Feudalism

Feudalism

During the Middle Ages in most of Europe, society was based on the "feudal" system.

Feudalism can be pictured as a pyramid. The king is at the top. Everyone owed loyalty and service to the king. The king would give out grants of land to his most important noblemen. Each noble had to then promise to loyally follow the king and supply him with soldiers or knights in time of war. They did this at a special kneeling before the king by swearing an oath with the words, "Sire, I become your man." Every lord had a mill and would earn money when the peasants paid him to use it. Sometimes men who owned land would turn it over to a lord in exchange for protection. All the people who lived on the lord's land owed loyalty to him.

The lords then divided their land among the lesser nobles who became their servants or "vassals".

Both the king or the lords could give the vassals gifts of land in return for military

service. Those lands were called fiefs. However, many of these vassals became so powerful that the kings had difficulty controlling them. By 1100, certain barons had castles and courts that rivaled the king's.

In 1215, the English barons formed an alliance that forced King John to sign the Magna Carta. While it gave no rights to ordinary people, the Magna Carta limited the king's powers of taxation and it required trials before punishment. It was the first time that an English monarch came under the control of the law.

The main service that the vassals owed his lord was military. Vassals had to supply them a certain number of knights for a certain number of days each year. The vassals were lords of the knights. Sometimes a vassal-lord would grant his knights part of his own fief. Then the knight would become a vassal. As time passed, there were several different layers of feudal relations that separated the knights and the king. There were several different levels of lords and vassals.

In addition to military duty, the vassal had to help the lord in official matters such as administering justice, contributing money and attending the lord at court. As a vassal, he also had to house the lord and his entourage when travelling across his grant of land. These visits were not happy ones for the vassal since it was very expensive to feed and house the royal travelers. In return for all of these services, it was the lord's responsibility to protect the vassal.

In the lowest spot in the feudal system sat the peasants. The peasants worked on the lords' lands. There were two kinds of peasants - those who were free and those who weren't.

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