Note 60 — PART I TERRITORIAL STUDIES (continued 3)

The assumption that the Conqueror cannot have introduced any new principle in the tenure of land lies at the root of the matter. Assuming this, one must of course seek elsewhere for the introduction of knight service. Have not the difficulties of the accepted view arisen from its exponents approaching the problem from the wrong point of view? The tendency to exalt the English and depreciate the Norman element in our constitutional development has led them I think, and especially Mr Freeman, to seek in Anglo-Saxon institutions an explanation of feudal phenomena. This tendency is manifest in their conclusions on the great council:60 it colours no less strongly their views on knight service. In neither case can they bring themselves to adopt the feudal standpoint or to enter into the feudal spirit. It is to this that I attribute their disposition to bring the crown face to face with the under-tenant—or 'landowner' as they would prefer to term him—and so to ignore, or at least to minimize the importance of the tenant-in-chief, the 'middleman' of the feudal system. Making every allowance for the policy of the Conqueror in insisting on the direct allegiance of the under-tenant to the crown, and thereby checking the disintegrating influence of a perfect feudal system, the fact remains what we may term the 'military service' bargain was a bargain between the crown and the tenant-in-chief, not between the crown and his under-tenants. It follows from this that so long as the 'baron' (or 'tenant-in-chief') discharged his servitium debitum to the crown, the king had no right to look beyond the 'baron', who was himself and alone responsible for the discharge of this service. It is, indeed, in this responsibility that lies the key to the situation. If the under-tenant of a knight's fee failed to discharge his service, it was not to him, but to his lord, that the crown betook itself. 'I know nothing of your tenant,' was in effect the king's position; 'you owe me, for the tenure of your fief, the service of so many knights, and that service must be performed, whether your under-tenants repudiate their obligations to yourself or not'. In other words the 'baron' discharged his service to the king, whereas the baron's under-tenants discharged theirs to their lord.61 So the Dialogus speaks of the under-tenant's 'numerum militum quos domino debuerat'.