The feudal system may be regarded as having nearly reached its maturity and full development when the Norman con quest of England took place. It appears accordingly to have been established here immediately or very soon after that event in as pure, strict, and comprehensive a form as it ever attained in any other country. The whole land of the king dom, as we have already mentioned, was without any exception either in the hands of the crown, or held in fief by the vas sals of the crown, or of them by sub infeudation. Those lands which the king kept were called his demesne (the Terra: Regis of the Domesday Survey), and thus the crown had a number of immediate tenants, like any other lord, in the vari ous lands reserved in nearly every part of the kingdom. No where else, also, before the restrictions established by the charters, were the rights of the lord over the vassal stretched in practice nearer to their extreme theoretical limits. On the other hand, the vassal had arrived at what we may call his ultimate position in the natural progress of the system ; the hereditary quality of feuds was fully established ; his ancient absolute depend ence and subjection had passed away ; under whatever disadvantages his inferi ority of station might place him, he met his lord on the common ground of their mutual rights and obligations ; there might be considerable contention about what these rights and obligations on either side were, but it was admitted that on both sides they had the same character of real, legally binding obligations, and legally maintainable rights.
This settlement of the system how ever was anything rather than an as surance of its stability and It was now held together by a principle altogether of a different kind from that which had originally created and ce mented it. That which had been in the beginning the very life of the relation between the lord and the vassal had now in great part perished. The feeling of gratitude could no more survive than the feeling of dependence on the part of the latter after feuds became hereditary. A species of superstition, indeed, and a sense of honour, which in some degree supplied the place of what was lost, were preserved by oaths and ceremonies, and the influ ence of habit and old opinion ; but these were at the best only extraneous props ; the self-sustaining strength of the edifice was gone. Thus it was the tendency of feudalism to decay and fall to pieces un der the necessary development of its own principle.
Other causes called into action by the progress of events conspired to bring about the same result. The very military spirit which was fostered by the feudal institutions, and the wars, defensive and aggressive, which they were intended to supply the means of carrying on, led in course bf time to the release of the vassal from the chief and most distinguishing of his original obligations, and thereby, it may be said, to the rupture of the strong est bond that had attached him to his lord. The feudal military army was at length found so inconvenient a force that soon after the accession of Henry II. the personal service of vassals was dispensed with, and a pecuniary payment, under the name of Escnage, accepted in its stead. From this time the vassal was no longer really the defender of his lord ; he was no longer what he professed to be in his homage and his oath of fealty ; and one effect of the change must have been still farther to wear down what remained of the old impressiveness of these solemni ties, and to reduce them nearer to mere dead forms. The acquisition by the
crown of an army of subservient merce naries, in exchange for its former ineffi cient and withal turbulent and unmanage able army of vassals, was in fact the dis covery of a substitute for the main pur pose of the feudal polity. Whatever nourished a new power in the common wealth, also took sustenance and strength from this ancient power. Such must in especial degree have been the effect of the growth of towns, and of the new species of wealth, and, it may be added, the new manners and modes of thinking, created by trade and commerce.
The progress of sub-infeudation has sometimes been represented as having upon the whole tended to weaken and loosen the fabric of feudalism. It "de molished," observes Blackstone (ii. 4), "the ancient simplicity of feuds ; and an inroad being once made upon their con stitution, it subjected them in a coarse of time to great varieties and innovations. Fends began to be bought and sold, and deviations were made from the old funda mental rules of tenure and succession, which were held no longer sacred when the feuds themselves no longer eontinued to be purely military." But the practice of sub-infeudation would rather seem to have been calculated to carry out the feudal principle, and to place the whole system on a broader and firmer basis. It would be more correct to ascribe the ef fects here spoken of to the prohibition against sub-infeudation. The effect of this practice, it is true, was to deprive the lord of his forfeitures and escheats and the other advantages of his seigniory, and various attempts therefore were at length made to check or altogether pre vent it, in which the crown and the tenants in chief; whose interests were most affected, may be supposed to have joined. One of the clauses of the great charter of Henri III. (the thirty-second) appears to be intended to restrict sub infeudation (although the meaning is not quite clear), and it is expressly forbidden by the statute of Quia Emptores (the 18 Ed. I. c. 1). Sub-infeudation was origin ally the only way in which the holder of a fief could alienate any part of his estate without the consent of his lord; and it therefore now became necessary to pro vide some other mode of effecting that object, for it seems to have been felt that after alienation had been allowed so long to go on under the guise of snb-infbnda tion, to restrain it altogether would be no longer possible. The consequence was, that, as a compensation for the prohibi tion of sub-infeudation, the old prohibi tion against alienation was removed; lands were allowed to be alienated, but the purchaser or grantee did not hold then of the vendor or grantor, but held them exactly as the grantor did ; and such is still the legal effect in England when a man parts with his entire interest in his lands. This change was effected by the statute of Quia Emptores with regard to all persons except the immediate tenants of the crown, who were permitted to alienate on paying a fine to the king by the statute 1 Edw. III. c. 12. Thus at the same time that a practice strictly accordant to the spirit of feudalism, and eminently favourable to its conservation and extension, was stopped, another prac tice, altogether adverse to its fundamental principles, was introduced and established, that of allowing voluntary alienation by persons during their lifetime.