wealth and life by raiding Viking bands. At first the Viking bands were simply after adventure and plunder. They became interested in conquering territory to establish their own settlements as they realized that England was better land than their homes which were wedged between fiord and mountain. So the Danes threatened everything in England from the simple villages to the reign of the Anglo-Saxon kings. Feudalism got its start by solving that problem. Feudal society was an arrangement between Baron, knight, the Church, and the serf to bring protection, order, and rude justice to village life. It was far from liberty and equality, but it was a first step and was consistent with at least one of the basic reasons for a people to submit to government. The serf received a large measure of stability and safety. In exchange, the surplus product of serf labor was divided among Baron, knight, Bishop and Abbot, who were, relative to the serf, a leisure class. Wealth accumulated in their hands, which created a demand for luxuries. From this grew trade, arts, crafts, and a middle class of merchants and tradesmen and the cities that grew as the result.

F. W. Maitland describes the evolution to feudalism in England. It starts with a chief or king to whom are attached a body of warrior companions bound by ambition and glory. These "thegns" are inmates of the leader's household. In England, though, he also becomes a landowner. The king confers land on those of his followers that distinguish themselves in service to him - as did William the Conqueror after invading England in 1066. So the thegn becomes a landowner, typically of a large area - or alternately, holding land belonging to the king by military service; the distinction may not be important. However land possession occurred, it was the basis for thegnage which carried with it an obligation for military service to the king and to find soldiers. All land holders carried some degree of service obligation. Obligation to the king was vaguely in proportion to the amount of land held and a thegn might have lesser thegns dependent on him. So, there was a relationship in England between king, thegn, and the land that bound them together.

But what of the landless man? The law had no hold on him until King Athelstan (925-940) wrote down a law requiring that all men have lords, including every landless man. If he did not have one, one must be found for him. The rule was written so that every man had a lord who was bound to produce him if he was wanted. The landless man was free and had political rights, but he was now dependent and could not be said to be fully free. As it developed, free-holding became the qualification for political rights. As it further developed, the lord answered for him at court and he lost his right to attend on his own behalf. Thus did feudalism restrict the rights of the landless and make dependents of all.

Another element was necessary to feudalism. Before the Norman Conquest, the right to hold courts had been passing from king into private hands. The doctrine was that justice was the king's and could be granted to others, and in the time between Alfred the Great of Wessex and the Conquest, it was granted lavishly by some. It was granted to churches and monasteries and also to lay landowners. England was becoming a land of private courts in which the lord did justice among those dependent on him who were also bound to help in making judgments. This, more than anything, set feudalism in place. Central power declined and local lords were growing strong.

The Vikings

The Viking invasion of England preceded and set the stage for the development of feudalism by exposing the inability of English church and farming villages to defend themselves. Vikings were an interesting mix. They were a free people within their own society and they had a well developed moral code that revered loyalty and honesty - loyalty to king and clan and honesty in word and action. They were also murdering thieves for whom adventuring and unprovoked barbaric marauding through England and Europe was considered an honorable profession.

The Viking raids on England started in the late 8th century. The first victims were the churches and monasteries that lay near the coast. They were unprotected, they had wealth, and they were easy pickings for the Vikings, who then came to realize that there was no sea power to protect the British Islands. They were there for the taking. The Anglo-Saxons inhabitants were inland farmers - not sailors or warriors; whereas the fist Vikings, sailing out of their fiords which cut into chasms of high mountains with the sea as their only road to the world, were at home at sea. Seemingly unopposed, war and plunder became the chief industry of the Scandinavians. At first it was strictly for adventure and plunder, but it eventually turned to immigration and settling the land. The English fields were more fertile than the fields above the sandy beaches of the fiords back home. So they became farmers as well. But they were also and always traders. They built fortified towns and markets. They were an energetic mixture of farmer, sea-faring barbarian and pirate, and merchant trader ready to act as fit the circumstances or advantages of the moment, and they ranged, raided, and traded through Europe. They were knowledgeable and cosmopolitan compared to the Saxon peasantry they preyed upon in England.

An interesting aside is that the Danish and Norse Vikings, who raided on the east and southern coasts of England, established two Danelaws (territories ruled by Danish law) - a large one encompassing much of eastern England, and a smaller one in France that was named Normandy after them - from whence, 200 years later, William the Conqueror invaded and took control of England. William's intent was to claim the English crown and was not on a mission of freedom, but the effect was to set England on its path to a highly developed concept of freedom that eventually spun off the United States.

The Rise of the English Warrior Class

It was for Alfred the Great of Wessex in southwest England to finally bring the Viking up short. And that was not accomplished by an army of farmers with shields and spears fighting large numbers of Vikings, experienced in combat, armed with battle axe, bow, sword and shield, wearing mail shirts. Alfred had to develop a professional warrior class that could match the Viking. This was a major advance toward feudalism. Defense came first. Law came close behind it. But feudalism, though a system of law and land tenure, depended on an aristocracy in arms. Later, the peasant armed with that most lethal weapon, the long bow, would deal a blow to the feudal system.

And another interesting thing happened. Alfred had contained the Danelaw - not eliminated it - which was populated by both Anglo-Saxons and former Danish Vikings who now occupied eastern England as farmers with families. In the face of continued Viking raids, the Anglo-Saxons looked to Alfred as their champion and protector. But increasingly, even though they were not threatened, so did the former Vikings - particularly those who had accepted Christianity - now established on the land and seeing their interests more aligned with the English. Two generations hence, under the leadership of Alfred's descendants, the English were more sophisticated politically and militarily and completed the reconquest of the Danelaw and it was absorbed into Wessex. But the Vikings were not done yet.

It is also interesting to note that, in the Danelaw, there were no slaves and many freemen - which was not the case in Alfred's Wessex. A peasant, though not a slave, was not necessarily free. Personal and political freedoms for the peasant in those days are difficult to discover. "Free man" did not seem to mean a well defined set of personal and political freedoms - though it is likely that such were conferred on men considered to be free. The term free seems to have referred to the ownership of land. If one owned land, one was "free". A landless person might (or might not) enjoy freedoms in today's sense, but was not referred to as "free". Land was the source of wealth and the landowner was seen has having a stake in society, but not the landless. In fact, until the late 10th Century, the law referred only to the "free" and had no hold on the landless. This is a hard concept to grasp today

Anglo-Danish Law

Prior to the coming of the Danes, there was little law. Though earlier English history likely had law, such as was brought by the Romans and clergy, at the time of the Viking invasion, life in the villages was probably ruled by custom. Alfred, in addition to developing a military capability, set up a system of administration that worked through shires and shire officials. These developed into shire courts, but there were no professional lawyers. Law in the shires was heavily dependent on local custom. Law common to all England - the Common Law - was yet to be developed by the Plantagenet Kings - still a 150 years in the future. The Danes had set up boroughs in the Danelaw. When Alfred's son Edward and daughter Ethelfleda conquered the Danelaw, they set up shires primarily based on the Danish borough centers - many of which were cities. These then also developed into merchant centers.

The Danes brought law. It too had custom behind it (Anglo-Saxon and Danish customs had much in common having come from common stock), but it had more structure. What developed was a mixture of custom and Danish law. Danish towns in England usually had 12 "law men" that served as principle officers. They also employed committees of freemen to attend court - perhaps a forerunner of juries in England. Anglo-Danish law was guided by three influences. "Weregild" called for a payment of money for a wrong as a substitute for blood feud - even in the case of murder. Secondly, Church doctrine made sin of wrongdoing. Thirdly, treason to king or local lord and cowardly flight in the face of battle or danger was dishonorable and punishable.

Feudalism

Before the rise of the state under the Plantagenet kings, feudalism seems the only efficient way to protect a defenseless 8th century English population. Given that need, it was also an efficient economic system for supporting the various layers of social class - at the top of which (aside from the king) was the Barron or thegn whose job it was to defend his territory and those dependent on him. The farmer could work the land uninterrupted and war could be pursued. The farmer wanted to work his land without being called up to fight every few months, and the thegn, knight, baron, and sometimes Bishop, were happy to do the fighting, forget the plough, and enjoy the status, wealth, and glory. They protected the manor and village from local and national trouble. For this division of labor, the serf gave up considerable freedom and all the surplus product of his labor, and sometimes his labor. Equality was a victim of feudalism as well as much of liberty. Day-to-day feudal life was much harder on the small landowning free man or the villein than the warrior lord who lived in leisure by comparison. But it resulted in order, security, and more liberty than had previously existed for the peasant. And it should be acknowledged that there was a large difference in risk to life and limb that was absorbed by this so-called leisure class. The peasant lived in greater security. Nonetheless, as time went by, freedom ultimately proved to have more value than security. The peasant learned to fight and began to chafe under feudalism's restrictions.

Feudalism meant local rule. While the local lord owed allegiance to the king, the king lacked the means to control local society. The lord king could maintain control over the lords for purposes of national defense, but little else. For local purposes, they granted rights of justice and administration since they had not the mechanisms or institutions to contain them centrally. This arrangement was forced by the expansion of territory controlled by the English kings from the more manageable Wessex of Alfred's day to include most of England. England had not developed the means to rule such a territory at the local level. This dispersal of courts and justice to the local lords, at the expense of central control, is a better definition of feudalism than dependence of the peasant on the lord for military defense.

Notes

Chapter IV of Book 1 of Trevelyan (an important chapter): Pg 48 of Trevelyan discusses the necessity of a wealthy class as a prerequisite of moving from primitive society to democratic equality. The same arguments can be presented at any stage. And this can be coupled with Gilder's arguments.

And pg 49: Maitland: " . . feudalism means civilization, the separation of employment, the division of labour, the possibility of national defence(sic), the possibility of art, science, literature and learned leisure; the cathedral, the scriptorium, the library are as truly the work of feudalism as the baronial castle."

And: Trevelyan: " . . covering the years between that (Saxon) conquest and the coming of the Vikings, we must attempt the difficult task of appreciating the change of religion oas the first great step forward of the English people on the path of civilized life."

Christianity brought "the beginning, among the barbarians, of a political and legal civilization based on the arts of reading and writing in the practicable Latin alphabet"

and so on . . .

The comparison of Anglo-Saxon worship of Odin and Thor with Christianity is instructive - but not very encouraging. Ponder why there was a great conversion to Christianity with its teaching of humility and charity and submission. There was the promise of a known afterlife - how to attain heaven and avoid hell.

top of pg 62: At the Synod of Whitby in 664, Oswy King of Northumbria gave judgment in favour of the claims of Rome as the inheritor of Peter's commission - rather than to the men of Iona. "The early adhesion of all the English Kingdoms to the Roman system of religion gave a great impetus to the movement towards racial unity, kingly and feudal power, systematic administration, legislation and taxation, and territorial as against tribal politics." The English were already moving from tribalism faster than the Celts.

pg 62: "A greater centralization and unity of system and purpose in ecclesiastical affairs throughout all the English Kingdoms led the way towards political unity under a single King. The administration of the Church became the model for the administration of the State. . . And since the Churchmen, being the only learned men, were the chief advisers of the Crown and its first Secretariate, the new Roman ideas passed all the more easily from the sphere of the church into the sphere of the State. Kingship gained new allies - men as skilled to serve with brain and pen, as the thegns with muscle and sword. Kinship gained also a new sanctity and a higher claim on the loyalty of the subject, through hallowing by the Church and by clerical theories of sovereignty drawn from recollections of the Roman law."

So, this is a marriage of two estates of power. Rivalries would ensue. But the Synod of Whitby was a declaration by a King of a favored religion. Before then, kings were not jealous of religious influence.

Pg 94 Monasticism had been in decline. King Edgar (959-975) and successors rebuilt and re-endowed the fenland monasteries such as Ely and Peterborough, and enriched monks everywhere with territorial and judicial power over their neighbors. The fenland monasteries did much to drain and colonize the fen country. The grants of sac and soc, mostly judicial, were connected with the aid given to reclaiming and colonizing waste land by feudal lords, lay and clerical.

This impulse paved the way for more extended claims imposed by the Norman Conquerors. In the end, the movement enforced celibacy on the priests, increased the international character of the Church under Papal leadership, led to the full development of the doctrine of transubstantiation, the importance attached to the worship of the Virgin Mary, and many other characteristic religious movements of the later Middle Age. The monastery was destined to be the principal breeding ground whence religious idea and practice emanated for centuries, and to hold a great place in the economic and social life of feudal England.

Maitland: The Constitutional History of England pg 156-7. talks about how in England, all land is held of the king even today "of course it is". He goes on to contrast it with feudal Germany in which land could be held under feudal law (Lehnrecht) or non feudal (Landrecht). But that in England all land was held under a feudal type law, but that it pertained not to a particular class of person holding a military fief, but to everyone - the agricultural class as well as the tenant by knight service. He then makes an interesting point: "Many things in our legal history are thus explained, for instance, the growth of primogeniture. In origin it belongs to a military system; slowly it spread from the military tenants to the socagers, it ceased to be the mark of a class, it became common law."

Maitland pg 161: Limitations of Feudalism

• It never becomes law that there is no political bond between me save the bond of tenure. William himself seems t ohave seen the danger. We read that in 1086 he come to Salisbury, 'and there came to him his witan and all the landowning men that were worth aught from over all England, whoseoever men they were, and all bowed themselves down to him and became his men, and swore oaths of fealty to him that they would be faithful to him against all other men.'

He exacted this oath from every landholder - not just his tenants, but all possessors of land, no matter whose men they were; they were to be faithful to him against all other men, even against their lords. This became fundamental law:

• English law never recognizes that ay man is bound to fight for his lord. The sub-tenant who holds by military service is bound by his tenure to fight for the king: he is bound to follow his lord's banner, but only in the national army: he is in nowise bound to espouse his lord's quarrels, least of all his quarrels with the king. Private war never becomes legal ; it is a crime and breach of the peace. Whatever was actual practice in individual incidents, that was the law. This was the opposite of the law in France where the vassal must follow his immediate lord, even against the king, in any just quarrel.
• Though the military tenures supply the king with an army, it never becomes law that those who are not bound by tenure need not fight. The old national force, officered by the sheriffs, does not cease to exist. In 1181 under Henry II and his Assize of Arms; every man is bound to have arms suitable to his degree, down to the man who need but have bow and arrows.
• Taxation is not feudalized.
• The administration of justice is never completely feudalized.
• The Curia Regis, which is to become the commune concilium regni, never takes a feudal shape. The body of tenants in chief is too large, too heterogeneous for that. It is much in the king's power to summon shom he will, to take the advice of whom he will. The tradition of a council of witan is not lost.

Then Maitland makes the point that ideal feudalism - while closely realized in France - did not take hold in England, though some aspects - such as land ownership, were more pure in England

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