en the Papacy, as in some sort "a foreign power," world-wide and
many-weaponed, could treat on more than equal terms with any European
monarch, and secure independence for the clergy. With the lopping off of
the national churches from the parent stem, this energising force from a
distant centre of life ceased. Each separate clerical organisation could
now depend only on its own intrinsic efficiency. For most this meant
absolute surrender.

The civil law therefore which supplanted feudalism entailed two
seemingly contradicting principles which are of importance in
considering the ownership of land. On the one hand, the supremacy of the
King was assured. The people became more and more heavily taxed, their
lands were subjected to closer inspection, their criminal actions were
viewed less as offences against individuals than as against the peace of
the King. It is an era in which, therefore, as we have already stated,
the power of the individual sinks gradually more and more into
insignificance in comparison with the rising force of the King's
dominion. Private rights are superseded by public rights.

Yet, on the other hand, and by the development of identically the same
principles, the individual gains. His tenure of land becomes far less a
matter of contract. He himself escapes from his feudal chief, and his
inferior tenants slip also from his control. He is no longer one in a
pyramid of grouped social organisation, but stands now as an individual
answerable only to the head of the State. He has duties still; but no
longer a personal relationship to his lord. It is the King and that
vague abstraction called the State which now claim him as a subject; and
by so doing are obliged to recognise his individual status. This new and
startling prominence of the individual disturbed the whole concept of
ownership. Originally under the influence of that pure feudalism which
nowhere existed in its absolute form, the two great forces in the life
of each member of the social group were his own and that of his
immediate lord. These fitted together into an almost indissoluble union;
and therefore absolute ownership of the soil was theoretically
impossible. Now, however, the individual was emancipated from his lord.
He was still, it is true, subject to the King, whose power might be a
great deal more oppressive than the barons' had been. But the King was
far off, whereas the baron had been near, and nearly always in full
evidence. Henc