Note 103 — PART I TERRITORIAL STUDIES (continued 3)

The servitium debitum, therefore, was a standing institution in Normandy, and 'to the mass of his (William's) followers', as Mr Freeman frankly admits,103 a 'feudal tenure, a military tenure, must have seemed the natural and universal way of holding land'. When we find them and their descendants holding their fiefs in England, as they had been held in Normandy, by the service of a round number of knights, what is the simple and obvious inference but that, just as Henry II granted out the provinces of Ireland to be held as fiefs by the familiar service of a round number of knights,104 so Duke William granted out the fiefs he formed in England?