European Feudalism

European Feudalism

Medieval historians have traditionally understood feudalism to be a sociopolitical system that dominated European societies from the fall of the Roman Empire to the start of the Renaissance. This definition however has been thrown into question by myriad incongruous details, among which is the notable absence of the word feudalism from the medieval vocabulary.

For although terms such as the Old High German words fehu “cattle,” “property,” or “money”; the Old English feoh, feo, fee; and the Latin feodum, all of which are precursors to our word fief, appear commonly in medieval sources, feudalism does not appear. It was first employed by 16th-century French and English jurists and legal historians to explain anachronistic property laws in their own societies. To them it denoted a framework in which political and military power were decentralized, private, and local.

The system as they envisioned it was based in large part on the concept of the feudal contract, in which land, the fief, was granted by the upper echelons of the military aristocracy to free nobles below them, their vassals, in return for fidelity or homage. This vision of medieval European society as a pyramid structure based on the exchange of land for services and fidelity continues in large part to dominate popular imagination.


In the 1970s historians began to highlight the conceptual flaws of the feudalism theory, pointing out that it existed not all over Europe, but only in a handful of locales, and only between the 10th and 13th centuries. It did not, therefore, dominate all of Europe for the better part of 10 centuries.

When Roman imperial organization collapsed in the fifth century, political authority fragmented. In this early period as numerous groups such as Vandals, Goths, Vikings, and Muslims threatened to invade former Roman territories, features of what would later be called feudalism emerged.

The first of these was a type of contract in which, in return for rewards and war booty, an armed retainer offered military aid to a lord. This was advantageous for the lord, since private armies were extremely expensive to raise and maintain. Without a central government to organize and pay soldiers the onus fell to individuals or family groups to muster as much force as possible.

Such techniques of dealing with a decentralized political situation were probably familiar to people on some level. In many ways, they were an amalgamation of preexisting Roman and Germanic customs. Romans, for example, had engaged in a system of patronage, in which powerful patrons would offer protection and services to clients in exchange for political support, loyalty, or gifts. This clientelism became mixed with a Germanic military custom in which an elected chief, after conquering territory with his army, distributed land and booty among his men in exchange for their continued allegiance.

While the armed retainer of the early Middle Ages was useful in situations of war and conflict, lords were eventually faced with the duduk perkara of housing and maintaining the young men in their service. A logical solution was to offer them a plot of land, on which they could live, and off which they could make a living other than war.

It was in the eighth century that Charles Martel made the first land grants in exchange for military service. In theory, the feudal system was based on this type of land tenure in which a landowner, or suzerain, granted rights to a piece of land (a fief, or Latin feudum) to a vassal in return for specific obligations. In addition to land, rights or honors could also be granted as fiefs.

While the first fiefs were small, by the 12th century they were often estates employing large numbers of peasants. The vassal receiving the fief had the right of ban, or command, over the peasants. The fief became inheritable property, and the vassals, as a result, became a landed aristocracy, meaning that their wealth was based in land. Upon inheriting a fief however the new tenant might have had to pay a fee, called a relief, before assuming it.

The relief could be large, up to a year’s income. In other cases the tenant might just seek written confirmation of his property rights to ensure, or to make public, his continued status. If the deceased vassal’s heir was a child, the lord could take him as a ward and collect the income from the property until the child matured, or he could bestow such rights on another vassal.

If the child was female, the lord could choose her husband. Since many men were eager to marry propertied heiresses, the lord could profit financially by offering her in marriage to the highest bidder. In some cases the heiress herself offered the lord substantial sums of money to avoid marrying a disfavored suitor.

By the high Middle Ages in some places in Europe, a ceremony had evolved by which lords and vassals formalized their ties. In this highly symbolic ceremony the vassal knelt before the lord, bowed his head, and put his hands, palms together, between the hands of his lord. After swearing an oath, the vassal became his lord’s man or in French, homme. For this reason this ritual became known as homage.

The lord then kissed the vassal on his lips and raised him to his feet. In addition the vassal might also be asked to swear fealty (a derivation of the Latin fidelitas, meaning faithfulness) to the lord, by which he contractually agreed to offer him auxilium et consilium, or military service and legal counsel. The latter he did by appearing in the lord’s court, which functioned both as a court of justice and as an administrative council. The vassal also agreed to offer “feudal aids.”

These were monetary contributions for specific situations such as crusade, ransom, the knighting of his eldest son, or the marriage of his daughter. These contributions could become quite substantial if the lord went on an extended military campaign. Finally the vassal could be expected to hand over a portion of his harvest to his lord, or even to grind his wheat and bake bread in the ovens owned and taxed by the lord.

The lord had reciprocal responsibilities toward his vassals. First among these was maintenance. While the vassal was entitled to the fief’s revenues, the lord was obliged to ensure that the land be maintained. Equally important was the responsibility the lord bore for offering the vassal physical protection and security. This he did by marshalling his military force when needed.

The feudal relations between vassal and lord as described probably did exist in medieval Europe, yet only in a handful of locales for limited periods of time. Surely more common were the innumerable variations on the classical model, some of which varied to such a degree that they could hardly be called feudal.

Some instances have been found, for example, in which lords demanded feudal aids from nonfiefholding commoners rather than fiefholding nobles. In other instances, feudal aids were asked of newcomers to a region and not of longstanding inhabitants.

In addition, there were high levels of regional variation such that the classical model appears to have applied only to a small region of France during the 12th and 13th centuries. The king of France had little central authority and little or no power over the great land owning lords. In France therefore feudalism implied a fragmentary and localized structure whose reciprocal bonds of loyalty and protection did not extend to the very top of society.

By the ninth and 10th centuries Italy from Rome northward exhibited similar characteristics to some French regions, but the growth of the commercial trading cities such as Florence and Venice in the 11th and 12th centuries introduced a money economy and an urbanized merchant class that did not fit the classic feudal model.

Still the region north of the Po River, particularly the area around Milan, continued to adhere closely to the French pattern of feudal relations. Without a centralizing monarchy, northern Italian lords remained powerful and independent of royal authority.

Unlike in France and northern Italy the king in England was, from the 11th century on, the pinnacle and nucleus of the political hierarchy. All lords held their fiefs directly from him, and in return they owed him military and court service, and on occasion, financial aid.

English feudalism was therefore much more an integrated system than elsewhere. Yet even here there were elements deviating from the classical model, for even though the great lords swore fidelity to the king, they did not perform homage to him. And since even in this circumstance peasants did not partake in the feudal contract, the feudal structure did not, in any explicit sense, permeate the lower rungs of society.

Societies with expansive open borders to defend, such as the German lands east of the Rhine and the frontier between Christian and Muslim Spain, developed different social structures generally marked by weak monarchies and powerful local nobilities. In some Slavic kingdoms, serfdom, in which peasants are tied to the land, became the dominant phenomenon.

In other frontier societies such as Scotland, Wales, and Ireland, enterprising barons could set up semi-independent lordships, though even there they were not entirely free from the king’s authority. In the 11th and 12th centuries, the Crusader States in the Levant exhibited a kind of purified feudal tenure wherein the lords held supreme power in their local realms. Until its fall in the mid-13th century, the Norman kingdom in southern Italy exhibited a variant of French Norman feudal relations.

Medieval historians have revealed wide disparities over distance and time in the structure of social hierarchies and practices of land tenure. Caveats such as these have made them question whether the term feudalism is still useful for understanding medieval history.

Since most historians now use the term with caution, feudalism is probably best used in a narrow sense to describe the relationship between lords and noblemen when they ritually exchanged protection for military and legal support. Despite more than a decade of debate, medieval historians still vary in their conclusions about the accuracy of the term feudalism for describing and understanding medieval European society.

Japanese Feudalism

Japanese Feudalism

When most people think of feudalism, medieval Europe from about the ninth to 15th centuries is most likely to come to mind. The term feudalism is of fairly recent origin, coined in the 17th century by lawyers and antiquarians who used it to describe rules of land tenure, legal customs, and political institutions that had survived from medieval times. For Marxist historians the key elements of feudalism are the relationships between the feudal landholders and their serfs, whom they compel by force, custom, or law to provide labor, money, or tribute.

Other non-Marxist historians define feudalism as a system of military and political organizations in which armed warriors or knights served leaders, who in turn provided them with land grants in return for personal service. Despite the fact that many of Japan’s governmental structures and institutions were based in part on those of China, Japan’s feudal culture was in many ways more like that of feudal Europe.

By the 19th century, historians generally agreed that the warriors of Japan were the “Oriental” counterparts to the knights of Europe. The roots of Japanese feudalism can be traced back to the seventh century in Japan and extend through the medieval period of Japanese history.


Japan’s political and economic order did not meet the definition of “full feudalism” until about the year 1300, which is much later than the onset of European feudalism. Many of the laws and institutions described as feudal protected privileges of the landholding aristocracy and allowed them to use their power over the peasant class. Feudalism from the modern historian’s perspective has taken on negative connotations as being outdated, oppressive, or irrational.

The primary virtue in the Japanese feudal system was loyalty, because the entire social-political system depended on personal relationships. Contrary to the lord-vassal relationships of European feudalism that were based on mutual and contractual obligation, the Japanese emphasized morality. Loyalty to one’s lord manifested from a belief that he was the superior budbahasa leader.

Unlike in China, where familial loyalty was the dominant ideology, in Japan loyalty to one’s lord was paramount. This is not to say that family ties were unimportant in medieval Japanese society, as inheritance determined power and prestige as well as property ownership.

Japanese feudalism also differed from European feudalism in that there was no cult of chivalry that put women on a romantic pedestal as fragile and inferior beings. Japanese warriors expected their women to be as strong as they were and accept self-sacrifice as part of their obligation to their lord.

The Japanese warriors, who were known as samurai, or “servitors,” placed great importance on the military virtues of bravery, honor, self-discipline, and the stoical acceptance of death. Seppuku, ritual suicide by disembowelment, became the dominant alternative to dishonor or capture.

Warrior class-consciousness—a sense of the warrior class as a separate entity—did not materialize until the 13th century when the Kamakura Shogunate (rule by a military generalissimo) took power. The new institution created a new category of shogunal retainer that held special privileges and responsibilities and narrowed the scope of social classes the samurai class comprised.

Its founder, Minamoto Yoritoto, consciously helped foster this new warrior ethos by holding hunts and archery competitions that helped to solidify the warrior identity. As the samurai served as the enforcers of feudal rule, their role in Japanese history was extremely important and the lord-vassal relationship was pivotal to feudal order.

Beginning in the early seventh century the Yamato court introduced several Chinese political and governmental practices in order to increase the power of the ruler. Within one century the Yamato court transformed itself into a Chinese-style monarchy. The main players in this governmental shift came not only from members of the ruling family, but also from powerful group leaders associated with the Yamato court. China provided both political ideals and a set of political institutions that extended further than the unsophisticated attempts at centralization begun in the sixth century.

Integral to the innovations of the seventh and eighth centuries was a new concept of ruler. Reformers borrowed the Chinese notion of an absolute monarch whose authority went beyond kinship ties. The monarch was considered “the master of the people and the master of the whole land,” and people pledged their allegiance to him and him alone. By the end of the seventh century the ruler was called tenno, or emperor, and the title brought with it increased authority.

The establishment of an imperial capital also helped legitimize the emperor’s ruling status. The first capital was constructed in the southern end of the Yamato Basin but was eventually moved to Nara in 710. In 794 the capital was moved to Heian, later known as Kyoto, where it remained until the 19th century. However the monarchial state did not survive much beyond the eighth century.

Part of the demise of the monarchy can be attributed to the emphasis placed on heredity rather than meritocracy. The members of the Yamato clan were unwilling to share power, as it was synonymous with wealth in the form of land grants, household servants, and agricultural laborers. The old clan leadership was thus transformed into a new ruling class that was dependent on imperial supremacy.

Notwithstanding the departure of the monarchial state from the goals originally intended by the reformers of the seventh century, the emperor, the court, and the aristocracy at the capital survived for several more centuries largely because of the rise of private estates called shoen.

Private estates became the primary source of aristocratic wealth and allowed court aristocrats to exert more power and control. By the end of the 12th century, some historians estimate, more than half the cultivated land was owned privately.

By the late 10th and early 11th centuries warrior chieftains threatened political order and began to emerge with more regularity. Powerful chieftains like Taira Masakado, who owned vast landed estates in the Kanto region, capitalized on the imperial government’s weakness and challenged its authority.

These challenges contributed to the breakup of the court into many aristocratic factions that competed for power and drew certain warrior families into capital politics. Most influential were the Seiwa branch of the Minamoto family and the Ise branch of the Taira family. By the late 11th century the Seiwa influence in the east and the Taira influence in the west had both established important connections in the capital.

After a series of power struggles, Taira Kiyomori emerged with increased influence in the court and political power. With a lack of local authority, however, Kiyomori’s ascendancy ended with the outbreak of the Gempei War (1180–85). Minamoto Yorimoto and his followers succeeded in driving the Taira out of the capital and in 1185 their armies were defeated in the west. The victory meant that Yorimoto became the most powerful chieftain in Japan.

This victory was a defining moment in Japanese history because it resulted in the founding of the Kamakura Bakufu, or “tent government.” Yorimoto sought political independence and wanted to avoid immersion in court politics. Yorimoto’s success can largely be attributed to the lord-vassal bonds he established during the Gempei War. In 1192 Yorimoto took the title of shogun or “generalissimo.”

This title brought with it the responsibility of preserving national peace and order. Eventually however the shogun became a warrior monarch whose power came from the imperial government and actually extended beyond it. Yorimoto remained in power until his death in 1199.

His death started a crisis of sorts because Yorimoto, perhaps because he distrusted his closest kin, did not make effective arrangements for a successor. Hence power fell into the hands of the Hojo clan, where it remained until the end of the Bakufu in 1333. The Kamakura Bakufu marked a big step toward a purely feudal political order.

The decline of Bakufu authority was integral to the onset of full political feudalism, and the Kamakura government was overthrown in 1334, driven by the anarchistic ambitions of Go-Daigo, who hoped to reinstate direct imperial rule. This demise combined with civil war brought the estate system to an end. Go-Daigo’s reign was short-lived and in 1336 Ashikaga Takauji, a powerful warrior leader, was named shogun by Go-Daigo’s successor.

Civil war ended in 1392, and, even though some order was restored, Japan was less unified. By the mid15th century, social and political unrest led to the Onin War in Japan. The period after the Onin War is considered the beginning of the “warring states” period in Japanese history, a time when the Ashikaga Shogunate was destroyed and a new group of feudal magistrates emerged from the local warrior class. Domains fell into the hands of feudal lords, known as daimyo, who used force and their loyal vassals to maintain their power, enforcing land taxes to keep the peasantry under much stricter control.

By 1500 the country was divided into the hands of roughly 300 daimyo. By the 1560s many of the more powerful daimyo sought power beyond their realms and some even hoped to control all of Japan. Unification, however, was largely the work of three men, sometimes called “the great unifiers,” Oda Nobunaga, Toyotomi Hideyoshi, and Tokugawa Ieyasu.

Nobunaga seized Kyoto in 1568, allegedly in support of the last Ashikaga shogun; crushed the power of the lesser lords in central Japan; and destroyed the Buddhist monasteries. Nobunaga was assassinated in 1590 and power fell into the hands of his most able general, Hideyoshi. By 1590 Hideyoshi established control over the entire realm.

Hideyoshi never took the title of shogun but did assume high positions in imperial government. Hideyoshi monopolized foreign trade, had land surveyed, and confiscated weapons from the peasant class. These actions further divided the samurai and peasant classes while increasing Hideyoshi’s military might. In 1592 he set out to conquer Korea, a first step toward world conquest, which for him essentially meant China.

However Chinese armies in northern Korea stopped the Japanese, and they were forced to withdraw after Hideyoshi’s death in 1592. Hideyoshi did not leave an heir, and power shifted to the victor of the Battle of Sekigahara in 1600, Tokugawa Ieyasu. Ieyasu took the title of shogun and moved his residence from Kyoto to Edo (modern Tokyo). He closed the country to foreigners and for more than 250 years, Japan remained in seclusion from the rest of the world.

While feudalism in Japan began later than in Europe, its demise was much more recent. In 1600 when Tokugawa Ieyasu took power, Japan entered the period of rule known as “centralized feudalism.” In this system, the Tokugawa Shogunate ruled Japan but gave relative autonomy to his vassal daimyo in exchange for loyalty. Tokugawa rule continued in Japan until 1868, when the Meiji Restoration ended feudal rule, abolished the warrior class, and opened Japan to the rest of the world.

Norman and Plantagenet Kings of England

Norman Castle in England

The conquest of England in 1066 brought with it a completely new ruling dynasty. The Norman kings, beginning with William I, began a social and legal revolution in England. They also succeeded in unifying England and blurred the lines between Saxons and Normans.

The Plantagenet kings composed a long dynasty that included the related families of Anjou, Lancaster, and York. However, most historians seclude the Angevins from the Lancastrians and the Yorkists because of the historical development of the Wars of the Roses.

The Norman kings included the following rulers:

William I (the Conqueror): 1066–1087
William II (Rufus): 1087–1100
Henry I (Beauclerc): 1100–1135
Stephen: 1135–1154
Matilda (Maude): 1141

The Plantagenet rulers were

Henry II: 1154–1189
Richard I (Lionheart): 1189–1199
John: 1199–1216
Henry III: 1216–1272
Edward I (Longshanks): 1272–1307
Edward II: 1307–1327
Edward III: 1327–1377
Richard II: 1377–1399

William I, originally the duke of Normandy and the second cousin of Edward the Confessor, emerged victorious from the Norman Conquest of England and seized control of the English throne on Christmas Day, 1066. Within five years William I contained numerous rebellions and subdued the country.

His reign was highlighted with the creation of the Domesday Book, a survey of landownership used to collect taxes and the most comprehensive and detailed record of a country’s physical resources produced in Europe during the Middle Ages. William I died on September 9, 1087, from complications of a wound received in battle.

William II, or Rufus, was the second son of William I. He received England upon the death of his father. William I’s eldest son, Robert, received Normandy. William Rufus’s rule was categorized by heavy taxes and animosity between Crown and clergy.

On August 2, 1100 William II was shot in the eye with an arrow while on a hunting expedition and died childless and unmarried. Because of his unpopular reign, many historians believe his death was not an accident.

Henry I, brother of William Rufus and the youngest son of Edward I, ascended the throne of England upon the death of his brother. He was nicknamed Beauclerc (fine scholar) because of his educational background.

Through his skilled use of court politics, he established the exchequer, or the royal treasury, during his reign. Henry I had hoped to leave his throne to his only surviving daughter, Matilda, but upon his death the throne was offered to Stephen of Blois.

Stephen, Henry I’s nephew and grandson of William the Conqueror, was ill equipped to respond to the demands of the monarchy and his lack of authority over the quarreling and power hungry English barons erupted into civil war and strife during 1135–54.

The government that Henry I had constructed was in jeopardy of collapse, and the church and Crown continued their deepening animosity. He was briefly overthrown in 1141 when Matilda (known also as Maude) and her husband, Geoffrey of Anjou, entered London and claimed the throne.

She ruled briefly but was removed from the throne by Stephen’s rallying troops. Questions of succession continued until the Treaty of Wallingford was signed. Under this agreement, Stephen would rule unopposed until his death, at which time the throne would pass to Matilda’s son, Henry of Anjou.

Henry Plantagenet, count of Anjou, succeeded Stephen as Henry II in 1154. As the first of the Angevin kings, Henry II was a European ruler rather than an English king because of the size of his empire and the fact that he was the richest prince in Europe at the time of his ascension to the throne.

Henry II’s rule is often remembered as one of the most effective of English monarchs’. Most important at this time were the revival of royal justice and the foundation of English common law applicable to all of England.

Henry’s reign also included his quarrel regarding the power of church courts with Thomas Becket, Henry’s former chancellor and archbishop of Canterbury, which led to the latter’s martyrdom at Canterbury cathedral in 1170.

The latter years of Henry II’s reign included several rebellions ignited by his sons, backed by the kings of France and Scotland and encouraged by Eleanor of Aquitaine Henry’s vivacious wife.

Richard I ascended the throne in 1189 but only lived in England for less than a year of his entire reign. Instead, he fought in the Crusades, fell captive to the Holy Roman Emperor Henry VI in Germany, and continued to fight for lands lost in France. While he was away, the government built by Henry II continued to collect taxes and survive. He died from battle wounds in April 1199, leaving no heirs.

John, the fourth son of Henry II, ruled England in 1199 after many years of trying to steal the throne from his brother Richard. Nicknamed Lackland, John was the stereotypical wicked king; he taxed the English system in every possible manner.

During his reign England lost her French possessions, Pope Innocent III excommunicated John from the church for refusing to install Stephen Langton as the archbishop of Canterbury, and taxes consistently increased.

The barons, led by Langton, confronted John at Runnymede and forced him to accept the Magna Carta, or Great Charter, in 1215. The document confirmed popular liberties and restated the rights of the church and the English people.

When John died in 1216, his nine-year-old son, Henry, was accepted as king of England. He assumed the role of king in 1234 and confirmed the Magna Carta. However Henry III was an inept king who engaged in costly wars in an attempt to replenish his impoverished treasury, refused to defy papal decree, and provided appointments to foreigners rather than the English nobility.

This approach to government fueled antipapal sentiment and laid the foundation for the Reformation. It also provided opportunity for the rise of English nationalism. As English barons became more frustrated with Henry III’s choices and costly wars, they revolted and threw England into a period of civil war.

At one point Simon de Montfort briefly held power in 1264; however, he was killed in battle and power returned to Henry III and his son, Edward. There were some positive aspects of Henry III’s reign.

The population of London and the country rose substantially, the universities of Oxford and Cambridge were established, and the economy improved with the increase of agriculture. By the time Henry III died in 1272, he was monarch in name only, as the true power had already been transferred to Edward.

Edward I, known as Longshanks because of his height, was an accomplished soldier, statesman, and perhaps the most successful medieval monarch. Through his reign England recognized and retained many aspects of society, law, and government that survived centuries, civil war, and international conflict. Although Edward I could be considered ruthless and aggressive in many situations, he understood the delicate balance in which a monarch functioned.

He is credited with the creation of the modern-day Parliament. In 1295 Edward I summoned various representatives to his Model Parliament in order to raise more revenue. To this end parliament was used to conduct national business.

Edward I also supplied the courts of King’s Bench, Exchequer, and Common Pleas with judges; established a Court of Equity; and created a Chancery Court to provide redress in situations where other courts could not intervene. Edward accepted the Confirmation of Charters in 1297, which stated that taxes must have the assent of the realm.

Edward I also lived up to his ancestors’ attempts to expand the English empire. He conquered Wales in 1284 and chose to name his eldest son Prince of Wales in 1301, a title that has been bestowed upon the all firstborn male heirs to the present day.

Scotland proved to be a tougher conquest. Edward attempted to lay claim to Scottish lands by having his son marry Margaret, the legitimate heir to the Scottish Crown.

However she died en route to England, and Edward I invaded Scotland in 1296, defeated them, and was paid homage by the Scottish barons. William Wallace incited a riot against the English king in 1297, defeated the English army at Stirling, and continued to be a thorn in Edward I’s side until his capture and execution in 1304.

Robert Bruce, a distant claimant to the Scottish throne, continued to harass Edward I and his armies. The English were eventually defeated at Bannockburn under Edward II, but the animosity between the two nations continued for centuries.

Edward I’s biggest failure came in the form of his son, Edward II, who was feeble, lazy, and incompetent. Edward II also had a penchant for surrounding himself with foreigners, a trait that the English barons loathed. He carried on a homosexual affair with Piers Gaveston, which led to Gaveston’s exile and murder.

Eventually Edward II’s wife, Isabella, and her lover, Roger Mortimer, invaded England from France, forced Edward II to abdicate in favor of his son, and murdered him. Once his wife and her lover deposed Edward II, Edward III ascended the throne in 1327.

He quickly arrested and hanged Mortimer while imprisoning his mother for the last few decades of her life. Edward III was responsible for the beginning of the Hundred Years’ War with France in 1337 allegedly to support his claim to the French throne.

Initially England saw victories at Sluys (1340), Crécy (1346), and Calais (1347), giving them control of the Channel and the land. The bubonic plague, or Black Death, provided a short break from hostilities, but England resumed the fight with an invasion of France in 1355.

Edward, the “Black Prince” and eldest son of Edward III, found success at Poitiers (1356). The Treaty of Brétigny (1360) brought this phase of the Hundred Years’ War to a close. However, John of Gaunt, Edward’s third son, resumed the battle in 1369 when he invaded France again.

Under Edward III, English social life and economic history changed. He experienced relatively peaceful relations with the noble classes. Mercantilism began to replace feudalism. The taxation system was supported by commerce rather than land taxes.

Parliament found a bicameral cohesion as it divided into two houses representing the nobility and clergy, and the middle classes. In 1362 English replaced French as the national language of the realm. Treason was defined in 1352, and the office of justice of the peace was created (1361) to assist the sheriffs.

Unfortunately Edward III’s selesai years were marked by increasing senility, the death of the Black Prince, and disintegrating relations between the Crown and his subjects, due in part to Edward’s mistress, Alice Perrers.

Richard II, son of the Black Prince and grandson of Edward III, ascended the throne in 1377 at the age of 10. His rule was highlighted by his marriage to Isabella of Valois, daughter of Charles VI of France, in order to end further conflict with France.

He also subdued a Peasants’ Revolt in 1381 that resulted from the effects of the Black Plague’s strain on the economy. Rival factions continued to fight for governmental control, and in 1397, Richard II became embroiled in a struggle with some of the nobles for control.

First John of Gaunt, then his son, Henry Bolingbroke (Henry IV), attempted to take the throne. Richard was usurped in 1399, imprisoned, and murdered. The Wars of the Roses had claimed their first victim in the former king.

Alfred the Great

Alfred the Great

Alfred the Great was the fifth son of King Ethelwulf (839–55) of the West Saxons (Wessex) and Osburga, daughter of the powerful Saxon earl Oslac. When Alfred became king of Wessex in 871, his small realm was the last independent Saxon kingdom in England. A massive Viking force from Denmark, known as the “Great Army,” had landed in East Anglia in 865 and had quickly overrun the Saxon kingdoms of Northumbria, East Anglia, and, eventually, Mercia.

During his older brother Ethelred’s reign (866–871), Alfred had helped fight off an initial invasion of the Great Army into Wessex, but when his older brother died and Alfred inherited the throne, he was forced to gain peace by buying the Vikings off.

In 878 the Great Army returned, led by the Danish chieftain Guthrum. Alfred’s fortunes were considerably augmented at this point by the fact that nearly half of the Vikings in the Great Army had settled down in Northumbria to farm and hence took no part in this new attack.


Even so Alfred and his men were hard pressed to survive. Driven from his royal stronghold at Chippenham in Wiltshire in early 878, he retreated to the marshes around Somerset, where he managed to regroup his forces. In May of that year he inflicted a solid defeat on the Vikings at the Battle of Edington and quickly followed this up with another victory by forcing Guthrum and his men to surrender their stronghold at Chippenham.

By the Treaty of Wedmore (878), which brought hostilities to an end, the Danes withdrew north of the Thames River to East Mercia and East Anglia; together with Northumbria, these lands would constitute the independent Viking territories in England known as the Danelaw.

Significantly, through this settlement Alfred gained control over West Mercia and Kent, Saxon lands that he had not previously controlled. In addition to acknowledging a stable demarcation between Alfred’s kingdom and Viking lands, Guthrum also agreed to convert to Christianity and, shortly thereafter, was baptized. The significance of this cannot be overstated, because it made the eventual assimilation of the Danes into Saxon, Christian society possible.

With this latest Viking invasion having been thwarted, Alfred took steps to ensure the future safety of his people. Across his kingdom he created a series of fortified market places called burhs, which, in addition to aiding the economy of the realm, provided strong points of defense against Viking raids. These were strategically situated so that no burh was more than one day’s march (approximately 20 miles) from another.

Alfred also reorganized his army so that at any one time, only part of the fyrd, or levy, was out in the field or defending the burhs, while the men in the other half would remain home tending their own and their absent kinsmen’s farms and livestock. This enabled Alfred to extend the time of service for which each half of the fyrd could be deployed, because it removed problems of supply and also relieved men from worrying about their families and farms back home.

These measures proved immensely effective, not only allowing Alfred to successfully defend Wessex, but even enabling him to go on the offensive against the Vikings, so that by 879 much of Mercia had been cleared of Vikings, and in 885–886 he captured London.

After the Danes launched a massive seaborne invasion against England in 892, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle tells us that Alfred also created a new navy, comprised of large, fast ships, in order to prevent any such subsequent overseas invasions from being successful.

Having dealt with the Vikings, in the second half of his reign Alfred took steps to improve the administration of his realm as well as increase the level of learning and culture among his people. In doing so he showed himself to be a competent direktur and possessed of an inquiring and capable mind. He established an Anglo-Saxon law code, by combining the laws and practices of Wessex, Mercia and Kent, and he kept a tight rein on justice throughout his lands.

Like others of his time, the king had a deep respect for the wisdom and learning of the past, and he worked hard to make a variety of works available to his contemporaries for their religious, moral, and cultural edification. He took an active role in improving the spiritual and pastoral qualities of bishops and clerics throughout his realm by personally translating from Latin into the Anglo-Saxon language Pope Gregory the Great’s late sixth-century work titled Pastoral Care.

e showed a similar interest in philosophical and budbahasa issues by rendering Boethius’s early sixth-century treatise The Consolation of Philosophy into his native tongue, while sprinkling throughout his translation numerous personal observations.

Alfred further engaged his passion for ethics, history, and theology by translating from Latin into Anglo-Saxon the work of the fifth-century Spanish prelate Paulus Orosius known as the Universal History. This latter work undertook to explain all history as the unfolding of God’s divine plan.

To help foster a sense of pride and awareness of Anglo-Saxon history, Alfred rendered (rather loosely) the Venerable Bede’s eighth-century work Ecclesiastical History of the English People. To this same end he ordered the compilation of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle that was continued from his reign until the middle of the 12th century. Around 888 Bishop Asser of Sherborne wrote his Life of King Alfred, celebrating the king as a vigorous and brave warrior, a just ruler, and a man of letters and intellect as well.

The political, military, and cultural accomplishments of King Alfred the Great are significant, especially when viewed within the larger context of late ninth- century European history. As much of the Carolingian dynasty fell into the chaos of feudalism because of the raids of Vikings, Muslims, and Magyars and the infighting among Charlemagne’s heirs, Alfred’s victories over the Vikings, and his subsequent expansion into Mercia and Kent, began a process that would result in his successors uniting all of England under the House of Wessex and in a fusion of Anglo-Saxon and Viking culture. Thus he is credited with establishing the English monarchy and alone among all English rulers bears the title “the Great.”