Akademik

A term of tortuous elusiveness. Broadly, the word is used of the system of land-holding, administration and relations between vassal and lord in England after 1066. At its heart is the assumption that everyone had a lord, from the lowliest *servus to the king, who had the sternest and most powerful lord of all, God. This relationship had superseded the familial or kin relationship of the old Saxon world. However, before the Conquest there were clear duties owed to the king by *thegn and *ealdorman, and the importation of the system by the Normans as something wholly new is itself disputed. Feudalism was in effect a combination of two relationships: material and personal. The material is found in the kind of tenure the tenant had and in the way he paid for the land he held of his lord: with service - in the fields or militarily -until the late 14c, after which the incidence of monetary payment increased, i.e. after the *Black Death and concomitant labour shortages. So long as all dues were met the tenure was heritable. The personal relationship derived from the tenant's place in the social ladder and the kind of dependence or protection the lord could provide. The word is first recorded in 1635, long after the period it now relates to. [< OldFr. feu < Lat. feudum = heritable estate, heritable land.] -

Cf. Bastard feudalism; Fee simple; Fief