CHAMBERS'S INFORMATION FOR THE PEOPLE. 



law were abolished in England, and with them 

 the corresponding degree. Jealous as the Eng- 

 lish were of the encroachments of the civil law, 

 they still more determinedly opposed that of the 

 canon. What the powerful court of Rome had 

 - t its heart upon, could not be wholly resisted ; 

 Imt it was always a principle, that though the civil 

 .1 ithorities of England might take laws from the 

 ecclesiastical system, the canon law was not to be 

 <>!>eyed within the realm. 



THE FEUDAL LAW. 



The feudal system and the Roman law the 

 one representing the Teutonic, the other the 

 Romanic element in the organisation of modern 

 states may be said to have struggled for suprem- 

 acy through nearly the whole of modern Europe. 

 Of the influence of the latter, we have already 

 taken a cursory view. The former was an in- 

 gredient in the constitution of the continental and 

 I'.ritish monarchies. It was the source of those 

 popular or aristocratic assemblies which shared 

 more or less, according to circumstances, the 

 government of the various states in which they 

 existed ; and it was thus the ostensible origin of 

 the British parliament. The constitution of the 

 German Empire was essentially feudal ; and the 

 customs, or peculiar local laws of the various prov- 

 inces of France, previously to the Revolution, 

 were models from which the system was studied. 

 The English law, especially that of real or landed 

 property, is full of feudal usages, though their 

 operation has often been checked. In Scotland, 

 very many forms of the feudal system still exist, 

 though, as we shall hereafter see, they have been 

 adapted, perhaps as far as they are capable of 

 being so, to the wants of civilised times. 



The essential elements of the feudal system 

 were land, and military service given for the use 

 of it, by the vassal who held it, to the superior of 

 whom it was held. It would be wrong to speak 

 of either of these two parties as the absolute 

 proprietor of the lands ; for in the more perfect 

 stage of the system, each had his own peculiar 

 privileges, with which the other had no right 

 to interfere, except where the law permitted 

 him. The vassal was not the slave of the 

 superior. The duties and services he had to per- 

 form were regulated by compact or custom. On 

 the other hand, however, he was not the independ- 

 ent proprietor of the lands he held. He could 

 not convey them to a purchaser, nor could he 

 pledge or bequeath them, without obtaining the 

 sanction of the superior to the person to be substi- 

 tuted for him. Land was thus completely removed 

 from the unrestricted operation of commerce ; and 

 in those countries where the feudal system con- 

 tinued to exist, it was only by fictions and con- 

 nivances by bribing the superior, or getting the 

 courts of law to compel him to give his consent 

 that sales and pledges could be effected. The 

 lands held in this manner were termed fiefs. 

 When they became hereditary, as they did 

 apparently by custom, arising from the tacit con- 

 sent of the parties interested, the superior was 

 still presumed to give an assent to the change 

 from father to son ; and before he acknowledged 

 the latter as his vassal, he exacted from him a 

 fine. When the successor was a minor, and on 

 that account unable to fulfil the military duties of 



54 



the fief, the superior in some cases became his 

 guardian, drawing the rents of the estate, and 

 compelling him to marry whom he should point 

 out, under a penalty. In some countries, females 

 could not succeed. In others, where their right 

 was acknowledged, the superior claimed the privi- 

 lege of assigning husbands to them ; and exacted 

 a fine, sometimes for admitting the husband as a 

 new vassal, sometimes as the price for permitting 

 him to marry his ward. 



The proper return of the vassal for his lands 

 and the protection of his lord was, as already 

 stated, military service. Where this system was 

 established as a fixed law, the quantity of service 

 to be so given was regulated. The church enjoyed 

 lands which were not exempt from the ordinary 

 feudal services. In the earlier ages, churchmen 

 in many cases assumed the spear and buckler. 

 When it was considered inconsistent for church- 

 men to fight, it was held as by no means unsuit- 

 able for the church to employ soldiers. A clerical 

 establishment would sometimes appoint a patron, 

 or chivalrous assistant, in the person of a neigh- 

 bouring baron, who would be called the 'advocate' 

 of the establishment It is not unfrequent to 

 find in old tenures that a particular monastery is 

 to supply so many archers and spearmen for so 

 many days. 



Borough communities were another class to 

 whom military service seems inapplicable, but 

 who, nevertheless, almost universally held by that 

 tenure. They obtained certain privileges, and in 

 return they had generally to keep watch and ward in 

 their respective towns a service in which their own 

 safety might not be less interested than the ambition 

 of their lord. As the privileges conceded to these 

 communities were large and important, they did 

 not, in general, escape taxation along with their 

 military duties ; and in later times, these exactions 

 became generally commuted for a money payment 

 The privileges usually conceded to these com- 

 mercial communities consisted of an exemption 

 from the more vexatious of the feudal exactions, 

 to be shortly noticed. These were generally con- 

 ceded to them by the monarchs, as a counterpoise 

 to the growing power of the feudal aristocracy ; 

 and within these sanctuaries commerce and civil- 

 isation created a power by which both kings and 

 nobility were effectually held in check. 



Among those who were placed in the position 

 of feudal vassals to the seignior, or lord, were his 

 own domestic servants, whose power and influence 

 would be, to a certain extent, measured by that of 

 their master. To perform the menial duties of 

 his household, a Roman emperor employed a 

 slave, just as a senator or a pro-consul might do. 

 The barbarian conquerors, however, gave lands 

 to those who performed these functions ; and the 

 person who performed for Charlemagne the office 

 of butler, valet, huntsman, or groom, got for his 

 services the commodity most readily at his 

 master's hands portions of conquered territory. 

 It is important to observe, however, that the 

 personal relation preceded the feudal one, and 

 that it was the latter which grew out of the former. 

 This point has been much insisted on by Mr 

 Freeman, in its political bearings, in his History 

 of the Growth of the English Constitution. 

 ' Among the Teutonic nations/ he says (page 46), 

 'the personal relation coloured everything. . . . 

 We are now accustomed to see this kind of service 





