The Origins of English Feudalism? An Episcopal Land‐Grant Revisited*

Abstract

Abstract The debate over whether English feudalism developed immediately after the Norman Conquest or early in the twelfth century is still very much alive. The wealth of information contained in Domesday Book actually tells little of the nature of land‐holding. Only three private land‐grants survive from the reign of the Conqueror. One, the 1085 grant from Bishop Losinga of Hereford to Roger de Lacy, was the subject of a celebrated article by V. H. Galbraith in 1929, in which he argued that the grant was a prime example of the new feudalism developing in the wake of the Conquest. However, recent writings have challenged that traditional view. This article re‐examines the grant in the light of those new views and assigns it a rather different significance.