In the course of time the same conditions came to prevail in a partial degree in smaller lordships too. When the King gave away land, he fre quently granted to the new holder all kinds of claims which he possessed over the people dwell ing on the land. In the ninth and tenth cen turie*, for instance, the King in many eases, especially in land granted to the Church, prom ised that royal officials should not intrude, in the future, upon the land for purposes of taxation, administration of justice, or military levy. This left it open to the landholder to exercise those rights upon his tenants, who thus became prac tically his subjects as well. Such royal grants were known as 'grants of immunity,' or 'immuni ties.' In England similar grants were made in late Anglo-Saxon times, reciting the privileges of 'sac and soc,"toll and team,' and other franchises now imperfectly understood. Some times only partial rights of government were given in the immunities. as where the King granted all pecuniary profits from court jurisdic tions over a certain district, but did not give any other powers. Ultimately, as feudal condi thins boeame so nearly universal, it was con sidered that landholding in itself involved the possession of certain political rights over the tenants of the land, the extent of these rights be ing dependent on the customs or circumstances of each particular case. And in this manner, in the
lower as well as in the higher grades of holding of landed estates, there was the same union of proprietorship of the land, lordships over vassals, and rights of sovereignty over inhabitants. In the creation of this complex mass of personal and territorial relations, there was much that was a matter of voluntary choice, but still more that was the result of the exercise of compulsion. The early Middle Ages were a period of violence and disorder, and feudalism was rather a re sultant from the eonfliet of different forces than any planned or logical scheme. Nevertheless a certain equilibrium was reached, if it was only the recognition of the common interests of op pressor and oppressed, of the powerful and the weak; in spite of a thousand variations, from country to country, from estate to estate, from person to person, there was a certain amount of uniformity. It is this degree of consistency which has suggested and partially justified the use of the term 'feudal system,' and taking it in this sense, it is possible to give an approximate description of this general body of feudal cus toms.