TILE ORIGINS OF FEUDALISM. ( 1 ) Personal leelationship.—Amid the disorders and inse curity of the early media•vat period it became very usual for men of low rank and little strength to 'commend' themselves to men of higher position and greater power. This 'com mendation' might be to the King, in which case an additional and closer bond was created than that between ruler and subject; or it might be to a noble or a church corporation, or even merely from one freeman to another. Commendation tended to become a formal procedure accom panied by all oath of fealty and service from the inferior to the superior. The relationship thus established was known as that between vassal and suzerain, or man and lord, and the ceremony as 'homage and fealty.' (2) Landholding Relationships.—Landed es tates were frequently granted by kings, or other possessors of extensive landed property, to per sons who should bold these estates for their own use, but should, iu acknowledgment of having received them, perform certain services, or make certain payments, to the grantor. In early times such grants do not seem to have been considered as hereditary, but they tended to become so. Rulers obtained lands to be thus disposed of by conquest and confiscation; men of lower rank re ceived such extensive royal grants that they here in a position to make similar grants on a smaller scale to others. During the same period many holders of land in full ownership gave it to powerful persons or bodies, especially to the Church, taking it back for possession during their own lifetime, or during the lives of a cer tain number of heirs. Such a grant was called a `precarium,' and was often held in practically hereditary tenure by the original donor and his sncee,ssors, although the ultimate title to it was vested in a third person or corporation. In these ways there came to be but little land that was actually owned by the person who occupied it, and but little that was directly claimed by the person who received payments from it. Land had come to be 'held' by one man from another, and land 'tenure' had taken the place of land `ownership.' A piece of land held in this way was called a 'fief,' a 'fee,' or a 'fend': the pro cedure by which it was granted was known as `enfeoffment,' and the relation between the person holding it and the person from whom it was held as that between landlord and tenant. See FEE; FEOFFMENT.
Next, it is to be noted that the personal bond of homage and fealty and the relation of landlord and tenant tended to run together. usu ally `commended' themselves to the lord from whom they held their land; a person receiving a fief from the King was both his tenant and his vassal ; and when a landholder enfeoffed a tenant he usually received an oath of homage and fealty from him. The conception of vassalage and ten ancy became inseparably bound up together. Some times. it is true, a fief consisted of something else than land. It might he an office or even a regular
income, held on condition of fealty. homage, and feudal service; but after the tenth century, in most western countries of Europe, the possession of any considerable holding of land without the accompaniment of personal homage and fealty to some lord was almost unknown.
(3) Powers of Government.—Large monarchies, under the conditions existing in the early :Middle Ages, could only be governed by placing their different section, or province, under governors or viceroys. In the Empire of the Franks these were known as counts; in England, as earls. When the King was a strong man, and his gov ernment well organized and orderly, the gov ernors were appointed officials with limited pow ers and a temporary, or at most a life tenure of office. During the disorders of the ninth and tenth centuries, however, the provincia I rulers obtained extensive local powers. They exercised such functions of government as taxation. the raising of military forces, the administration of justice, and the coinage of money. Noreover, their positions ea= to be looked upon and treated as hereditary. In many cases their power was strengthened by the fact that the district over which the count ruled had been occupied earlier by an independent race or tribe, and had been brought into the monarchy only by con quest or annexation. The surviving race-feeling, therefore, now attached itself to the local ruler. In addition the semi-independent political powers of these rulers over whole districts were closely combined with the personal and landholding re lationships already described. glen naturally commended themselves to the nearest powerful lord, and performed the services due for their land to him. Ecclesiastical bodies, bishoprics, and abbeys, which were the holders of such a large proportion of the land, and whose estates were considered as being held feudally, were naturally dependent upon the good will of the local ruler to defend them from the attacks of others, and to refrain from aggression upon them himself. These rulers also had lands in their possession which they granted out as fiefs to be held from themselves by persons who were thus alike their subjects, their tenants, and their vassals. Thus, in the case of these great lords of whole districts, political powers, the rights of a feudal landlord, and personal lordship were in separably combined. It is this close union of the powers included under the modern conception of government with a system of landholding and with personal relations of fealty that forms the fundamental character of feudalism, and lies at the base of the legal institutions of the Middle Ages. In the great lordships, at first. a fief in volved not only the possession of land and of personal claims and duties, but of most of the important rights of government over the persons dwelling on the land.