290 A BRIEF SURVEY OF HUMAN HISTORY

good service then, was not without its defects. Private
warfare was one of its most outstanding evils. This acted
as the enemy of all established order. " The man's man
was not the lord's man " was the principle which obtained in
the continent of Europe. Hence, however powerful a lord
might consider himself in theory, he could not in practice
depend upon the co-ordinated loyalties of all who shared
his lands. Very often the vassals proved stronger than their
masters, and well integrated national kingdoms could not
arise under such circumstances. To this England was the
earliest exception. On account of her geographical isolation
she could develop well along her own lines. The Normans
under William the Conqueror, profiting by continental ex-
perience, tried to counteract the feudal anarchical tendencies
by insisting upon all classes of vassals that they could swear
allegiance to their immediate superiors only " saving the faith
that I owe to our lord the King." Yet the centrifugal forces
continued to assert themselves, though with diminishing effect,
until the establishment of the strong Tudor monarchy in the
fifteenth century. On the continent feudalism was liquefied
only gradually. It vanished, however, in the wake of the
invention of gun-powder, the growth of commercial towns,
and above all of the Renaissance. But it is not to be for-
gotten that in its own time it had functioned well " as a
military measure to organise local defence; economically, to
safeguard cultivation of the soil; and politically, to provide
machinery for local administration of justice."1 Its moral and
cultural influences were also considerable. It gave courage
to the barons in 1215 to extort the Magnn Carta from King
John of England, and its traditions of gallantry and romance

1. A. F. Hattersley, A Short History of Western Civilization,
p. 62.