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"In its classic definition, by François-Louis Ganshof (1944),[2] feudalism describes a set of reciprocal legal and military obligations among the warrior nobility, revolving around the three key concepts of lords, vassals, and fiefs.[2]
... A lord was in broad terms a noble who held land, a vassal was a person who was granted possession of the land by the lord, and the land was known as a fief. In exchange for the use of the fief and the protection of the lord, the vassal would provide some sort of service to the lord. There were many varieties of feudal land tenure, consisting of military and non-military service. The obligations and corresponding rights between lord and vassal concerning the fief form the basis of the feudal relationship.[2] ... Before a lord could grant land (a fief) to someone, he had to make that person a vassal. This was done at a formal and symbolic ceremony called a commendation ceremony, which was composed of the two-part act of homage and oath of fealty. During homage, the lord and vassal entered into a contract in which the vassal promised to fight for the lord at his command, whilst the lord agreed to protect the vassal from external forces. Fealty comes from the Latin fidelitas and denotes the fidelity owed by a vassal to his feudal lord. "Fealty" also refers to an oath that more explicitly reinforces the commitments of the vassal made during homage. Such an oath follows homage.[11]
Once the commendation ceremony was complete, the lord and vassal were in a feudal relationship with agreed obligations to one another. The vassal's principal obligation to the lord was to "aid", or military service. Using whatever equipment the vassal could obtain by virtue of the revenues from the fief, the vassal was responsible to answer calls to military service on behalf of the lord. This security of military help was the primary reason the lord entered into the feudal relationship. In addition, the vassal could have other obligations to his lord, such as attendance at his court, whether manorial, baronial, both termed court baron, or at the king's court.[12]
It could also involve the vassal providing "counsel", so that if the lord faced a major decision he would summon all his vassals and hold a council. At the level of the manor this might be a fairly mundane matter of agricultural policy, but also included sentencing by the lord for criminal offences, including capital punishment in some cases. Concerning the king's feudal court, such deliberation could include the question of declaring war. These are examples; depending on the period of time and location in Europe, feudal customs and practices varied; see examples of feudalism. ... Holding by feudal tenure meant that vassals must provide the quota of knights required by the king or a money payment in substitution. ...
There is also a broader definition, as described by Marc Bloch (1939), that includes not only warrior nobility but all three estates of the realm: the nobility, the clerics, and the peasantry bonds of manorialism; this is sometimes referred to as a "feudal society". Since 1974 with the publication of Elizabeth A. R. Brown's The Tyranny of a Construct, and Susan Reynolds' Fiefs and Vassals (1994), there has been ongoing inconclusive discussion among medieval historians as to whether feudalism is a useful construct for understanding medieval society.[3][4][5][6][7] ... Like Ganshof, he recognized that there was a hierarchical relationship between lords and vassals, but Bloch saw as well a similar relationship obtaining between lords and peasants.[25]
It is this radical notion that peasants were part of feudal relationship that sets Bloch apart from his peers. While the vassal performed military service in exchange for the fief, the peasant performed physical labour in return for protection. Both are a form of feudal relationship. According to Bloch, other elements of society can be seen in feudal terms; all the aspects of life were centered on "lordship", and so we can speak usefully of a feudal church structure, a feudal courtly (and anti-courtly) literature, and a feudal economy.[25 ... Since the 1970s, when Elizabeth A. R. Brown published The Tyranny of a Construct (1974), many have re-examined the evidence and concluded that feudalism is an unworkable term and should be removed entirely from scholarly and educational discussion, or at least used only with severe qualification and warning.[3][4]
Outside a European context, the concept of feudalism is normally used only by analogy (called semi-feudal), most often in discussions of feudal Japan under the shoguns, and sometimes medieval and Gondarine Ethiopia.[9] However, some have taken the feudalism analogy further, seeing it in places as diverse as ancient Egypt, the Parthian empire, the Indian subcontinent, and the Antebellum and Jim Crow American South.[9] " -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feudalism
The feudal system came about in a time when there was widespread anarchy (well, not really anarchy, but it seems that way relative to what we consider as a lawful society today), when horses and metal weapons and armor made a warrior much more powerful but required much training and were themselves relatively expensive, when long distance communication was high latency and relatively expensive, when food and other necessities were mostly produced locally, and when people felt no sense of national loyalty. Because of these conditions, the main thing people tried to get was physical security. Knights (warriors who were properly equipped and trained) were the key, and were very valuable; the supply was low (because horses and metal weapons and armor were expensive), the demand was high (because there were frequent unavoidable battles, and a single knight was worth a lot of non-knights). Being a knight meant devoting your life to training, and risking your life; it was a lot to ask of someone and required a good reward. Presumably Knights could defect or flee, and presumably it was important to ensure their loyalty. Knights were fed and clothed by lords, rather than having a centralized army, presumably because food was grown locally, because people didn't feel a duty to their nation, and because the administrative/tax apparatus wasn't able to collect enough tax. Being a lord mostly meant owning land, but later on you had yeoman who owned their own land but weren't lords.
This system stopped being popular later on, presumably when the rise of cities made it possible to tax and to feed and equip centralized militaries, and when the fighting within nations diminished, presumably making knights became relatively less valuable compared to other occupations (e.g. merchants).
Wikipedia says: "Feudalism usually emerged as a result of the decentralization of an empire: especially in the Japanese and Carolingian (European) empires which both lacked the bureaucratic infrastructure[clarification needed] necessary to support cavalry without the ability to allocate land to these mounted troops. Mounted soldiers began to secure a system of hereditary rule over their allocated land and their power over the territory came to encompass the social, political, judicial, and economic spheres.[13]
These acquired powers significantly diminished centralized power in these empires. Only when the infrastructure existed to maintain centralized power—as with the European monarchies—did Feudalism begin to yield to this new organized power and eventually disappear.[13]" -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feudalism
One possibility, consistent with Wikipedia's view but not with my hypothesis about the importance of knights above, is that feudalism is highly suboptimal, not just for the purpose of assuring the freedom and happiness of most of the people, nor even for the purpose of effective management of the nation, but even for the purpose of defending against external and internal attack, and for the purpose of ensuring stability. In this view, feudalism is a transitional state that obtains before any central power has yet become powerful enough to impose anything else. Imagine, for instance, that you are suddenly teleported into the body of a warlord in 'nation' which is just a collection of independent tyrannical warlords who war with each other, also beset by outlaws within and barbarian raiders without. Let's even say that you are the most powerful warlord; but not so pwerful that you can take over most of the other warlords without allies.
You might think of various structures that are more just for the people, more stable, and also better at defending themselves from threats, but you won't be able to get the other warloards to subordinate themselves to these structures. The best you can do is form a large alliance and take over the other warlords outside your alliance and then impose sensible laws on everyone, and raise forces to fight outlaws and raiders.
In order to get allies, you'll have to offer the other warlords privilages akin to lordships (after all, they de facto have these privilages within their terriory right now). After the war, you'll offer your allies plunder from the defeated, and security from future attack, in exchange for their military support and taxes.
Some of your allies may themselves not be sovereign within their own realm, but rather merely the most powerful warlord among minor warlords who banded together in a similar manner; in which case you'll have multiple levels of lords. Similarly, either you, or each lord, grants knighthoods to the most powerful fighters to incentivize them to fight for you. This is essentially feudalism.
It may be highly non-optimal but it may still be the best state transition that you can make directly from a warlord situation. Eventually you may transition either to an imperial system (very top-down, presumably better than feudalism at effective management and focusing effort) or a democratic system (very bottom-up, presumably better than feudalism for ensuring the rights and possibly the happiness of the people).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Examples_of_feudalism
"In England the division between the nobility and the gentry was less rigid than was true in most of Western Europe. Only the eldest son of a nobleman was noble - his younger brothers were mere gentlemen.
English noblemen were subject to taxation (unlike the nobility of France and Spain, who were largely exempt from taxation). The House of Lords, therefore, was sometimes willing to ally with the House of Commons in opposing taxes.
The number of nobles in Tudor England was generally fewer than 60, but it grew steeply under James I, who was generous with honors at his accession to curry favor, and later to earn money; in 1628 the number had reached well over 120." -- http://faculty.history.wisc.edu/sommerville/367/367-03.htm
"Hereditary titles often distinguish nobles from non-nobles, although in many nations most of the nobility have been un-titled, and a hereditary title need not indicate nobility (e.g., baronet).
In modern usage, "nobility" is applied to the highest social class in pre-modern societies. In the feudal system (in Europe and elsewhere), the nobility were generally those who held a fief, often land or office, under vassalage, i.e., in exchange for allegiance and various, mainly military, services to a suzerain, who might be a monarch or a higher-ranking nobleman. It rapidly came to be seen as a hereditary caste, sometimes associated with a right to bear a hereditary title and, for example in pre-revolutionary France, enjoying fiscal and other privileges.
... Nobles were expected to live "nobly", that is, from the proceeds of these possessions. Work involving manual labour or subordination to those of lower rank (with specific exceptions, such as in military service) was either forbidden (as derogation from noble status) or frowned upon socially. On the other hand, membership in the nobility was usually a prerequisite for holding offices of trust in the realm and for career promotion, especially in the military, at court and often the higher functions in the government and judiciary.
Prior to the French Revolution, European nobles typically commanded tribute in the form of entitlement to cash rents or usage taxes, labour and/or a portion of the annual crop yield from commoners or nobles of lower rank who lived or worked on the noble's manor or within his seigneurial domain. In some countries, the local lord could impose restrictions on such a commoner's movements, religion or legal undertakings. Nobles exclusively enjoyed the privilege of hunting. In France, nobles were exempt from paying the taille, the major direct tax. Peasants were not only bound to the nobility by dues and services, but the exercise of their rights were often also subject to the jurisdiction of courts and police from whose authority the actions of nobles were entirely or partially exempt. In some parts of Europe the right of private war long remained the privilege of every noble.[1] ... In France, a seigneury (lordship) might include one or more manors surrounded by land and villages subject to the noble's prerogatives and disposition. Seigneuries could be bought, sold or mortgaged. But if erected by the crown into, e.g. a barony or countship, it became legally entailed for a specific family, who could use it as their title (although most nobles were untitled: "seigneur of Montagne" meant ownership of that lordship but not, if one was not otherwise noble, the right to use its associated title). However, any French noble who bought a countship was allowed, ipso facto, to style himself as its comte.
By contrast, in the United Kingdom royal letters patent were necessary to take a noble title, which also carried a seat in the House of Lords, but came with no automatic entail nor rights to the local peasants' output.
... Nobility might be either inherited or conferred by a fons honorum. ...
This illustrates the traditional link in many countries between heraldry and nobility; in those countries where heraldry is used, nobles have almost always been armigerous, and have used heraldry to demonstrate their ancestry and family history. However, it is important to note that heraldry has never been restricted to the noble classes in most countries, and being armigerous does not necessarily demonstrate nobility. " -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nobility
More on yeomen:
in some cases they were tenants of lords but who, unlike ordinary tenants, couldn't have their land taken away, so had a sort of sub-ownership of the land:
" In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries it had a particular meaning that, by the nineteenth century, had become largely obsolete. A 'yeoman' in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was a 'customary tenant' - in other words, someone who held his land by 'custom' rather than by the 'will' of the lord of the manor. This meant in practice that his land would pass from father to son automatically - the lord couldn't prevent the inheritance.
The lord, did, however have various rights. These were often described as 'fines' (monies due, for instance, when the land changed hands or when the lordship of the manor changed hands) but the term had nothing to do being fined for being naughty. Possibly the two most important rights were over wood and minerals - the yeoman couldn't cut down the trees on his land, or mine for coal and iron, without permission. These rights (as a major source of income) were usually jealously guarded by the lord of the manor (or landlord, as wills often describe him).
The manorial court also had certain powers. Though this court might be chaired by a representative of the lord, the decisions were made by a jury of yeomen. In effect, these were an oligarchy who controlled life in the manor. They could, and did, fine ('amerce') their fellow yeomen for being naughty!
People who weren't yeomen (husbandmen or whatever) had no rights or powers - they couldn't, for instance, graze animals on common land and weren't protected by local bylaws and notions of 'good neighbourhood'. In other words, whatever your actual occupation (farmer, shoemaker, lawyer) it was very much in your interest to retain a parcel of customary land so that you were still a yeoman.
By the end of the seventeenth century, many yeomen elsewhere in England had lost their rights and status. In Cumbria and Yorkshire, they were able to resist attempts by big landowners to take over (partly because they were able to claim special right as a potential defence force against Scottish raids).
However, by the mid 1700s, the things that made 'yeomen' a special breed were beginning to die out. Yeomen had often bought out the rights of the lord ('enfranchisement') and had privatised the common land ('enclosure'). Neither the lord nor the manorial court had any significant power over them or their land. The '45 eliminated the Scottish threat. The term had largely lost its technical status.
A 'yeoman' described as such in a nineteenth century census or directory was someone who owned his own land. This could be a big or a small landowner, especially when the term is used in a directory, but the census might more usually describe a big landowner as a 'landed proprietor'. A yeoman might in other contexts be described as a 'gentleman' or might equally not be in that social category. The term yeoman had most meaning in contrast to the term 'husbandman' or 'ag.lab' - someone who didn't own the land. " -- rmhh.co.uk/occup/files/yeomen.rtf
later on the term meant something different: "Sir Anthony Richard Wagner, Garter Principal King of Arms, wrote that "a Yeoman would not normally have less than 100 acres" (40 hectares) "and in social status is one step down from the Landed Gentry, but above, say, a husbandman. "(English Genealogy, Oxford, 1960, pps: 125-130). A yeoman could be equally comfortable working on his farm, educating himself from books, or enjoying country sports such as shooting and hunting. By contrast members of the landed gentry and the aristocracy did not farm their land themselves, but let it to tenant farmers. Yeomen in the Tudor and Stuart periods might also lease or rent lands to the minor gentry. However, yeomen and tenant farmers were the two main divisions of the rural middle class, and the yeoman was a respectable, honourable class and ranked above the husbandmen, artisans, and labourers. Isaac Newton and many other famous people such as Thomas Jefferson hailed from the yeoman class. Isaac Newton inherited a small farm which paid the bills for his academic work. Many yeomen were rich enough to send their sons to school to qualify for a gentlemanly profession. Earlier, the sons of many yeoman families served in royal or great noble households providing not menial, but honourable service, as his social status or degree in society was equal in the royal or noble household. The Concise Oxford Dictionary, (edited by H.W. & F.G. Fowler, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1972 reprint, p. 1516) states that a yeoman was "a person qualified by possessing free land of 40/- (shillings) annual [feudal] value, and who can serve on juries and vote for a Knight of the Shire. He is sometimes described as a small landowner, a farmer of the middle classes."... In the United States, yeomen were identified in the 18th and 19th centuries as non-slaveholding, small landowning, family farmers. " -- wikipedia, section 14th to 18th centuries
" Yeomen were prosperous independent farmers, typically holding about 50 acres of land. They did not have gentry status - often because they worked the land themselves. A gentleman's dignity was deemed incompatible with manual labor. Similarly, the younger sons of gentlemen were often "apprenticed" to some respectable trade, and so moved downwards into the middling sort. English society was hierarchical but it was comparatively easy to move up or down the hierarchy - particularly from one generation to the next. " -- http://faculty.history.wisc.edu/sommerville/367/367-03.htm
" The term franklin denotes a member of a social class or rank in England in the 12th to 15th centuries. In the period when Middle English was in use, a franklin was simply a freeman; that is, a man who was not a serf, in the feudal system under which people were tied to land which they did not own, in bondage to a member of the nobility who owned that land. The surname "Fry", derived from the Old English "frig" ("free born"), indicates a similar social origin.
The meaning of the word "franklin" evolved to mean a freeholder; that is, one who holds title to real property in fee simple. In the 14th and 15th centuries, franklin was "the designation of a class of landowners ranking next below the landed gentry".[1]
The social class of franklin, meaning (latterly) a person not only free (not in feudal servitude) but also owning the freehold of land, and yet not even a member of the "landed gentry" (knights, esquires and gentlemen, the lower grades of the upper class) let alone of the nobility (barons, viscounts, earls/counts, marquis, dukes), evidently represents the beginnings of a real-property-owning middle class in England in the 14th and 15th centuries. " -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franklin_%28class%29
" Freemen
Freemen, or free tenants held their land by one of a variety of contracts of feudal land tenure and were essentially rent-paying tenant farmers who owed little or no service to the lord, and had a good degree of security of tenure and independence. In parts of 11th century England freemen made up only 10% of the peasant population, and in the rest of Europe their numbers were small. Villeins
A villein (or villain) was the most common type of serf in the Middle Ages. Villeins had more rights and higher status than the lowest serf, but existed under a number of legal restrictions that differentiated them from freemen. Villeins generally rented small homes, with or without land. As part of the contract with the landlord, the lord of the manor, they were expected to spend some of their time working on the lord's fields. The requirement often was not greatly onerous, contrary to popular belief, and was often only seasonal, for example the duty to help at harvest-time. The rest of their time was spent farming their own land for their own profit.
Like other types of serfs, they were required to provide other services, possibly in addition to paying rent of money or produce. Villeins were tied to the land and could not move away without their lord's consent and the acceptance of the lord to whose manor they proposed to migrate to. Villeins were generally able to hold their own property, unlike slaves. Villeinage, as opposed to other forms of serfdom, was most common in Continental European feudalism, where land ownership had developed from roots in Roman law.
A variety of kinds of villeinage existed in Europe in the Middle Ages. Half-villeins received only half as many strips of land for their own use and owed a full complement of labour to the lord, often forcing them to rent out their services to other serfs to make up for this hardship. Villeinage was not, however, a purely uni-directional exploitative relationship. In the Middle Ages, land within a lord's manor provided sustenance and survival, and being a villein guaranteed access to land, and crops secure from theft by marauding robbers. Landlords, even where legally entitled to do so, rarely evicted villeins because of the value of their labour. Villeinage was much preferable to being a vagabond, a slave, or an unlanded labourer.
In many medieval countries, a villein could gain freedom by escaping from a manor to a city or borough and living there for more than a year; but this action involved the loss of land rights and agricultural livelihood, a prohibitive price unless the landlord was especially tyrannical or conditions in the village were unusually difficult. Bordars and cottagers
In England the Domesday Book, of 1086, uses bordarii (bordar) and cottarii (cottager) as interchangeable terms, cottager being derived from the native tongue whereas bordar being derived from the French.[12]
The status of bordar or cottager ranked below a serf in the social hierarchy of a manor, holding a cottage, garden and just enough land to feed a family. In England, at the time of the Domesday Survey, this would have been between about 1 and 5 acres (0.4 to 2 hectares).[13] Under an Elizabethan statute, the cottage had to be built with at least 4 acres (0.02 km2; 0.01 sq mi) of land.[14] However, the later Enclosures Act removed the cottagers' right to any land: "before the Enclosures Act the cottager was a farm labourer with land and after the Enclosures Act the cottager was a farm labourer without land".[15]
The bordars and cottagers did not own their draught oxen or horses. The Domesday Book showed that England comprised 12% freeholders, 35% serfs or villeins, 30% cotters and borders, and 9% slaves.[13] Slaves
The last type of serf was the slave. Slaves had the fewest rights and benefits from the manor. They owned no tenancy in land, worked for the lord exclusively and survived on donations from the landlord. It was always in the interest of the lord to prove that a servile arrangement existed, as this provided him with greater rights to fees and taxes. The status of a man was a primary issue in determining a person's rights and obligations in many of the manorial court cases of the period. Also, runaway slaves could be beaten if caught. " -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serfdom#Freemen
"A copyholder paid an entry fine and then was allowed to hold the land for a term of years or his lifetime at a customary rent.
A tenancy-at-will gave the farmer no security. The tenant could be dispossessed at any time, - although the landlord did have to allow any growing crops to be harvested.
" -- http://faculty.history.wisc.edu/sommerville/367/367-03.htm
" In certain jurisdictions, including the UK's England and Wales and Scotland, a freehold (also called frank-tenement and franktenement) is the ownership of real property, being the land and all immovable structures attached to such land. This is opposed to a leasehold in which the property reverts to the owner of the land after the lease period has expired.[1] Immovable property includes land and all that naturally goes with it, such as buildings, trees, or underground resources, but not such things as vehicles or livestock (which are movable).
For an estate to be a freehold it must possess two qualities: immobility (property must be land or some interest issuing out of or annexed to land); and ownership of it must be of an indeterminate duration. If the time of ownership can be fixed and determined, then it cannot be a freehold. " -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freehold_%28law%29
" At its origin in medieval England, copyhold tenure was tenure of land according to the custom of the manor, the "title deeds" being a copy of the record of the manorial court.
The privileges granted to each tenant, and the exact services he was to render to the Lord of the Manor in return for them, were described in a book kept by the Steward, who gave a copy of the same to the tenant; consequently these tenants were afterwards called copyholders in contrast to freeholders.[1] The specific rights and duties of copyholders varied greatly from one manor to another and many were established by custom, though generally they laid out rights to use various resources of the land such as wood and pasture, and copyholds very commonly required payment of a type of death duty called a heriot upon the decease of the copyholder.
Two main kinds of copyhold tenure developed:
Copyhold of Inheritance: with one main tenant landholder who paid rent and undertook duties to the Lord. When they died, the holding normally passed to their next heir - who might be the eldest son/daughter if no son (primogeniture); or youngest son/daughter if no son (Borough English or ultimogeniture); or a division between children (partible inheritance), depending upon the custom of that particular manor. In practice, local rules of inheritance were often applied with considerable flexibility. During their life the tenant could usually 'sell' the holding to another person by formally surrendering it to the Lord to be regranted to them. This was recorded in the court roll and formed the new 'copyhold' for the purchaser.
Copyhold for Lives: three named persons were nominated, the first-named was the holder tenant and held for the duration of their life. The other two were said to be "in reversion and remainder" and effectively formed a queue. When the first life died, the second-named inherited the property and nominated a new third life for the end of the new queue. These were recorded in the court rolls as the "copyhold" for this type of tenant. It was not usually possible for these holdings to be sold, as there were three lives with an entitlement. Copyhold for Lives is therefore regarded as a less secure tenancy than Copyhold for Inheritance.Copyhold likely originated from the state of villeinage.[2]
Genealogists may find it helpful to note that copyhold land often did not appear in a will. This is because its inheritance was already pre-determined, as just described. It could not therefore be given or devised in a will to any other person. In many instances, the executor of the estate held the copyhold for the term of one year after the decease of the testator, which was called the "executor's year," in parallel with the same concept in common law. Language regarding the disposal of the profits of the executor's year or of a heriot often indicates a copyhold.
Copyholds were gradually enfranchised (turned into ordinary holdings of land – either freehold or 999-year leasehold) as a result of the Copyhold Acts during the 19th century. By this time, servitude to the Lord of the Manor was merely token, discharged on purchasing the copyhold by payment of a "fine in respite of fealty". Part V of the Law of Property Act 1922 finally extinguished the last of them. " -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyhold
