h dealt with criminal cases, and
could inflict the death penalty. In all cases the decisions of the
manorial courts would be pretty sure to be in the lord's favor. In
England, however, these courts never acquired the degree of power
which they did on the Continent.
[3] See note above, on the manor.

On every manor there were usually three classes of these tenants:
(1) those who discharged their rent by doing military duty; (2) those
who paid by a certain fixed amount of labor--or, if they preferred, in
produce or in money; (3) the villeins, or common laborers, who were
bound to remain on the estate and work for the lord, and whose
condition, although they were not wholly destitute of legal rights,
was practically not very much above that of slaves (S113).

But there was another way by which men might enter the Feudal System;
for while it was growing up there were many small free landholders,
who owned their farms and owed no man any service whatever. In those
times of constant civil war such men would be almost in daily peril of
losing, not only their property, but their lives. To escape this
danger, they would hasten to "commend" themselves to some powerful
neighboring lord. To do this, they pledged themselves to become "his
men," surrendering their farms to him, and received them again as
feudal vassals. That is, the lord bound himself to protect them
against their enemies , and they bound themselves to do "suit and
service"[1] like the other tenants of the manor; for "suit and
service" on the one side, and "protection" on the other, made up the
threefold foundation of the Feudal system.

[1] That is, they pledged themselves to do suit in the lord's private
court, and to do service in his army.

Thus in time all classes of society became bound together. At the top
stood the King, who was no man's tenant, but, in name at least, every
man's master; at the bottom crouched the villein, who was no man's
master, but was, in fact, the most servile and helpless of tenants.

Such was the condition of things in France. In England, however, this
system of land tenure was not completely established until after the
Norman Conquest, 1066; for in England the tie which bound men to the
King and to each other was originally one of pure choice, and had
nothing directly to do with land. Gradually, however, this changed;
and by the time of Edward the Confessor land in England had come to be
held on conditions so closely re