negatives of feudalism in the middle ages

Each tenant laid claim to a certain aspect of the service from the land.Īmong the complexities of feudal arrangements, there existed no guarantee that contracts between lord and vassal would be honored, and feudal contracts saw little enforcement from those with greater authority. A chronicle of the time says 'different lordships lay on the land in different respects'. However, even this sometimes broke down when a vassal would pledge himself to more than one liege lord.įrom the perspective of the smallest land holder, multiple networks of tenancy were layered on the same small plot of land. To resolve this the concept of a liege lord existed, which meant that the vassal was loyal to his liege lord above all others, except the king himself, no matter what. These complex relationships invariably created loyalty problems through conflicts of interests. It would also have been possible and not uncommon for a situation where Robert of Stafford was a vassal of Henry elsewhere, creating the condition of mutual lordship/vassalage between the two. Thus while Henry was the vassal of his overlord Robert, Henry was himself a lord of his own manors held in capite and sub-enfeoffed many of his manors which he did not keep in demesne, that is to say under his own management using simple employees. Henry d'Oilly, who held 3 fees from Robert de Stafford, also held, as a tenant-in-chief, over 30 fees elsewhere that had been granted to him directly by the king. Stafford tenants were themselves lords of the manors they held from him, which is altogether different from their being barons. Often lords were not so much lords presiding over great estates, but managers of a network of tenants and sub-leases.

A feudal barony contained several knight's fees, for example the baron Robert de Stafford held a barony containing 60 knight's fees. It was a record commissioned by the Treasury as the knight's fee was the primary basis for assessing certain types of taxation, for example, feudalism is the exchange of land for military service, thus everything was based on what was called the knight's fee, which is a fiefdom or estate of land. This was a roll of parchment or several such, recording the quantity and tenant of each knight's fee held in capite. However, it could be structurally complex, which is illustrated by the example of the feudal barony of Stafford as described in a survey of knight's fees made in 1166 and recorded in The Black Book of the Exchequer. Western European Feudalism 12th century England įeudalism in 12th century Norman England was among the better structured and established in Europe at the time.

2 'Semi-feudal' (non-Western European) feudalism.

It’s pretty hard to keep learning when there’s a war going on! Today, students are protected from the political changes around them and schools are able to keep operating like normal. Though, very few students got to attend, unlike today.Īnd remember all the wars and invasions of the middle ages? Students would sometimes have their learning interrupted by social upheaval. There were also colleges and universities in the middle ages. Unlike today, most subjects centered around theology (or, the study of religion). And, they played sports like archery, hammer-throwing, horseshoes, and wrestling. What did students study in the middle ages? All kinds of things! Just like today they learned math and grammar (or, the study of language) as well as music, art, and science. Some of the things that students learned then we might consider to be superstitions today. Because of this, religion informed every subject that students learned. There were no public schools, and those who had the privilege of getting an education usually either learned at home with a tutor or from a school run by the church. Only the wealthy had access to education, and then usually only for boys. In the Middle Ages, this was not the case.

Negatives of feudalism in the middle ages