The relations of the feudal hierarchy were likewise based on grants of land; because, in the absence of taxation, a grant ofenjoying a portion of land was the only possible method of rewarding a service, or duty. Nevertheless, the feudal hierarchywas preeminently political. It constituted the state organization; for the benefice was originally granted for life to the countor marquis, who governed a town or district; to the man of arms who owed military service; or to the vassal who was boundto appear and aid his sovereign in judging or administering. It was only in later times that the benefice became hereditary;while military service, originally imposed on every free man, became the condition of enjoying a fief. The feudal system,being at its full development at the time of the conquest of England by the Normans, was applied there in a more completeand systematic manner than anywhere else. It was admitted in theory that the sovereign was now proprietor of the wholesoil, and henceforth all land was considered as granted by the sovereign. For this reason Blackstone, and other jurists, admiteven now that English soil is the property of the Crown. The Anglo-Saxon lords, remaining in possession of their domains,became the conqueror's vassals, like those of his companions, to whom he had actually granted confiscated property. Therewas no longer any free allod; all lands were comprised in the network of feudal tenures. This was not the case in Germany,and still less so in Holland and Scandinavia. There, side by side with the seignor and the feudal manor, village communitiesat first, and peasant proprietors subsequently, maintained their independence for centuries, and, in some provinces, even tothe present day.
The complete feudalization of property in England had two results, which at first sight seem contradictory. On the one hand,it led to the preservation or re-establishment of political liberty, because, royalty being from the first very powerful, thenobles allied themselves with the bourgeois to limit its power and to found the parliamentary system on the traditional typeof the witan , the Germanic thing or mallus . On the other hand, it was singularly favourable to the development of inequalityand the extension of latifundia , because a share in the judicial and legislative power was given to the lords, while elsewheresuch power was exercised by the kings, for the advantage of their prerogative and at times in favour of the middle classes,whose support was sought by the Crown. Mr Cliffe Leslie, (9) M. Nasse, and Mr David Syme (10) have described in detail thisremarkable economic evolution, the final result of which has been to concentrate the possession of the soil of England in thehands of a few thousand families.
To sum up rapidly the phases of the continued progress of inequality. After the conquest, the corvée became more and moresevere. The tenant, who occupied a virgata, owed the manor three or four days' labour a week, from the first of August toMichaelmas; and two or three days during the rest of the year. He was bound besides to plough the land one day a week, aswell as to sow and harrow it when ploughed. He also owed extraordinary services, to gather in the hay and harvest, to cartwood, or dig ditches. The lord's domain did not form a compact whole. It was composed, like the cultivator's virgata, of alarge number of scattered parcels in the, three fields of the rotation, these being also the lots of the old partition. In manylocalities, the ]ord endeavoured to break in on the indivisibility of the arable, and, by means of forced exchanges, formed forhimself a separate domain which he enclosed.
The fief having been granted by the sovereign to the lord, the latter assumed, as a consequence, that the whole soil belongedto him. He did not, on this account, suppose himself able to despoil the peasants of the enjoyment of their lands or of theirright of using the common forest and pasturage, but these rights were regarded as servitudes exercised over the property ofthe lord. In consequence of this usurpation, the lord began to enclose, for his own use, all that portion of the communalpasturage, which was not required for the wants of the tenants. The Statute of Merton in 1235, and the Statute ofWestminster in 1285, decided that the complaints of the tenants, liberè tenentes , against the usurpations of the lord of themanor were not to be allowed, when it was shewn that ipsi feoffati habeant sufficientem past uram quantum pertinet adtenementa sua . As to the rights of the villani , there is nothing to shew that the law protected or even recognised them. Thelords made large use of the privilege granted them by the Statute of Merton, to extend their private domain.
There was also another custom, calculated to enrich them further. This was the jus faldae , in virtue of which the tenantswere obliged to fold their sheep on the lord's land, so as to manure it abundantly. Under the primitive triennial rotation,manure from the stable was rare, as the beasts were nearly always out at grass. The result, therefore, of the jus faldae was toimpart to the lord's land the elements of fertility which it took from the tenants' lands. The same custom enriched the one andimpoverished the other.
From the thirteenth century, there commenced in the agrarian situation of England a slow and gradual revolution, which atfirst seemed favourable to the cultivators, and yet ultimately produced a remarkable reduction in their number. It gave themliberty, and, at the same time, took away their property.
