Vassal

known as fiefs, ownership to nobles, also known as vassals, and in return for the king’s overall protection, the vassals would be responsible for providing their support and defense in the form of knights. In reciprocation for their service, knights were given smaller sized fiefs, this was known as subinfeudation. The peasants, or serfs, would do all upkeep of the land. Eventually, these landowners became very powerful, to the point that the common people would turn to them for…

The difference between vassal and lord shows the ranking of power, and the foundation for feudal relationships of medieval history. Idealised views of feudalism represent honorable agreements between a lord and his vassal or vassals in which they both offered their loyalties to one another in exchange for land and services that were usually military in nature. Instead the Agreement between Count William V of Aquitaine and Hugh IV of Lusignan translated by Paul Hyams of Cornell University,…

When we think of “Medieval England” we think about guys in armor suits, royalty ruling cruelly over their land and servants, and among other things, farms. However, medieval England- and medieval europe for that matter -isn’t that far from our own society today. We actually inherit many of the things that were created in the medieval times, such as the basic structure of land tenure that we now see as renting. Society in the Middle Ages may appear to be much different than ours today, but in…

The Feudal System was a societal structure established in the European Medieval Ages. It involves the King’s distribution of his land amongst his subjects, as a form of loan. It was a tool used by rulers to ensure the loyalty of their country as well as the loyalty of those who may otherwise wish to overthrow his reign. Apart from this, the subjects benefitted from the system as it ensured that they would have at least a small piece of land, which was necessary as 98% of the medieval population…

The Serf’s lives were controlled by the lords in a variety of ways during the medieval period. A Serf is a person who works farms under the direction of the lord’s estate. A lord was simply a person who did many things in the medieval period. The first way the lords controlled the Serfs was through debt and economics. In the document Manorial Records of Bernehorne it explained that the lords did not want the serfs to move away in order to provide themselves with a better life, the lords wanted…

This oath was known as homage, in the homage oath the knight promised loyalty and military/protection to the lord, this was the base of the oath (Biel 9). Military service was basic to feudalism, but the vassal owed much more to his lord. The lord expected his vassals to aid him financially if it was required, the lord presumed that the vassals would attend court, and participate in decisions concerning other vassals. Furthermore, vassals also gave money payments known as scutage or shield…

allowing it to work. Feudalism was a governmental and military system based on agreements between the lords, vassals, and serfs. It was a system of private government, in which there was an exchange of services for a fief (Biel 8). The whole system was based on contracts, called Feudal oaths, made between lords and vassals (Biel 9). In these oaths, the lords and vassals agreed to help each other so that each group got what they needed. A lord’s authority to rule was based on the amount of land…

Like the king, vassals also had needs and wants that feudalism helped provide for. As warriors, they needed wealth to purchase equipment and care for their horses (Andrew Smith 1-2). So, they received fiefs from their lord as payment (Nardo 18). Fiefs could consist of money or making the vassal the mayor of a town or steward of another fief (Nardo 20, C. Smith 3). The most common form of a fief, however, was an estate or manor, which was a house or castle along with acres of fields and peasants…

which a vassal and his peasants lived and worked. A Lady lived on a manor and worked to help the manor and feudalism as a whole. The role of the Lady was crucial to the manor and the overall function of feudalism. Feudalism is the political and economic system that ruled over the middle ages. Feudalism was established because of the lack of central government after the fall of the roman empire. The Middle Ages began with the fall of rome in 476 C.E.…

of the Middle Ages (C. Smith ). The set of ideas as to what earned respect and esteem of the society became know as the code of chivalry (C. Smith ). During the time, the code was mainly a warrior code, which emphasized the need to fulfill certain expectations militarily (C. Smith ) Chivalric knights were those who were fully devoted to their lords, some to the extreme of dying for them (C. Smith ). A vassal also had to be skilled in the arts of the warrior (C. Smith ). They had to know how to…