Introduction of Feudalism 97
feudal tinge that gave them for a time a somewhat anom-
alous character.I
The unit of military service was that of the single
knight, the warrior fully armed according to medieval
fashion. Hence the unit of military tenure was a holding
of such value as to support a knight. When the new
feudal tenures were created, they were reckoned in terms
of knights' services. The Conqueror might grant to one
of his followers an extent of territory from which forty
knights were required, to another, a holding furnishing
twenty or thirty knights, and so on. The number of
i nights' services were almost always reckoned in multi-
ples of five, as they had been in Normandy. Although
there was, of course, a relation between the amount of
land granted and the number of knights required from it,
yet no very accurate measuring unit seems to have been
used; the Conqueror probably fixed the numbers quite
arbitrarily. In many cases, surely, the number of knights
required was much below what the land might have fur-
nished. Comparatively few tenants-in-chief owed over
fifty or sixty knights, and the sum of all was about five
thousand. It has been contended by some writers that
this system of knight service was simply a continuation,
under another name, of what is often called the fhegnage of
Anglo-Saxon times. There was, however, an essential
difference, which is an illustration of the fact, already dis-
cussed, that England before the Conquest did not possess
the principles of continental feudalism. What had been
growing in England was a more or less complete teni-
torialising of military service. The old militia idea that
1 This feudal tinge appears in the universality with which these lands
were held of some lord, all rendered some kind of service, and all tended
to assume some of the more characteristic feudal dues, such as the regu-
lar aids and the relief; another feudal trait, more slowly acquired but very
important, was primogeniture (see below, p. 349). But they lacked the
essential feudal characteristic of being held by an "honourable service, that
is, political, the kind of service to be performed by a noble% Free socage
tenure became increasingly popular, being a free tenure, with a definite,
non-military service and usually lacking the more vexatious feudal inci-
dents, as wardship and marriage. Burgage, the characteristic tenure iť
boroughs, was a sort of utown socage."