ation by which the local landowner definitely recognized a
feudal superior and through him the power of a Central
Government.... When William landed, the whole system of tenure was
in disorder in the sense that the local lord of the village was not
accustomed to the interference of the superior, and that no groups
of lords had come into existence by which the territorial system
could be bound in sheaves, as it were, and the whole of it attached
to one central point at the Royal Court.

Such a system of groups _had_ arisen in Gaul, and to that
difference ultimately we owe the French territorial system of the
present day, but William the Norman's new subjects had no
comprehension of it.[16]

The order introduced by William was not strong enough to endure in face
of the ancient customs of the populace and the lack of any bond between
scattered and locally independent units. A recrudescence of the early
independence of the landowners was felt in the reign of Henry II, while
under John it blazed out into successful revolt. Throughout the Middle
Ages we may see the village landlord gradually growing in independence
and usurping, as a class, the power of the Central Government.

What the outcome of this state of affairs would have been had events
been allowed to develop without interruption, it is impossible to say.
Whether or not the peasant would have acquired freedom and wealth, at
the expense of the landlord; whether then a strong Central Government
would have arisen; whether property would have become more or less
equally distributed and the State have been composed of a mass of small
owners, all possessed of the means of production--these are things we
can only guess. What we do know, and what Mr. Belloc has made abundantly
clear, is that "with the close of the Middle Ages the societies of
Western Christendom, and England among the rest, were economically
free." In England the great mass of the populace was gradually becoming
more and more possessed of property; but at the same time there existed
a very considerable class of large landowners, who were not only wealthy
and powerful, but incapable of rigid control by the Crown.

This, then, was the state of England when an immediate and overwhelming
change occurred. "Nothing like it," says Mr. Belloc, "has been known in
European history." An artificial revolution was brought about which
involved a transformation of