"a regulated and fairly well graduated
method of jurisdiction, based on land tenure, in which every lord, king,
duke, earl or baron protected, judged, ruled, taxed the class next below
him; ... in which private war, private coinage and private prisons took
the place of the imperial institutions of power." Land, "the sacramental
tie" then, "of all relations," and not money, was the chief wealth of
those ages. For services rendered, therefore, fiefs or landed estates
were the reward. Feudalism thus rested on a contract entered into by the
nation represented by the king, which let out its lands to individuals
who paid the rent not only by doing military service, but by rendering
such services to the king as the king's courts might require. The bond
was frequently extremely loose, and it was hard then to say which of the
two was in reality the stronger, the feudal lord or the technically
lower, but sometimes in reality stronger, vassal.

The feudal lord was bound to support his vassal, and in return, had a
right to expect his help in the hour of danger. The feudal lord owed his
vassals justice, protection, shelter and refuge. If certain privileges,
claimed by the feudal lord, were onerous, the vassal was not without
some guarantee that he would be shown fair play; for it was evident that
unless in some way rights and obligations were fairly well balanced, and
there was a fair return for service rendered, the whole system would
soon crumble to pieces.

The "system," if it can be called one, was, as we have said, by no means
perfect, but it bridged the historic gap which stretches between the
fall of the Carolingian power and the full dawn of the Middle Ages. It
saved Europe from anarchy. Its blessings cannot be denied. It helped to
foster the love of independence, of self-government, of local
institutions, of communal and municipal freedom. The vassal that lived
under the shadows of the strong towers of a feudal lord did not look
much further beyond, to the king in his palace or in his courts of
justice, for protection. He found it closer at home. The vassal,
moreover, began to think of his own rights and privileges, to value them
and to ask that they be enforced. The idea of right and law, one of the
most deeply engraved in the Christian conscience in the Middle Ages,
grew and developed. The barons were the first to claim these rights;
gradually the whole nation imitated them. Even when they claimed them,
primarily for the