The Beginnings of the Feudal Age151The conversion to feudal and manorial tenures
seems more dramatic when seen in relation to its effect
on social institutions and attitudes—the ties that
bound society together. After the great raids, the gap
between the vast majority of the population and the
aristocracy that ruled them widened perceptibly. Social
mobility was not only difficult to achieve but also gen-
erally condemned. Chivalric and ecclesiastical writers
maintained that people should not attempt to rise
above their class. Permanence and stability were val-
ued by a society that had just emerged from two cen-
turies of near-anarchy, but the longevity of feudal
institutions was based only in part on the conservatism
of those who had suffered much.
The apparent success of heavy cavalry in dealing
with the crises of the ninth and tenth centuries had cre-
ated a powerful myth of class superiority. The medieval
knight believed in it and made it the basis of an entire
way of life. His education, leisure activities, and ulti-
mately the moral and aesthetic values of his class were
grounded in the perception of himself as the armed and
mounted protector of society—a perception that also
gave him his chief claim to social privilege. By the end
of the tenth century the conditions that created the
knights had largely disappeared, but the knights were
now in possession of the bulk of society’s resources and
could be neither displaced nor effectively controlled.
Class divisions would henceforth widen and acquire a
more elaborate ideological basis than they had formerly
possessed. A system of military tactics that was not suit-
able for all occasions would be preserved until long af-
ter it had outlived its usefulness. Above all, the creation
of a dominant social class whose power was based upon
widely scattered estates would perpetuate the decen-
tralization of political authority for centuries to come.
An immediate consequence of this decentralization
was feudal warfare, disruptive and endemic, though not
as devastating as the great raids. The warrior’s sense of
vocation, the development of a code of conduct based
upon the ideals of honor and courage, and the emphasis
on individual and corporate rights characteristic of feu-
dal law all encouraged the lords to fight one another in
defense of what they considered their honor and their
right. The church sought to restrain these tendencies
by encouraging the “Peace of God” movement. Coun-
cils or bishops issued decrees against wanton violence
and tried to limit the fighting to certain days of the
week. Such measures could achieve little. The political
history of the age became in large measure an attempt
to control the centrifugal tendencies of feudalism in the
interests of public order.
France and Norman England
In northwestern Europe a protracted struggle between
the kings of France and England was the legacy of Nor-
man expansion. England fell to the Normans when Ed-
ward the Confessor died without heirs. There were
three claimants to the throne: Edward’s first cousin,
William, duke of Normandy (c. 1028–87); Harald
Hardrada, king of Norway; and the Saxon Harold God-
winsson. When the English Witan, or council, chose
Harold Godwinsson, the new king found himself under
attack on two fronts. He defeated the Norwegians at
Stamford Bridge on September 23, 1066, and rushed
south to meet William, who had landed near Hastings
on the same day. Exhausted by the battle and by a
march of almost three hundred miles, the Saxon army
was crushed on October 14.
William was no friend of feudal decentralization.
The fiefs he established in England were composed of
manors in different parts of the country to prevent a
concentration of power. He retained the Saxon office
of sheriff or shire reeve, who collected taxes, adminis-
tered the royal domains, and presided over the shire
courts. In 1086 his officials produced a comprehensive
survey of all English properties known as the Domes-
day Book (see document 8.5). Norman England was
perhaps the most tightly administered monarchy of the
central Middle Ages, but William’s conquest gave birth
to a political anomaly: The king of England was still
duke of Normandy and vassal to the king of France for
one of the richest provinces on the Continent.
The situation became critical in the reign of Henry
II from 1154 to 1189. The development of the French
monarchy had been slow and painful. In 987 the great
French feudatories had elected Hugh Capet king, pri-
marily because his small holdings in the region of Paris
made it unlikely that he would ever pose a threat to
their interests. The area was a hotbed of feudal anarchy,
and the Capetian kings took more than a century to es-
tablish control. When Louis VI “the Fat” died in 1137,
he left a small but powerful state in the Ile de France to
his son Louis VII. Guided by his chief adviser, Suger,
abbot of St. Denis, Louis VII tried to double his hold-
ings by marrying Eleanor of Aquitaine (c. 1122–1204),
the heir to vast estates in southwestern France (see illus-
tration 8.5). The marriage was a disaster. Louis was pi-
ous and ascetic; Eleanor was attractive, witty, and a
patron of troubadours. She apparently took the
adulterous conventions of chivalric love too seriously,
and the marriage was annulled in 1152 amid charges of
infidelity with one of her cousins. The couple had two