Feitdalis7n. 143 



the agricultural application of this still customary incident in 

 copyhold tenure. It is difficult to fix any date at which most 

 of these feudal incidents came to bear a twofold significance. 

 The transition stage from arts of war to those of peace extended 

 over many centuries of national history. Thus, in the pic- 

 turesque and imposing ceremony observed over the grant of a 

 fief, we read of the kneeling vassal, with sword ungirtand head 

 bare, the exclamation " Je deveigne votre homme," and the 

 lord's kiss. In fact, all pertaining to the livery of seisin 

 breathes of war, and is the very reverse of the peaceful and 

 prosy business of a modern lawyer's conveyance. Yet in the 

 later court baron a very careful distinction was made between 

 homage and fealty. There was in the latter no lord's kissing, 

 no humble submission of the vassal on bended knee with head 

 uncovered, and no solemn adjuration of a life's devotion in a 

 soldier's cause. The tenant merely swore to faithfully manure 

 his lord's ground and carefully discharge his rural duties. 

 Without multiplying instances like these, it may be stated 

 generally, that as the sword became beaten, into a plough- 

 share, and as men turned from devastating the soil to its im- 

 provement by agriculture, that system which owed its incep- 

 tion to war became revolutionised in its chief characteristics. 

 The villeinage rose into the dignified tenure by soccage, while 

 military service sank in social importance. The tenant of each 

 knight's fee, i.e. portion of land of £20 annual value, no longer 

 needed to don his armour and serve his forty days in the field, 

 but was permitted to discharge his obligation by deputy. 

 Eventually money equivalents, under the incident of scutage, 

 allowed the farmer to till his lands at home, whilst the mer- 

 cenary fought his battles abroad. 



In like manner the incident of Frankalmoigne (subsequently 

 checked and regulated by the Statutes of Mortmain) freed the 

 ecclesiastic from the incongruous pursuit of arms. 



So far the mention of feudal incidents has divided the nation 

 into soldiers and farmers; but there was a third and very neces- 

 sary class, composed of artificers, who, finding their position 

 insecure in the country districts, gravitated towards the old 

 Roman towns or built fresh ones for themselves. Even in 



