144 History of the English Landed Interest. 



Saxon times these communities had received botli protection 

 and subsistence by the gifts of garrisons and lands, in return 

 for which they paid certain taxes. At the Conquest the tenure 

 by Burgage drew them within the folds of feudalism. 



Perhaps the most striking circumstance connected with the 

 introduction of this new polity into England was the little dis- 

 turbance it created in the pre-existent economy of land tenure. 

 This was no doubt mainly owing to the common Teutonic 

 origin of both conqueror and conquered. Both nationalities 

 viewed the land through the same pair of spectacles. Its 

 possession involved the fulfilment of certain seignorial duties, 

 the recognition of certain popular rights, and the performance 

 of sundry national requirements. The obligation of military 

 service had been just as inseparable from allodialism as it now 

 was from feudalism. It would puzzle a Norman lawyer to have 

 satisfactorily explained to a Norman lord the practical differ- 

 ence between a National Defence Fund based upon land tenure 

 instead of land ownership. When we bear in mind how very 

 closely connected the two systems were to each other and how 

 very remote they were from what we now understand by landed 

 proprietorship, the distinction for all practical purposes is re- 

 duced to a minimum. 



No wonder then that the transposition of the two systems 

 was effected without disturbance. The internecine struggle 

 and the expulsion of the bulk of the Saxon landed gentry, had. 

 it is true, convulsed and stirred to its very depths the whole 

 country. But this was an event outside of and accidental to 

 the revolution in the Land Laws, which, had there been no 

 change of ownership, might have been carried out as simply 

 and silently as the Local Government Reforms of 1890. In 

 nearly all the incidents of feudalism we can trace an Anglo- 

 Saxon parallel, sometimes a shadow of some still earlier 

 economy. 



The thane was the prototype of the knight, the heriot of 

 the relief, and the fyrd of the knight's fee. But the incident 

 of Wardship takes us back to the times when blood relation- 

 ship welded together in one protective sj^stem, not only the 

 head of the minor's kin, but the whole of his family. 



