82 English and Continental Backgrounds
military service in some way proportioned to the fiefs;
there had also been grants of jurisdiction by the dukes.
But our fuller knowledge of Norman feudalism and of its
special traits comes from the Conqueror's time. Norman
efficiency in organisation had, before 1066, fixed the knights'
services due from the great nobles to the duke in units
and multiples of five, these were being subdivided among
these great lords' vassals, and the specific holdings which
owed them were known as knights' fees. There was in
this a definiteness and orderliness not found elsewhere.
While thus organising the feudal force of knights, the
dukes do not seem to have relinquished the right to call
out all freemen, at least for defensive warfare. This made
them quite sure to recognise and maintain the Anglo-
Saxon militia duty, the fyrd, after the Conquest. While
it cannot be asserted that all free tenures were, by 1066,
of the feudal type, surely they were rapidly approaching
it. But while all feudal forms were spreading, there was
no approach to the private warfare and general license
which the feudal state of society usually meant. One
special guarantee against private war which was an estab-
lished policy was that castles—the very life of feudalism—
could be built only by the duke's permission and must be
turned over to him whenever requested. Of private
jurisdiction little more can be said than that it existed
as elsewhere in France, except that more high criminal
jurisdiction was reserved for himself by the duke and when
exercised by others it was specifically on the basis of a
ducal grant. Certainly in the localities there remained
some public courts where justice was administered on the
duke's authority. The duke's own central court, his
curia, was, like the feudal courts in general, a counselling
body and a court of law; it "was brought together for
purposes of counsel on matters which ranged from a trans-
fer of relics to the invasion of England, and for judicial
purposes."1 Its make-up was somewhat shifting. Usu-
ally there would be present members of the duke's family,
1 Haskins, Norman Institutions, p. 55.