Feudalism assumed that all the land belonging to a nation belonged in the first place to that nation’s king. Because he could not govern or cultivate it all himself he would parcel it out in ‘fiefs’ amongst the chief nobles at his court, promising them his protection, and asking in return that they should do him some specified service. This system recalls the ‘villa’ of Roman days with its senator, granting protection to his tenants from robbery and excessive taxation, and employing them to plough and sow, to reap his crops, and build his houses and bridges. In the Middle Ages the service of the chief tenants was nearly always military: to appear when summoned by the king with so many horsemen and so many archers fully armed. In order to provide this force the tenant would be driven in his turn to grant out parts of his lands to other tenants, who would come when he called them with horsemen and arms that they had collected in a similar way. This process was called ‘sub-infeudation’. Society thus took the form of a pyramid with the king at the apex, immediately below him his tenants-in-chief, and below them in graded ranks or layers the other tenants. This brings us to the base of the pyramid, the people who could not fight themselves, having neither horses nor weapons, and who certainly could not lend any other soldiers to their lord’s banner. Were they to receive no land? In the Roman ‘villa’ the bottom strata was the slave, the chattel with no rights even over his own body. Under the system of feudalism the base of the pyramid was made up of ‘serfs’, men originally free, with a customary right to the land on which they lived, who had lost their freedom under feudal law and had become bound to the land, _ascripti glebae_, in such a way that if the land were sub-let or sold they would pass over to the new owner like the trees or the grass. In return for their land, though they might not serve their master with spear or bow, they would work in his fields, build his bridges and castles, mend his roads, and guard his cattle. From top to bottom of this pyramid of feudal society ran the binding mortar of ‘tenure’ and ‘service’; but these were not the only links which kept feudal society together. When a tenant did ‘homage’ for his land, and ‘with head uncovered, with belt ungirt, his sword removed’, placed his hands between those of his lord, and took an oath, after the manner of the thegns of Wessex to their king, ‘to love what he loved and shun what he shunned both on sea and on land’, there entered into this relationship the finer bond of loyalty due from a vassal to his overlord. It was the descendant of the old Teutonic idea of the _comitatus_ described by Tacitus,[7] the chief destined to lead and guide, his bodyguard pledged to follow him to death if necessary.