It is apparent, from what has been said, that, all through the Middle Ages, feudalism continued to grow, as it were, "from the top and bottom and in the middle all at once." (1) Great landowners carved out new fiefs from their domains and granted them to new vassals. (2) Those who held small tracts brought them into the feudal relation by turning them over to a lord or monastery, whose vassals they became. (3) Finally any lord might subinfeudate portions of his estate by granting them as fiefs to those whose fidelity or services he wished to secure. By the thirteenth century it had become the rule in France that there should be "no land without its lord." This corresponded pretty closely to the conditions which existed at that period throughout the whole of western Europe. [Sidenote: The hereditary character of fiefs and its consequences.] It is essential to observe that the fief, unlike the _beneficium_, was not granted for a certain number of years, or for the life of the grantee, to revert at his death to the owner. On the contrary, it became hereditary in the family of the vassal and passed down to the eldest son from one generation to another. So long as the vassal remained faithful to his lord and performed the stipulated services, and his successors did homage and continued to meet the conditions upon which the fief had originally been granted, neither the lord nor his heirs could rightfully regain possession of the land. No precise date can be fixed at which it became customary to make fiefs hereditary; it is safe, however, to say that it was the rule in the tenth century.[67] The kings and great nobles perceived clearly enough the disadvantage of losing control of their lands by permitting them to become hereditary property in the families of their vassals. But the feeling that what the father had enjoyed should pass to his children, who, otherwise, would ordinarily have been reduced to poverty, was so strong that all opposition on the part of the lord proved vain. The result was that little was left to the original and still nominal owner of the fief except the services and dues to which the practical owner, the vassal, had agreed in receiving it. In short, the fief came really to belong to the vassal, and only a shadow of his former proprietorship remained in the hands of the lord. Nowadays the owner of land either makes some use of it himself or leases it for a definite period at a fixed money rent. But in the Middle Ages most of the land was held by those who neither really owned it nor paid a regular rent for it and yet who could not be deprived of it by the original owner or his successors. [Sidenote: Subvassals of the king not under his control.]