In the course of the tenth century, the Danes in England are described
as ‘bowing down’ to the king of Wessex and accepting him as their
lord.^11 Yet, as the kingdom of England expanded in this way, the
kingdom of the West Franks was regressing from the level of public
administration it had reached under the Carolingians, to rule by
regional magnates. This could not be a mere reassertion of old patterns,
however, because the public jurisdiction of the count and his official
subordinates as Charlemagne defined it was now added to the territorial
power of the landlords. Under Charlemagne, appointments to offices
(honores) at all levels were accompanied by grants of land (beneficia) to
support the office-holders and ensure their fidelity. If a count failed to
do justice, or to turn out for a military expedition, his honorand his
benefice were forfeited together, propriumas well as ministerium.^12 By
the time Charles the Bald made provision for the government of his
kingdom before setting out on a last pilgrimage to Rome in 877, it looks
as though the situation was being reversed: the landed property
bestowed on the counts and their subordinates was becoming the
hereditary property of lineages, so that provision had to be made for the
succession to offices which became vacant when the heirs were accom-
panying the king.^13
Together, benefice and ‘honour’ (office) made up the units of landed
power forming the basic element of what was much later characterized
as ‘feudal society’.^14 The old Germanic word fehu, feoh, meaning
‘cattle’ (or even a man’s whole fortune, in seventh-century Lombardic
and Anglo-Saxon laws),^15 takes on a new lease of life from about 950
onwards as fevumor feudum, referring it seems, at least in some of the
earliest instances from Languedoc, to the territorial power of public
origin which counts and viscounts had converted to their own uses—
uses which included, of course, the giving of it to retainers in return for
service, or to churches for the good of their souls.^16 In 961 the count of
The growth of feudal society 45(^11) The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, ed. B. Thorpe (Rolls Series, London, 1861), 190–1 (a. 914:
‘gesohte him to hlaforde’), 195 (a. 918), 196 (a. 920), 212 (a. 946: ‘p hic woldan eal p he
wolde’), 217 (a. 959: ‘him to bugan’).
(^12) K.-J. Hollyman, Le Développement du vocabulaire féodal en France pendant le haut
moyen âge(Geneva and Paris, 1957), 34; Capitularia, i. 48 (9), 284, ii. 95–6.
(^13) 13. Capitularia, ii. 358 (9,10).
(^14) The early modern ‘discovery’ of feudalism is described by J. G. A. Pocock, The Ancient
Constitution and the Feudal Law(Cambridge UP, 1957); cf. D. R. Kelley, ‘De Origine
Feudorum: The Beginnings of an Historical Problem’, Speculum, 39 (1964), 224; P. Ourliac,
‘La Féodalité et son histoire’, Revue historique de droit français et étranger, 73 (1995); Susan
Reynolds forcefully demolishes the feudalism imagined by some modern historians in Fiefs and
Vassals(Oxford UP, 1994).
(^15) Hollyman, Développement du vocabulaire féodal, 41, 43–4; Liebermann, Die Gesetze
der Angelsachsen, i. 10 (6, 7).
(^16) Niermeyer, lexicon minus, s.v. feodum, miles, 6, 7; C. Devic and J. Vaissete, Histoire
générale de Languedoc(Toulouse, 1872–1904), ii. col. 421 (a.d. 954), v. nos. 48 (cols. 145–6;