Feudalism’s Saxon roots
Of the military character and predatory spirit of the Saxons an
accurate notion may be formed from the Danish adventurers of the ninth
and tenth centuries. Both were scions from the same Gothic stock; but
the latter retained for a longer period the native properties of the
original plant. Hengist and Cerdic, and their fellow-chieftains, were
the sea-kings of their age, animated with the same spirit, and pursuing
the same object as the barbarians, whose ferocity yielded to the
perseverance of Alfred, but subdued the pusillanimity of Ethelred.
The
reader has only to transfer to the Saxons the Danish system of warfare,
its multiplied aggressions, its unquenchable thirst of plunder, and its
unprovoked and wanton cruelties, and he will form a correct picture of
the state of Britain, from the first defection of Hengist to the final
establishment of the octarchy. The adventurers did not think of
colonizing the countries which they conquered, till they had become
weary of devastation; and then they introduced the institutions to which
they had been habituated in their original settlements, and
successively modified them as circumstances suggested.
Hengist and his brother, Horsa, landing in England.
Of these the most important, and that which formed the groundwork of
the rest, may be discovered among the Germans in the age of Tacitus.
From him we learn that every chieftain was surrounded by a number of
retainers, who did him honor in time of peace, and accompanied him to
the field in time of war. To fight by his side they deemed an
indispensable duty; to survive his fall, an indelible disgrace. It was
this artificial connection, this principle which reciprocally bound the
lord to his vassal, and the vassal to his lord, that held together the
northern hordes, when they issued forth in quest of adventures. They
retained it in their new homes; and its consequences were gradually
developed, as each tribe made successive advances in power and
civilization. Hence, in process of time, and by gradual improvements,
grew up the feudal system, with its long train of obligations, of
homage, suit, service, purveyance, reliefs, wardships, and scutage. That
it was introduced into England by the Norman conqueror, is the opinion
of respectable writers; and the assertion may be true….. But all the
primary germs of the feudal services may be descried among the Saxons,
even in the earlier periods of their government; and many of them
flourished in full luxuriance long before the extinction of the
dynasty….
Cynewulf of Wessex Slain at Merton
That the artificial relation between the lord and his man, or vassal,
was accurately understood, and that its duties were faithfully
performed by the Anglo-Saxons, is sufficiently evident from numerous
instances in their history. We have seen that when Cynewulf was
surprised in the dead of the night at Merton, his
men refused
to abandon, or even to survive their lord; and when on the next morning
the eighty-four followers of Cyneheard were surrounded by a superior
force, they also spurned the offer of life and liberty, and chose rather
to yield up their breath in a hopeless contest, than to violate the
fealty which they had sworn to a murderer and an outlaw. An attachment
of this romantic and generous kind cannot but excite our sympathy. It
grew out of the doctrine, that of all the ties which nature has formed
or society invented, the most sacred was that which bound the lord and
the vassal; whence it was inferred that the breach of so solemn an
engagement was a crime of the most disgraceful and unpardonable
atrocity. By Alfred it was declared inexpiable; the laws pronounced
against the offender the sentence of forfeiture and death.
It was not, however, an institution which provided solely for the
advantage of one party. The obligations were reciprocal. The vassal
shared with his fellows in the favors of his lord, and lived in security
under his protection. It was a contract, cemented by oath, for the
benefit of each. “By the lord,” said the inferior, placing his hands
between those of his chief, “I promise to be faithful and true; to love
all that thou lovest, and shun all that thou shunnest, conformably to
the laws of God and man; and never in will or weald (power), in word or
work, to do that which thou loathes, provided thou hold me as I mean to
serve, and fulfil the conditions to which we agreed when I subjected
myself to thee, and chose thy will” (Leg. 401, 50, 63).
This last proviso furnished the usual pretext for the dissolution of these engagements.
John Lingard,
The History of England: From the First Invasion by the Romans to the Accession of William and Mary in 1688 (Edinburgh: John Grant, 1902), vol. I, 376-9.
