If to escape from this conclusion the suggestion be made that these _servitia debita_ were compositions effected by English _antecessores_, it need only be answered that the fiefs acquired were wholly new creations, constructed from the scattered fragments of Anglo-Saxon estates. And though in the case of the church fiefs this objection might not apply, yet we have evidence, as I shall show, to prove that their _servitia_ also were determined by the conqueror's will, as indeed might be inferred from their close correspondence with those of the lay barons. But if the lands of the conquered realm were so granted to be held by a _servitium debitum_ of knights, the key of the position is won, and the defenders of the existing view must retire along the whole line; for, as Mr Freeman himself observed, 'Let it be once established that land is held as a fief from the crown on condition of yielding certain services to the crown, and the whole of the feudal incidents follow naturally.'[105] I am anxious to make absolutely clear the point that between the accepted view and the view which I advance, no compromise is possible. The two are radically opposed. As against the theory that the military obligation of the Anglo-Norman tenant-in-chief was determined by the assessment of his holding, whether in hidage or in value, I maintain that the extent of that obligation was not determined by his holding, but was fixed in relation to, and expressed in terms of, the _constabularia_ of ten knights, the unit of the feudal host. And I, consequently, hold that his military service was in no way derived or developed from that of the Anglo-Saxons, but was arbitrarily fixed by the king, from whom he received his fief, irrespectively both of its size and of all pre-existent arrangements. Such propositions, of course, utterly and directly traverse the view which these passages best summarize: The belief that William I divided the English landed property into military fees is erroneous.... According to the extent and the nature of the productive property it could be computed how many shields were to be furnished by each estate, according to the gradually fixed proportion of a £20 ground-rent.[106] There is no ground for thinking that William directly or systematically introduced any new kind of tenure into the holding of English lands. There is nothing to suggest any such belief, either in the chronicles of his reign, in the Survey, which is his greatest monument, in the genuine or even in the spurious remains of his legislation.... As I have had to point out over and over again, the grantee of William, whether the old owner or a new one, held his land as it had been held in the days of King Edward.[107]