I. Alod And Fee

Abstract

The degree to which England had already adopted or grown into feudalism by the generation before the Norman Conquest is one of the oldest of historical controversies, and one in which the opposing views, having reached something like a stalemate, seem now disposed to concede a measure of recognition to each other's premisses. Recent treatments of the tenth and eleventh centuries are cautious and compromising. They are apt to speak of “nascent feudalism”, or of the Normans’ mission to develop and give precision to a Saxon feudalism which is never clearly delineated, but which is assumed to be far advanced. I would suggest on the contrary that, given the known components of early English law and the admitted difficulty of bringing this hypothetical Saxon feudalism to definition, the proper approach to the subject should be one not of compromise but of scepticism, and that, as no major passage of Saxon politics can be made to bear that surface appearance of baronial motive and interest which the play of Norman feudalism everywhere presents, any phrase or text of Saxon law which can be made to carry a feudal implication should be tested rigorously to see if it is susceptible of no other interpretation before a strictly feudal meaning is imposed upon it. I must confess that no single term or maxim of the English codes or charters having any claim to genuineness has ever seemed to me to bear a feudal connotation.