Norman Institutions. 911-1066 79
Saxon feudalism, while the economic side is much the
more important, it is impossible to distinguish so clearly
between the political and economic aspects. The dis-
tinguishing traits of the political feudalism, found in
Norc/mdy as elsewhere in Prance in the eleventh cen-
tury, and which was brought into England by the Norman
Conquest, may be summarised. They related to a part
of society held together by a nexus of private contracts.
The relation of lord and vassal, whatever was the expecta-
tion based upon inheritance of the fief, was in theory and
usually in practice, wholly voluntary, freely entered into
on both sides, and solemnised by the ceremony of homage.
It involved such negative duties on the part of the vassal
as not to attack his lord, reveal his secret, endanger his
castle, diminish his judicial power, or hinder any of his
undertakings; and positively to render him counsel and
aid, usually in the form of attending his feudal court,
and of course, as the main condition upon which the fief
was held, a fixed yearly amount of military service.1
The obligations of the lord, protection, backing, and a
like personal fidelity, while not so easy to particularise,
were equally binding. As between lord and vassal, the
better right to the fief was with the lord, evidenced by
the reversion of the fief to the lord at the vassal's death
and the payment of relief when taken up by the new
vassal. We hear little of best right, of ownership; in land
tenure all was relative, not absolute; all up and down the
scale, everybody held land of some one. Attached to
this nexus of private contracts based on landholding were
public duties—the chief ones of those times, the levying
of a military force and the holding of courts of law. The
amount of jurisdictional power possessed by the different
grades of nobles varied greatly, but public courts, as such,
whether central or local, had practically disappeared.
Criminal jurisdiction, especially in the more serious cases,
1 The service might be some other than knight service provided it were
such as a noble could perform without tarnishing his nobility, but knight
service was so much the rule that the other forms were negligible.