The second order: nobility, vassalage, manor and knights

Detail

The idea of three orders

• A French bishop said society had three parts: 'Here below, some pray, others fight, still others work.'
• First order = clergy (they pray).
• Second order = nobility (they fight). This is our section.

• Third order = peasantry (they work).

• The three orders were not equal. Writers of the time defended this.

• Abbess Hildegard of Bingen (12th century) used a cattle analogy: God 'makes distinctions among his flock... there is no equality among them.' So, she argued, God himself wanted ranks.
• The word feudalism comes from the German feud, meaning 'a piece of land'. Historians use it for a society where local lords — not a strong central state — ran justice and administration, and where lords tied free dependants (vassals) to themselves by giving them land (fiefs) and taking their homage (a formal act of becoming someone's man). [2]

Vassalage — the chain of loyalty

• Vassalage = a person accepts a more powerful person as his master and promises service; in return he gets protection and land.
• Nobles were vassals of the king.

• Peasants were vassals of the nobles.

• This was like an older Germanic custom among tribes in central and western Europe.

• The noble accepted the king as his seigneur — from the Latin senior, meaning 'senior'. The noble was the vassal.
• The ceremony: both took vows on the Bible, inside a church. This made the promise a religious act, not only a legal one.
• The symbol of the grant: the vassal was given a written charter, or a staff, or a clod (lump) of earth — the earth stood for the land itself.
• The English word 'lord' comes from a word meaning 'one who provided bread'. The lord's first duty was to feed his men.
• Outside detail on the same ceremony: homage was performed by the vassal kneeling and placing his joined hands inside the lord's hands, which the lord then closed over them. Fealty was the separate oath of faithfulness — the vassal swore not to harm his lord or his lord's property. [2]
• The duties ran both ways:
• Vassal owed military service, counsel (advice) and money aid.

• Lord owed protection and had to respect the vassal's rights. [2]

• In theory, all land belonged to the king or emperor, who was the suzerain (top overlord) of those who held land directly from him. Below him the chain went down step by step. [2]

• A fief was meant to be big enough to support the vassal and the unfree peasants attached to it came with the land. [2]

The privileges of the noble

• Absolute control over his property, and it lasted 'in perpetuity' — forever, passing to his heirs. The king could not simply take it back.
• Raising troops: these forces were called feudal levies.
• Own courts of justice: the noble judged disputes on his land. Royal courts did not reach inside.
• Coining his own money: some nobles minted their own coins.
• Put together, the noble was almost a small king inside his own land. This is the key point: in this system public authority was weak, and local lords did the work of government — administration and justice. [2]
• His house was called the manor.
• His private lands were farmed by tenant-peasants. The same peasants also served as his foot-soldiers when war came.

The manorial estate — what it looked like

• Size varied hugely:
• A small estate held about a dozen families.
• A large estate held fifty to sixty families.

• Some great lords controlled hundreds of villages.

• The estate was nearly self-sufficient — almost everything needed was made inside it:

• Grain fields for food.
• Blacksmiths, carpenters and stonemasons to build and repair.
• Women spun and wove cloth.
• Children worked the wine-presses.
• Woodlands and forests where lords hunted.
• Pastures for cattle and horses.

• A church and a defensive castle.

• But not fully self-sufficient. Three things always came from outside: salt, millstones (the heavy stones for grinding grain) and metalware. Luxury goods came from far away too.

• In England, castles were practically unknown before the Norman Conquest (1066). They came in with the Normans.
• The wider system of running such estates is called manorialism — peasants bound to the land and to the lord, the manor being the basic unit. [3]
• The lord's own portion of the manor, kept for himself and not given out to tenants, was the demesne. Peasants had to plough, harrow, reap and thresh it, bringing their own ploughs and oxen. [3]
• Peasant farmland was often split into three big fields, each cut into long narrow strips. Each peasant got strips in every field, so nobody got only the best or only the worst soil. [3]
• Serfs were tied to the land. They owed a fixed number of days' work each year on the lord's demesne and gave up a share of their own harvest. Lords also controlled their movement, marriage and occupation. [3]
• How it ended: trade revived and money spread. Lords let peasants pay money instead of labour, and in time peasants bought their freedom. That killed manorialism. [3]

Knights — the fighting men

• From the ninth century, Europe saw frequent small local wars.
• Amateur peasant-soldiers were no longer enough. They were part-time farmers, poorly trained.
• What war now needed was good cavalry — trained men fighting on horseback. This created a new class: knights.
• The bargain between lord and knight:
• The lord granted the knight a fief.
• The fief was inheritable — the knight's son could keep it.
• Size: 1,000 to 2,000 acres or more.
• It came with a house, a church, a watermill and a wine-press.
• Peasants cultivated it, so the knight did not farm.

• In return the knight paid his lord a regular fee and fought for him when called.

• Training: the knight practised fencing daily with dummy targets. Fighting was his full-time job.

• Multiple lords: a knight could serve several lords at once — but his foremost loyalty was to his own lord.
• The problem of split loyalty was real. Feudal law answered it with the liege lord — the one lord whose claim beat all the others. [2]

Knightly culture and the minstrels

• From the twelfth century, French minstrels (travelling singers and poets) sang of brave kings and knights.
• They sang from the minstrels' gallery — a raised balcony inside the lord's manor hall.
• Example: Doon de Mayence, a thirteenth-century poem, about a feud between two knights who later become friends.
• These songs spread the ideal picture of the knight — loyal, brave, generous — across Europe.

Prelims Hooks

• The three orders came from a saying of a French bishop: some pray, some fight, some work. Second order = nobility.
• Hildegard of Bingen (12th century) used the cattle analogy to defend inequality among God's flock.
• The noble called the king his seigneur, from Latin senior = 'senior'.
• Vassalage vows were taken on the Bible in a church; the symbol handed over was a written charter, a staff, or a clod of earth.
• 'Lord' = 'one who provided bread'.
• Noble privileges: property in perpetuity, feudal levies, own courts of justice, own coinage.
• Manor size: small = about a dozen families; large = fifty to sixty families.
• Three goods the manor could NOT produce: salt, millstones, metalware.
• Castles were practically unknown in England before the Norman Conquest.
• A knight's fief: 1,000–2,000 acres or more, with house, church, watermill, wine-press; it was inheritable.
• Knights arose from the ninth century because local wars needed cavalry.
• Doon de Mayence = 13th-century French minstrel poem; minstrels sang from the minstrels' gallery.
• Term to know: demesne = the lord's own share of the manor, worked by peasants. [3]
• Term to know: suzerain = the top overlord; homage = kneeling with joined hands; fealty = the oath of faithfulness. [2]

Mains Points

• Feudalism was a substitute for the state, not a partner to it. When central authority was weak, the noble's four privileges — land in perpetuity, feudal levies, his own court, his own mint — meant he performed the functions of government himself. So the second order was both a military class and the actual administration on the ground. [2]
• Religion held the system together. The vows were sworn on the Bible in a church, and Hildegard of Bingen argued God himself made ranks. Useful link between the first order (clergy) and the second order (nobility) — the Church supplied the moral defence for the warrior's privileges.
• The manor's 'self-sufficiency' should be stated carefully. It made its own grain, cloth, tools and wine, but salt, millstones and metalware always came from outside. So even at its most closed, the manorial economy needed trade — and when trade and money revived, lords swapped labour dues for cash and manorialism dissolved. [3] Good for questions on why feudalism declined.
• Technology and military need created a social class. Ninth-century local warfare demanded cavalry; cavalry needed costly horses, armour and daily training; that needed a landed income; hence the inheritable fief of 1,000–2,000 acres. Compare with Indian samanta and jagirdari systems — land assigned in return for military service — but note the difference: Indian assignments were usually not hereditary in theory and were transferable, while the European fief became hereditary property in perpetuity.