It is hardly necessary to remark that, in the change in the mode of living which had suddenly taken place in this country, a form of society had also been introduced abruptly which differed entirely from that of the Anglo-Saxons. On the continent, throughout the now disjointed empire which had once been ruled by Charlemagne, there had arisen, during the tenth century, amid frightful misgovernment and the savage invasions of the northmen, a new form of society, which received the name of feudalism, because each landholder held, either direct from the crown or from a superior baron, by a feudal tenure, or fee (_feodum_, _feudum_), which obliged him to military service. Each baron had sovereignty over all those who held under him, and, in turn, acknowledged the nominal sovereignty of a superior baron or of the crown, which the latter practically was only sometimes able to enforce. One great principle of this system was the right of private warfare; and, as not only did the great barons obtain land in feudal tenure in different countries under different independent princes, but the lesser holders of sub-fees obtained such tenures under more than one superior lord, and as these, when they quarrelled with one superior, made war upon him, and threw themselves upon the protection of another who felt bound to defend his feudatory, war became the normal state of feudal society, and peace and tranquillity were the exceptions. One effect of feudalism was to divide the population of the country into two distinct classes--the landholders, or fighting-men, who alone were free, and the agricultural population, who had no political rights whatever, and were little better than slaves attached to the land. The towns alone, by their own innate force, preserved their independence, but in France the influence of feudalism extended even over them, and the combined hostility of the crown and the aristocracy finally overthrew their municipal independence. Feudalism was brought into England by the Normans, but it was never established here so completely or so fully as on the continent. The towns here never lost their independence, but they sided sometimes with the aristocracy, and sometimes with the crown, until finally they assisted greatly in the overthrow of feudalism itself. Yet the whole territory of England was now distributed in great fees, and in sub-fees; amid which a few of the old Saxon gentry retained their position, and many of the Norman intruders married the Saxon heiresses, in order, as they thought, to strengthen the right of conquest; but the mass of the agricultural population were confounded under the one comprehensive name of _villains_ (_villani_), and reduced to a much more wretched condition than under the Anglo-Saxon constitution. The light in which the villain was regarded in the twelfth century in England is well illustrated in a story told in the English “Rule of Nuns,” printed by the Camden Society. A knight,