The Norman Conquest and English Feudalism

TT is now more than forty years since John Horace Round inaugurated a new epoch in English feudal scholarship by discovering origins of English knight-service not in AngloSaxon custom but in bargains by which Conqueror fixed number of knights due for his service from each of his greater followers.2 The doctrine was at time a startling heresy3; it has since been developed into severest orthodoxy; and we are now authoritatively taught4 that after Norman Conquest and as its result a new social structure was rapidly and widely established in England by means of a military reorganisation that ignored Old English precedent at every point. Even those who are most concerned display vitality of English society during the last phase of Anglo-Saxon history are rigid in their refusal extend Old English influence into this department of social growth, and there are to-day, among successors of Round, some who would deduce from his theory of knight-service implications wider than those suggested by its original author. It is hardly possible, writes Dr. Darlington, to speak of any trend towards feudalism in England before io66,5 and Mr. Jolliffe

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