The Executive 257
to pieces, not of any upon
it, but because alike
unable to maintain Roman imitation. In the ruins
of this empire, there grew the a set
of relations, termed feudal, in which lord
were bound to each other by a contract freely entered
into and entailing mutual obligations,1 If of the
parties to the contract broke it, the other might try to
force him to keep it or might regard the relation as dis-
solved. Indeed these military contracts distinctly
the source of the principle of armed to wrong.
A baron was a sovereign with respect to his Ms
fiefs; hence "such common as to be
made in medieval society had to be effected on the
lines as modern international conventions." The king
could declare his will only in Ms own ; if it touched
the territory of his vassals it must have their consent.
But the sovereign barons were far from of equal
influence, either in the feudal court or outside, and in
England the suzerain's voice was very influential. Some
barons were much greater than others—-"voices were
rather weighed than counted*'—and the majority prin-
ciple was not yet. It depended on circumstances and
place whether, in feudal society, the pull was towards
the centre, the king's control, or the circumference,
feudal licence. As transplanted in England it was to-
wards the centre; in the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem
towards the circumference.
William the Conqueror did not turn out to be the kind
of king that his vassals had expected; he did not treat
them as the French kings treated their vassals. He did
not consciously modify feudalism when he came into
England or deliberately undertake to weaken his vassals.
But he was as strict and stem a king in England as he
had been duke in Normandy; he was great enough to
play the same part on the larger stage. His followers
seem not to have expected this; they thought he would
* See above, Part I, § II., i.