This is a statement which may surprise you, for you will no doubt know that the feudal system did exist in England at a rather later date and that the principal part of England's story for many a year was made up of fights between the feudal barons themselves and of combinations of the barons against the king. But this feudalism was brought into England by the Norman kings, after William I.'s conquest in 1066, and again there was a fresh importation of feudal practices under those French kings of the House of Anjou--thence called Angevins--who reigned both over England and over a large slice of France. But it did not spring up in England like a growth from the soil, as it did in Charlemagne's empire. It had not the same roots in England. The Anglo-Saxon had not quite the same customs of the _comitatus_, {92} the body-guard devoted to the king or chief, as the Franks had, nor was England as familiar as France with the Roman customs of the _patrocinium_--the relation of patron and client--and the _precarium_--the tenure of land granted in answer to a prayer--out of which the relations between the feudal lord and his vassal so easily grew. Moreover, you will remember that the Anglo-Saxon possession of our England did not include the whole of the island. There were still Britons along the western fringe and there were Picts north of the Forth. And even the land that the Anglo-Saxon did hold was not one kingdom, but divided into three main divisions, to say nothing of some lesser divisions. There were the kingdoms of Northumbria, Mercia, and Wessex, to name them in their order from north to south. At one time we hear of the "Heptarchy," or seven kingdoms, but the number really might be stated equally well as more or less than seven, according as this or the other collection of tribes were reckoned as independent. Therefore the kingdoms were small, so that the kings, if they had any strong rule at all, could make their ruling strength felt all over their kingdoms. We have seen that one of the reasons why the feudal system came into being on the Continent was that the king was not able, in disturbed times, to make good his authority far from his own headquarters. That failure to make good was less likely to occur to the ruler of the small kingdoms into which England was divided. [Sidenote: The English lose their freedom]