Feudalism and Governance

The Norman Conquest is often remembered for Hastings, but its most lasting effects lay in a set of quieter, slower changes: the transfer of English land into Norman hands on contractual military terms, the reshaping of royal justice and local government, and the extraordinary survey that produced the Domesday Book. Together these changes built a system historians call feudalism — a word the Normans themselves did not use, but which usefully describes the interlocking obligations of land, service and justice that structured post-Conquest society.

This lesson sets out the feudal pyramid, the process of forfeiture and redistribution, the terms of knight service, the instruments of royal government (sheriffs, writs, Great Council), the legal changes (murdrum, trial by combat, Forest Law), and the Domesday survey of 1085–86. A grade 4 candidate can describe feudalism; a grade 9 candidate can explain how it served William's political needs and what it cost the English people.

1. The Feudal Pyramid

graph TD
  K[King William] --> TC1[Tenant-in-Chief]
  K --> TC2[Tenant-in-Chief]
  K --> TC3[Tenant-in-Chief]
  TC1 --> KN1[Knight]
  TC1 --> KN2[Knight]
  TC2 --> KN3[Knight]
  KN1 --> P1[Peasants]
  KN2 --> P2[Peasants]
  KN3 --> P3[Peasants]

1.1 The king

All land in England was held — in theory — from William. Nothing could be given away permanently; even the greatest magnate held his estates "of the king" and owed him specific services. This was the key constitutional innovation: it made the Crown the ultimate landlord.

1.2 Tenants-in-chief

Roughly 180 men — mostly Norman, Breton and Flemish — held directly from the king. They owed a specified quota of knights (servitium debitum). The greatest, such as William fitzOsbern in Hereford or Roger of Montgomery in Shrewsbury, held hundreds of manors across multiple counties.

1.3 Knights

Tenants-in-chief subinfeudated — granted land to their own followers in return for military service. A knight's fee (feudum) was typically one manor of five hides, enough to equip him with horse, mail, sword and lance.

1.4 Peasants

Peasants did not hold from the king at all, but from the knight or lord on whose manor they lived. Their obligations — week-work, boon-work, produce renders — were owed to the lord, not the Crown. Their legal position (free or villein) depended on local custom.

Rank	Held from	Owed
Tenants-in-chief	King	Quota of knights (typically 5–60); homage; relief on inheritance; counsel at Great Council
Knights	Tenants-in-chief	40 days' military service per year at own expense; garrison duty
Villeins	Local lord	Labour service on demesne; produce renders; court dues
Cottars	Local lord	Smaller labour services; often 5 acres
Slaves	Lord	No rights; category dwindling and extinct by 1130

2. Forfeiture and Redistribution

2.1 Forfeiture after Hastings

William treated all Englishmen who had fought at Hastings as traitors. Their lands were forfeit. Further forfeitures followed each rebellion: 1068 (Edwin, Morcar and allies), 1069 (northern thegns), 1071 (Hereward, Morcar).

2.2 Scale of transfer

By the time of Domesday in 1086, only two English tenants-in-chief of any consequence remained: Thorkell of Arden in Warwickshire, and Colswein of Lincoln. The rest — roughly 95% by value — were Normans, Bretons or Flemings. A revolution in landholding had taken place in twenty years.

2.3 Castleries and compact lordships

In strategically sensitive regions (the Welsh Marches, the Scottish border, the Sussex coast) William granted compact "castleries" to a single tenant-in-chief who built a castle at the centre. Examples included Chepstow (William fitzOsbern) and Pevensey (Robert of Mortain). Elsewhere lands were more dispersed, making concerted rebellion harder.

2.4 Grade 4/6/9 micro-contrast

• Grade 4: "William took land from the English and gave it to Normans."
• Grade 6: "William forfeited the land of Englishmen who fought against him at Hastings and in the 1068–71 rebellions, and granted it to Normans in exchange for knight service."
• Grade 9: "Forfeiture and redistribution converted a revolt-driven series of seizures into a systematic transfer of almost all tenant-in-chief land to Normans by 1086, producing a feudal aristocracy whose landholding and survival depended entirely on loyalty to the Crown — a structural political transformation, not merely a change of personnel."

3. Military Service

3.1 Knight service

Each tenant-in-chief owed a specific number of knights — for example, the Abbey of Peterborough owed 60 knights, the Bishop of Worcester 50. This quota could be provided either by retaining knights in the lord's household or by subinfeudating land to knightly tenants.

3.2 The 40-day limit

A knight's service was, by custom, 40 days per year at his own expense. Beyond 40 days, or abroad, the king had to pay. This limit shaped campaign seasons and made prolonged warfare expensive.

3.3 Castle guard and scutage

Knights also owed castle guard — garrison duty at a royal or magnate castle. By the early twelfth century many such duties had been commuted to a money payment (scutage), which the Crown used to hire professional troops. The seeds of this development lie in William's reign.

3.4 The fyrd

William did not abolish the Anglo-Saxon fyrd. He used it, especially in 1068–70 against rebels, and his successors called it out repeatedly. The Conqueror fused an inherited general levy with a new feudal cavalry elite.

4. Royal Government