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Bastard Feudalism Revised: ReplyAuthor(s): P. R. CossReviewed work(s):Source: Past & Present, No. 131 (May, 1991), pp. 190-203Published by: Oxford University Press on behalf of The Past and Present SocietyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/650874 .Accessed: 23/01/2012 19:43

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REPLY

Debates often take an unexpected turn. Rather than the vigorous defence of the traditional, McFarlanesque, framework of refer- ence against which I had braced myself, I find that two scholars, with considerable knowledge of twelfth- and thirteenth-century conditions respectively, have produced stimulating critiques. One of these offers significantly to modify my interpretation, while the other threatens to so extend its range as to effectively dissolve the historical specificity of bastard feudalism altogether.

David Carpenter, an old sparring partner, is in apparent agree- ment over the content and chronology of bastard feudalism, but disagrees essentially over the way it came about. He concludes that the "lords rendered the Angevin revolution in government harmless by spinning a bastard feudal web over the system", but argues that it was "the increasing employment of gentry in local administration" which made it "all the easier for them to do so". As these lesser men were equally the gainers, so they were equally responsible: "These developments were to the mutual benefit of the strong, both lords and gentlemen. It was the minores who suffered''.1 David Crouch, however, is rather less in accord. He agrees that "the social order described by the term 'bastard feudalism' " can be "dated back to the early thirteenth century", but argues further that the social facts it encompasses were already in place during the second half of the twelfth century. He believes my chronology to be at fault, and offers an alternative perspective which seems to dissolve feudalism and bastard feudalism into a continuum of aristocratic power, so that "what changes there were between 1100 and 1300 were matters of degree and cosmetic".2

I find myself in agreement with a great deal of what both scholars say, and since much of what they offer is supportive of the central thesis (in Crouch's case much more than he thinks), it is not a question of exchanging blow for blow. Conceptually, however, and in terms of one's sense of the broad evolution of feudal society, it is a different matter. What I intend to do, therefore, is to work through the implications of what they say for the bastard feudalism thesis, so that it can be modified or

1 Above, p. 189. 2 Above, pp. 165, 168.

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extended, as appropriate. In doing so, I will indicate where I feel that their arguments and evidence do not support the reinter- pretations they offer. Let me say bluntly, however, that much of my disagreement with Crouch stems from his unwillingness to break away from the narrow fief-centred definition of feudalism and, indeed, from McFarlane's consequent retinue-centred model of bastard feudalism, the latter problem being present in Carpen- ter's arguments too.

Let me begin with Carpenter's analysis. He challenges my interpretation from three angles. The first of these is, I think, much the most significant. Although he agrees that the Angevin and subsequent legal reforms were potentially damaging to the magnates, and indeed offers further support for this view, he argues against the idea "that the employment of gentry as sheriffs, judges and so forth to run the new system of local government falls into the same category". On the contrary, he suggests, it was precisely this which gave the magnates the opportunity to pervert the whole system and to "anaesthetize" its effects. He argues further that the demise of the curial sheriff after 1236 marked a decisive change in the pattern of local government, and that the employment of knights judicially offered the magnates a golden opportunity. In other words, "the process Coss takes as signalling potential doom to the magnates was rather the means of their salvation".3

I do not believe I put quite the emphasis upon local office- holding that Carpenter suggests, except insofar as it is sympto- matic of a direct relationship between local society and the crown. None the less, his caveat is an important one, and one which raises a significant paradox. There is no denying that what he describes is precisely what did happen, as magnates used their superiority within local society and their own relationship with lesser men to advantage, "inserting", as he puts it, their "bastard feudal fingers into the system".4 But the important point is that it was by no means an accidental development that they should have done so; on the contrary, from their point of view it was imperative, as indeed Carpenter himself implies when he talks of it as the "means of their salvation". None of this should occasion any great surprise. The central point, as I argued before, is that the threat to magnate power was latent within the direct relation-

3 Above, pp. 180, 181. 4 Above, p. 181.

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ship between the free subject and the crown.S The threat was not to be realized, at least not for several centuries, and it was probably not at this juncture realizable. This was due both to the way existing society was structured and to contemporary habits of mind. Service and subordination (often, in effect, very much the same thing) characterized society at virtually all levels. There were, however, factors which were working in a different direc- tion. Military and other free tenants were increasingly released from magnate control; there was a growing sense of territorial elitism which would ultimately lead to a graded English gentry; and there were the implications of the upsurge of public justice. But none of this proved strong enough to counteract the capacity of the feudal magnate to sustain social superiority and to bend the system to his will. The result was bastard feudalism, where public justice subsisted and was uneasily mastered, and where it remained essential that lesser seigneurs, office-holders and others should be bound as closely as possible to their social superiors if the latter's feudal power was to survive.

As Carpenter acknowledges, there was no necessary identity of interest between magnates on the one hand and the knights and lesser men on the other, just as there was no simple point of fracture or divergence. It was a complex society with very little clear articulation. There was, however, a great deal of tension and strain within thirteenth-century society, some of it resulting from the exercise of magnate power and the subversion of public authority. Carpenter has shown that the king could, and did, attempt to play the "magnate oppression" card, but that he did so with limited success. This was not only because of those social factors which worked to bolster magnate power, but because of the nature of, and exercise of power by, the crown itself. Despite the much applauded advantages of royal justice, royal agents (especially when resident in the localities) could be extremely oppressive. Hence the tendency for men to combine to free the localities from excessive interference from outside.

In short Carpenter offers here an important perspective on the situation, and one with which I concur. The difference between us is, to my mind, one of emphasis, not one of fundamental disagreement, and Carpenter's particular stress upon the means

5 P. R. Coss, "Bastard Feudalism Revised", Past and Present, no. 125 (Nov. 1989), p.41.

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by which the magnates exercised their social power has further illuminated the situation.

His second line of attack is against what he sees as my "implica- tion" that "the way that lords looked for servants outside the ring of their knightly tenants, and rewarded them not with land, but with money fees and other gifts" was "just a magnate reaction to the Angevin legal and administrative reforms".6 This is an implication which I frankly disown. But, again, it is one which raises important issues. Of course I fully appreciate the reasons for the development of service from outside the traditional hon- our, that "strait-jacket" as he puts it,7 and I am quite aware, as I made clear initially, that twelfth-century society did not revolve solely around the honour. The specific needs of the era of high farming and the growing sophistication of society during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries take us a long way towards an explanation of contracts for service and related phenomena, as the fine study of the subject by Scott L. Waugh makes abundantly clear.8 On the other hand the attenuation of the stock of land available for reward, and the continuing need to offer inducements for service, explain the growth of the money fief and other means of reward. This too led, indubitably, to a growth in contracts and legal sanctions. All of this is clear enough. It does not follow, however, that the employment of knights and other servants from outside a magnate's honour, nor the granting of fief-rentes, nor indeed the use of written instruments to record a service relation- ship, should automatically involve the invasion and subversion of law courts and offices of administration. It is this latter which in my view lies at the heart of bastard feudalism.

This, I think, is where a fundamental difference between us lies. For me this penetration of institutions is not a secondary, but a primary matter. I rejected, and I still reject, the McFarlane view which sees bastard feudalism as flowing simply from the replacement of the tenurial bond with the cash nexus. It is Car- penter's willingness to retain this perspective which causes him to impute to me the implication that a broader search for service on the part of the magnates and the money fief both arose out of a reaction to the Angevin legal reforms.

6 Above, p. 185. 7 Ibid. 8 S. L. Waugh, "Tenure to Contract: Lordship and Clientage in Thirteenth-Century

England", Eng. Hist. Rev., ci (1986), pp. 811-39.

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In fact, the money fief, the annuity, the contract, the fee and the indenture are all enabling mechanisms when it comes to explaining how the magnates were able successfully to penetrate the administration and the courts, and in this respect stand along- side the filling of local offices by local men to which Carpenter has drawn attention. They constituted, as he says, the means of the magnates' "salvation". It does not have to follow that, because they were used for, and moulded to, such purposes, the explana- tion for their origin must lie there. On the contrary, men use and develop whatever instruments lie to hand as they strive to main- tain and enhance their influence and their power. Waugh had it exactly right when he wrote (of the contract): "What began as a device to solve specific problems . . . evolved into a versatile tool of social organization which could be used in many different circumstances . . . The development of contractual retaining in the thirteenth century thus ensured the pattern of the survival of the lord/client relations that had been worked out over the previ- ous centuries and likewise ensured the continued dominance of the landed elite within those relations and within the social hier- archy and the economy as a whole".9

Carpenter's over-concentration on the question of service and its rewards leads him to argue that the "first and greatest bastard feudal lord" was in fact the king, for he both employed whom he liked in his service, and had long done so, and rewarded them with fees and wages as well as with land.10 This is a deliberate reductio ad absurdum, for the crown was the guardian of the very public authority which bastard feudalism subverted. Yet, in an- other sense, it underlines an important feature of the situation. The crown may have been the guardian and fountain of public authority, but the king himself had much in common with any other magnate and, as has so often been said, was enmeshed in the feudal order. And so, as the bastard feudal order gained sway, he became increasingly enmeshed there too.

Carpenter's third, and final, point of disagreement is with the idea that "it was the action of the lords which created bastard feudalism". On the contrary, he feels, "ambitious and successful magnates and gentry had a mutual interest in developing bastard feudalism; a mutual interest, that is, both in forging a free market

9 Ibid., p. 839 10 Above, p. 186.

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in service, and in extending local control of local government''.1l Here again I think we are slightly at cross-purposes. I did not mean to imply that lesser lords and other clients did not have a part to play in the formation of bastard feudalism. What I was attacking at this point was the idea that the bastard feudal system somehow arose automatically and that it therefore equally bene- fited, and was sanctioned by, all. What I wanted to stress was that it arose out of the existing power structure, and here, inevi- tably, the accent falls on the greater lords. Of course we have to take account of the demands placed by clients upon the lords, demands that were implicit within the social order. The satisfac- tion of such demands, for protection as well as direct sustenance, lay at the core of some of the problems inherent in the bastard feudal order. One might also add that lesser men participated in this society not only as clients, but also as patrons. It is noticeable, for example, that some of the earliest surviving indentures of retainer and similar expressions of social binding derive from lesser lords.12 They too needed to reward men and to hold them to their service.13 Having said this, it still remains the case that the interests of lesser lords lay in more than one direction, and that the evolution of local communities and the development of an increasingly direct relationship with the crown raised other possibilities. It was in the interests of the magnates if not to "put the lid on" such possibilities) then at least to control them.

I think we should be careful, too, that we do not see these possibilities as arising suddenly at one point in time. For this reason perhaps we ought not to place too much emphasis even upon the Angevin legal reforms, as though they were Deus ex machina. It may well be the case, as I think Crouch is indicating,14 that these legal reforms and their successors should be seen as part of the process of the emancipation of the feudal tenant rather

1t Above, pp. 188, 189. 12 See the recent, thorough treatment by J. M. W. Bean, From Lord to Patron:

Lordship in Late Medieval England (Manchester, 1989), esp. pp. 12, 40-8, 127-8, 133. 13 It is important, however, not to over-stress the indenture. It is in reality an

expression, and in its mature form a relatively late expression, of bastard feudal tendencies. Bean, in searching for the institutional origins, as it were, of bastard feudalism, is surely right to put equal stress upon annuities and livery, although I find his focus upon the household a relatively narrow one (ibid., ch. 4). For a highly pertinent recent discussion of the significance of livery in the fourteenth century, see Nigel Saul, "The Commons and the Abolition of Badges", in Parliamentary Hist., ix (1990), pp. 302-15.

14 Above, p. 172.

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than itS fons et origo. Equally the beginnings of bastard feudal tendencies should not be seen as originating against a fully articu- lated relationship between crown and localities during the early to mid-thirteenth century. As I have argued elsewhere, there has been a tendency to invest too much in the county courts of this period as a vehicle for the expression of local feeling. Although there are many instances of their fighting for local rights and against oppression from without, a cause in which magnates themselves and indeed their stewards often played a prominent part, there is evidence enough to show that at this period local society operated, for the most part, at some remove from the county court.15 None the less it is equally clear that the years between the Angevin reforms and the legislation of 1258-9 did see considerable development in the growth of a direct relation- ship between the central government and society in the localities, and that this is manifested in the period of baronial reform. In terms of the capacity to articulate local feeling the mid-thirteenth- century era of reform was, in fact, critical, and as time passed the growth of parliament and through it the government's rela- tionship with the "constituencies" gave increasing potential for the forging of a new partnership, as a series of studies by J. R. Maddicott has made abundantly clear.16 Looked at from the point of view of the continuance of magnate power, the necessity of binding lesser lords and other clients closer and closer to them became ever more critical. Hence the full flowering of the bastard feudal order.

In short, although I do not feel that Carpenter's arguments should lead to a substantial modification of my thesis on the origins of bastard feudalism, the perspectives he opens up on the role of the lesser lords none the less shed considerable light on

15 p. R. Coss, "Knighthood and the Early Thirteenth-Century County Court", in P. R. Coss and S. 1). Lloyd (eds.), Thirteenth-Century England, ii (Woodbridge, 1988), pp. 45-57.

16 J. R. Maddicott, "The County Community and the Making of Public Opinion in Fourteenth-Century England", Trans. Roy. Hist. Soc., 5th ser., xxviii (1978), pp. 27-43; J. R. Maddicott, "Parliament and the Constituencies, 1272-1377", in R. G. Davies and J. H Denton (eds.), The English Parliament in the Middle Ages (Manchester, 1981), pp. 61-87; J. R. Maddicott, "Edward I and the Lessons of Baronial Reform: Local Government, 1258-80", in P. R. Coss and S. D. Lloyd (eds.), Thirteenth-Century England, i (Woodbridge, 1986), pp. 1-30; J. R. Maddicott, "The Crusade Taxation of 1268-70 and the Development of Parliament", in Coss and Lloyd (eds.), Thirteenth-Century England, ii, pp. 93-116.

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its genesis, just as his work on thirteenth-century politics formed a major ingredient in my original formulation.

Similarly the observations on twelfth-century society offered by Crouch, a foretaste of the results of his wide-ranging aristo- cracy project, seem to me to be much more supportive of the bastard feudalism thesis than he himself realizes. He raises some very large issues of interpretation. In so doing, however, he misinterprets me on three crucial points. The first is over the relationship, as I see it, between feudal society in general and bastard feudalism in particular. It is not true that I adopt "McFar- lane's line that 'feudal' society was 'essentially different while superficially similar' to that which succeeded it''.17 In fact I quoted with approval G. L. Harriss's famous reversal here, that bastard feudalism should be seen as "an adaptation of the forms of feudalism rather than as the manifestation of a radical change in social organization". 18 I conclude, moreover, that bastard feud- alism was one particular type of feudal order: "It occurs when a highly feudalized society is subjected to a growth in publicly exercised authority, and its chief manifestation is the control of that authority by means of private and privatized agents''.19 It is entirely consistent with this interpretation that there should be strong elements of continuity with the preceding era, and it occasions no great surprise that Crouch should have found them. The "changes one finds between 1100 and 1300" might well be regarded as "matters of degree". However, they were certainly more than "cosmetic".

Secondly, just as I did not talk of "two radically different societies", neither did I seek a "crisis at the point of fracture" between them. Similarly I spoke neither of "a fading aristocracy" nor of "a crisis in the aristocracy, defined by the catastrophic decay of honours".20 I was, in fact, at pains to stress that bastard feudalism did not occur "as a series of separate steps growth in royal government, potential partnership with the gentry, aris- tocratic reaction. It was not as mechanistic as this . . . It has to be emphasized that the threat to the great lord's social power was essentially latent within the developments I have outlined. It was

17 Above, p. 166 18 Coss, "Bastard Feudalism Revised", p. 30; England in the Fifteenth Century:

Collected Essays of K. B. McFarlane, introd. G. L. Harriss (London, 1981), p. ix. 19 Coss, "Bastard Feudalism Revised", p. 63. 20 Above, pp. 167, 168, 172.

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not in practice realized, precisely because of the inherent power of the lords. The elements of this alternative, public and landed polity and the institutions of bastard feudalism developed gradu- ally across time. They grew, in fact, together; they were symbi- otic''.2l I was arguing, therefore, neither for a sharp shift nor for radical discontinuity.

Thirdly, Crouch misunderstands the emphasis I placed on the honour and its decline. It is certainly the case that I see the decay of the honour as a symptom of a decline in the traditional means of exercising aristocratic power. I do, however, warn against the view that "To argue solely in terms of the growth of central government and the aristocracy's reaction to this would be to see only surface phenomena".22 More importantly Crouch exagger- ates the extent to which I saw twelfth-century society as revolving around the honour. It was never part of my argument that the honour was an enclosed society. To contrast the twelfth-century "honour" with the fourteenth-century "affinity" as standing for "two radically different societies" is to put the matter much too starkly, and thereby to distort my formulation.23 Our differences here, however, stem from our radically different approaches to the issue of feudalism.

First of all, I find it difficult to accept the proposition that because there is disagreement over the definition of feudalism we should automatically abandon it. If we were to jettison every concept which failed to achieve unanimity we would be left with a very primitive vocabulary. The fact that Crouch goes on to use "feudal" to describe a narrow set of military arrangements centred on the fief, and proceeds to treat all other forms of military recruitment and subordination as non-feudal, tends to confirm me in the view that it is essentially those who are tied to this usage who now wish to abandon feudalism, as their model fails against the results of recent historical research. By contrast, where feudal is used to describe a total social formation it seems to me that disagreements are more often a matter of emphasis, with some stressing the mode of production, others the parcelliz- ation of authority, yet others the superiority of a warrior class and so on. With these observations in mind, and with a view to avoiding a long historiographical survey on the subject, let me

21 Coss, "Bastard Feudalism Revised", p. 52. Emphasis added. 22Ibid., p.41. 23 Above, p. 167.

BASTARD FEUDALISM REVISED 199

offer a working definition of feudalism in the broader sense of the term.

Feudal society, in my view, is characterized by direct appropri- ation of surplus production and by a tendency to decentralization of authority and justice (more or less realized). It is dominated by a seigneurial class, or classes, whose power is territorial, is based ultimately upon physical force, and involves the direct subordination of man to man.24 This subordination most often involves the idea of service, and this characterizes feudal mores and habits of mind. Within this social order the greater feudatory needs to dominate the lesser, and he must continue to do so if he is to remain on a superior plane. One further feature of feudal society needs emphasis. As Marc Bloch himself stressed, in the midst of all this there survived older forms of association, includ- ing the state. One might well argue that feudalism is essentially a matter of distinctive social relationships which crystallize into concrete, institutional forms. We should avoid, therefore, over- concentration upon the forms, to the detriment of the underlying tendencies of which they are manifestations.25 As far as twelfth- century England is concerned, both the fief and the honour are significant social forms; but they do not in themselves constitute feudalism. Neither is a sine qua non.

It will be apparent, then, that I regard England during the twelfth century as highly feudalized, but that this does not mean that I accept the view of that society which Crouch imputes to me. There is more to feudal society than the honour and the fief. In fact, my sense of aristocratic society in the twelfth century is, I suspect, very little different from his own, and I accept the general contours that he has drawn, with a multiplicity of military arrangements and a variety of means of social domination. Two points, however, do need stressing, even though there is a broad measure of agreement between us, if we are to fully understand the origins and nature of bastard feudalism.

The first is that the fief must be seen in its full context, and not solely from the vantage point of recruitment to the royal host. The servitium debitum was only one imperative acting upon lords.

24 My sense of feudalism is, therefore, close to that of Georges Duby: see, for example, G. Duby, The Early Growth of the European Economy, trans. Howard B. Clarke (London, 1974), pp. 162-77; G. Duby, The Three Orders: Feudal Society Imagined, trans. Arthur Goldhammer (Chicago and London, 1980), pp. 150-5.

25 None the less the rise and fall of particular institutional forms can hardly be without historical significance.

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It has long been understood that pressure came also from below, from relatives, servants and associates seeking land. The fief was, by and large, the most attractive form of reward.26 The need to deliver, and to continue to deliver, was potentially disconcerting to the lords as the pool of available land dried up. Naturally they took to rewarding in whatever ways were possible. None the less whenever and wherever land became available the pressure to subinfeudate remained strong, as the activities of William Marshal and others in Ireland, for example, make perfectly clear.27 It is hardly surprising either that those with access to the crown and royal patronage should seek to use it to reward subordinates. As the role of the central government expanded this was to become an increasingly significant factor. Crouch points here to another area in which the growth of the central administration tended to cause difficulties for lords in exercising their wider social roles. The crown was simply better placed to offer patronage to the men of the shires, in terms of lucrative office as well as matters like marriage and wardship, than were the magnates. Little won- der that lords came increasingly to regard the control of its flow as a vitally important matter.

The second point which needs stressing is that the heart of magnate power, at least qua magnate rather than as simple seigneur, lay in dominating local society. Here the honour was a vital institution, but it never constituted the sole means of magnate control. For one thing honorial justice was complemented by the exercise of delegated royal jurisdiction, or franchise; most often in one and the same court.28 Crouch is

26 See, for example, Sally Harvey, "The Knight and the Knight's Fee in England", Past and Present, no. 49 (Nov. 1970), repr. in R. H. Hilton (ed.), Peasants, Knights and Heretics (Cambridge, 1976), pp. 136-40. For a stronger view, which tends to displace the servitium debitum from its primary role, see R. Mortimer, "The Beginnings of the Honour of Clare", in R. Allen Brown (ed.), Proceedings of the Battle Conference, 1980 (Woodbridge, 1981), pp. 140-1; R. Mortimer, "Land and Service: The Tenants of the Honour of Clare", in R. Allen Brown (ed.), Anglo-Norman Studies, viii (Wood- bridge, 1986), pp. 192-6.

27 D. Crouch, William Marshal: Court, Career and Chivalry in the Angevin Empire, c. 1147-1219 (London, 1990), pp. 105-6: "It was in Ireland that many of his political affinity became his tenants for the first time". See also R. R. Davies, Domination and Conquest: The Experience of Ireland, Scotland and Wales, 1100-1300 (Cambridge, 1990), pp. 32-3.

28 W. O. Ault, Private 3rurisdiction in England (Yale, 1923), p. 323; N. Denholm- Young, Seignorial ffurisdiction in England (London, 1937), p. 95. I have never under- stood the view that would deny that privatized public authority in the hands of individuals (or corporations) was feudal.

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surely right, in this context, to point to the similarities between the later medieval affinity and earlier forms of association. The expansive nature of lordship was one of the dynamic features of feudal society. The history of feudal society in France shows lords using a variety of means to bring others under their sway. This could include tight territorial control, as was often the case, for example, within castellanies, where local seigneurs exercised the power of the ban. It could involve the creation, by various routes, of subordinate tenures. Equally it could involve little more than alliances, backed up by oaths of fidelity and acknowledgement of superiority the famous mouvance, or network of fideles. We would do well to look for similar phenomena in England, and indeed something similar to the mouvance has recently been sug- gested in the mid-eleventh century.29 Such phenomena are by no means non-feudal, although arguably they are often symptomatic of less advanced forms of feudalism. But this is not necessarily so. The type of affinity which Crouch describes around William Marshal is a similar type of association of subordination, but occurring here because he and others like him were essentially interlopers within the territorial scene. But an affinity in the sense that Crouch is using the term could clearly be a means of ex- tending existing lordship. In times of disorder and/or weak gov- ernment, well-placed magnates were ever likely to be particularly expansive. The extension of local power by subjugation, by creat- ing clients in one way or another, is a characteristically feudal mode of behaviour. That Stephen's reign in particular should see looser forms of domination flourishing, and lords making pacts and agreements with both lesser lords and lords of equal degree, is precisely what one would expect to have happened.

It is also true, however, as Crouch is indicating, that we should not see the extra-tenurial retinue, or extra-tenurial elements within a retinue, as necessarily aberrant. It does seem to be the case that in the twelfth as well as the thirteenth century a lord's retinue, at least as indicated by the witnessing of his charters, could comprise men who were not his tenants. Nevertheless tenurial ties were important and remained so into the thirteenth century. Their importance can be seen when it came to rebellion against the crown, as J. C. Holt's famous study of the Northerners

29Ann Williams, "A Vice-Comital Family in Pre-Conquest Warwickshire", in R. Allen Brown (ed.), Anglo-Norman Studies, xi (Woodbridge, 1988), pp. 279-95, esp. p. 291.

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clearly shows. When all the necessary caveats have been made, "the general impression of the evidence is that the great rebel lords were followed by the men whom they might reasonably regard as their particular tenants almost to a man" .30 This remains true, notwithstanding the political independence which many men of knightly rank were already showing, secure in their wealth and/or administrative experience.3l Such independence of mind, and factors of regional and local association, were even more significant in 1264-5, but even then, and despite all the changes of the intervening years, there were many rebel knights who were following the lead of their overlords. In some cases they were even prompted by distraint.32 Others, to be sure, participated as members of the household contingents and retinues of the barons and wealthier knights, and there can be no doubt that tenurial links were becoming a less significant, and "direct" service a more significant, factor.33 Even so, as far as the twelfth and thirteenth centuries are concerned, I think we should be wary of assuming that a lord's power over lesser seigneurs was necessarily limited to his immediate retinue and to his charter witnesses. Indeed it should not be lost sight of that even in the fourteenth century indentured retainers could be drawn from families with a traditional tenurial dependence upon their lords.34

There are, then, in all of this considerable elements of continu- ity. It seems to be undoubtedly the case that tenurially subordinate lords were increasingly ceasing to regard service to (or even association with) their chief lord as axiomatic, at least not without additional reward. In other words, we are brought back increas- ingly to the emancipation of the lesser lord, of the feudal tenant. But does this undermine the bastard feudalism hypothesis? I think not. The "affinity", as Crouch uses the term, is certainly a feudal

30 J. C. Holt, The Northerners: A Study in the Reign of King 3rohn (Oxford, 1961), p. 43; see also ch. 4, in general.

3lIbid.,p.53.

32 See, in particular, C. H. Knowles, " 'The Disinherited', 1265-80" (Univ. of Wales Ph.D. thesis, 1959), pt. ii, ch. 2.

33 See also Daniel Williams, "Simon de Montfort and his Adherents", in W. M. Ormrod (ed.), England in the Thirteenth Century: Proceedings of the 1984 Harlaxton Symposium (Woodbridge, 1985), p. 173. Here it is suggested, however, that the independent action of the lesser landowners of the Midlands and East Anglia, who predominated in this rebellion, is to be explained partly in terms of "the de facto demise of the great Midland earldoms which culminates in the middle years of the thirteenth century on the eve of the Barons War" (ibid., pp. 174-6).

34 See, for example, Philip Morgan, War and Society in Medieval Cheshire, 1277-1403 (Manchester, 1987), pp. 18-19.

203 BASTARD FEUDALISM REVISED

phenomenon, and bastard feudalism arises within a pre-existing feudal order. One can expect, therefore, a degree of continuity. In this sense there is no reason to despise the quest for ante- cedents. Moreover, as Carpenter points out in relation to the subversion of the public courts and their agents, "features of bastard feudal control" can be found in the twelfth century, and indeed before that.35 The difference is one of scale. Quantitative changes can become qualitative. The sheer growth of the central government during the thirteenth century and the increasing capacity for independent behaviour on the part of the lesser lords encouraged magnates to use the entire armoury at their disposal to penetrate public law courts and public office and to bind the emergent gentry as far as possible to them. The great lords, as before, needed to dominate local society. But this necessitated the exercise of power at and through the centre as never before. What they had to offer was domination, but also aid and protec- tion, as well as reward. In this they succeeded: but at a price. That price was bastard feudalism.

Newcastle upon Tyne Polytechnic P. R. Coss

35 Above, p. 180.