Life in a Medieval Castle

by Joseph Gies

  The great lord, even with no official post, had more than enough to occupy him in overseeing his estates and manors and making sure his household staff did not rob him.

  Underlying the social, economic, and political position of the great lord, English or Continental, were always the two pillars of feudalism: vassalage and the fief. By the thirteenth century both were hallowed, even decadent institutions, their roots in a past so far distant that few lords could give an account of them.

  Vassalage was the relationship to the lord, who for all the great English barons was the king. The fief was the land granted by the lord in return for the vassal’s service, or more technically, a complex of rights over the land which theoretically remained the legal possession of the lord.

  The feudal relationship, which by the thirteenth century had accumulated a large train of embellishments, had originated as a simple economic arrangement designed to meet a military problem in an age when money was scarce. In late Roman times a custom had grown up whereby a man attached himself to a superior by an act of “commendation,” a promise of military service in return for support, often in the form of a grant of land known as a benefice. The Frankish Carolingian rulers of the eighth century rapidly expanded this custom to meet their need for heavily armed, mounted warriors, a need that arose from the new technique of war—mounted shock combat. The enhanced military value of the mounted warrior brought a corresponding rise in his social status, symbolized by a more personal relationship between lord and vassal. This more personal relationship was in turn symbolized by a new commendation ritual reinforced by an oath of fealty. In the commendation, the vassal placed his hands within the hands of the lord. The oath was sworn on a relic—a saint’s bone, hair, or scrap of garment—or on a copy of a Gospel. The contract entered into could not be lightly broken.

  Charlemagne laid down precise and exceptional cases in which the vassal might justifiably foreswear his oath: if the lord tried to kill or wound him, to rape or seduce his wife or daughter, to rob him of part of his land, or to make him a serf, or, finally, if he failed to defend him when he should. The lord had no absolute power over his vassal; if he accused the vassal of wrongdoing, he had to accord him trial in the public court, with the “jury of his peers.”

  In Charlemagne’s time a vassal who owed military service, on horseback, with full equipment, needed a benefice amounting to from three hundred to six hundred acres, requiring about a hundred villeins to plow, plant, and harvest it. Although the land continued to belong formally to the lord, custom more and more favored the permanent retention of the land by the vassal’s family. The new vassal performed the commendation and oath as had his father. William Longsword, ancestor of William the Conqueror, on succeeding his father as duke of Normandy in 927, “committed himself into the king’s hands,” according to the chronicler Richer, and “promised him fealty and confirmed it with an oath.” An example of the renewal of vassalage following the death of the lord, as practiced in the twelfth century, is recorded by Galbert of Bruges at the time of the succession of William Clito as count of Flanders in 1127, when a number of knights and barons did homage to the new count:

  “The count demanded of the future vassal if he wished without reserve to become his man, and he replied, ‘I so wish’; then, with his hands clasped and enclosed between those of the count, their alliance was sealed by a kiss.” The vassal then said: “I promise by my faith that from this time forward I will be faithful to Count William and will maintain toward him my homage entirely against every man, in good faith and without any deception.” Galbert concluded: “All this was sworn on the relics of saints. Finally, with a little stick which he held in his hand, the count gave investiture.”

  Homage: The vassal puts his hands between those of his lord. (Bibliothèque Nationale. MS. Fr. 5899, f. 83v)

  In England the oath of homage always contained a reservation of allegiance toward the king. A thirteenth-century English legal manual cites this formula:

  With joined hands [the vassal] shall offer himself, and with his hands under his lord’s mantle he shall say thus—I become thy man of such a tenement to be holden of thee, to bear to thee faith of life and member and earthly worship against all men who live and can die, saving the faith of my lord Henry king of England and his heirs, and of my other lords—if other lords he hath. And he shall kiss his lord.

  The ceremonial kiss was widely used, though it was less significant than the ritual of homage and the oath of fealty.

  The vassal’s obligations fell into two large classes, passive and active. His passive obligations were to refrain from doing the lord any injury, such as giving up one of his castles to an enemy, or damaging his land or other property. The active duties consisted of “aid and counsel.” Under the “aid” heading came not only the prescribed military duty, ost or host, commonly forty days with complete equipment, either alone or with a certain number of knights, but a less onerous duty, chevauchée or cavalcade, which might mean a minor expedition, or simply escort duty, for example when the lord moved from one castle to another. In addition there was often the important duty of castle guard, and the further duty of the vassal to hold his own castle open to the lord’s visit. Highly specialized services also appeared, ranging from the obligation of the chief vassals of the bishop of Paris to carry on their shoulders the newly consecrated bishop on his formal entry into Notre Dame, to that of a minor English landholder of Kent of “holding the king’s head in the boat” when he crossed the choppy Channel.

  In the twelfth century a wholly new kind of service had developed that gave the vassal-lord relationship a fresh significance. This was scutage (from the Latin scutum, “shield”), a money payment that took the place of military service. Its appearance showed how far Europe had come since Charlemagne’s time in economic sophistication. The new custom was especially conspicuous in England, where William the Conqueror had laid direct hold of the land, something quite impossible for the king of France or the emperor of Germany, whose domains were entangled in a mass of ancient feudal relationships. Richard the Lionhearted, calling on his barons for a war in France, proposed that they each send just seven knights and fulfill the remainder of their obligations with money. The barons, averse to leaving their castles, preferred the arrangement. So did Richard. In place of self-willed vassals whose terms of service might run out the day before a battle, he got mercenary soldiers who did as they were told and stayed as long as they were paid.

  Included in the “aid” part of vassalage were financial obligations entirely apart from the money substituted for military service. “Relief” was a payment made by a new tenant at the beginning of his tenancy. A new knight paid his lord one hundred shillings for his knight’s fee (fief). The great lord paid a relief to the king proportionate to his holdings, sometimes running to a thousand pounds or more.

  The term “aid” itself came to be used to designate certain money obligations exacted by all great lords on special occasions, three of which were widely recognized: ransom of the lord’s person, marriage of his eldest daughter, and knighting of his eldest son. These three were specified in Magna Carta as all that the king of England could require of his barons. Sixty years later the Statute of Westminster (1275) fixed rates: twenty shillings of aid per each twenty pounds’ worth of land held at a rent, that is, a levy of five per cent, usually twice in the lord’s lifetime. A fourth aid, for going on Crusade, was widely accepted on the Continent. Aids were not restricted to baronial vassals, but were charged to many others, including the wealthy burghers of the towns, often a surer source of revenue than even the large barons.

  The “counsel” part of the vassal’s obligation required him to come to his lord’s (i.e., in the case of a tenant-in-chief, the king’s) castle when summoned, and the word counsel, or council, was soon attached to the gathering itself. A lord was expected to consult his vassals on major questions of policy, such as negotiating an important marriage or going to war. But often the purpose was to try
judicial cases. Occasionally the sovereign might prefer to have someone else take the blame for offending one party or another in a dispute, and so welcomed his vassals’ help, but more often the contrary was the case—that is, the sovereign’s interest was served by trying his barons himself, finding them guilty, and extracting fines or expropriations. King John’s abuse of this power was a prime cause of the baronial revolt that led to Magna Carta, with the specification of the already time-honored “jury of his peers” for the accused baron.

  An important reciprocal obligation of every lord toward his vassals, whether the king toward his barons or a baron toward his knights, was that of defending them when they were accused in other courts—for example, in those of the Church. Self-interest dictated honoring the obligation, since any danger to a vassal’s fief arising from such litigation threatened financial harm to the lord.

  Vassalage was thus a many-faceted arrangement. Its economic basis, the second component of the feudal relationship, was the fief. In the eleventh century the term, from the Latin feodum, had gradually supplanted the older “benefice” to designate the property a lord conferred on a vassal for his maintenance. A fief might be anything that brought in revenue—a mill, a rented house, a market with its fees, a toll bridge, or even a saleable chattel (movable property). Abbeys and churches often belonged as fiefs to lay vassals who pocketed the tithes and endowments and even sometimes the offerings of the faithful. Land, however, was by far the commonest form of fief. In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries western Europe, including Britain, was covered with fiefs of sizes ranging from thousands of acres and embracing farm, pasture, woodland, and village, down to fiefs of a mere half dozen acres.

  By the thirteenth century the feudal relationship had become so complex through inheritances and grants that a baron might hold his castle as a fief from one lord and much of his land from another, and several other revenue-producing fiefs from still others. In England, because of the Conqueror’s seizure of all land, a tidy pyramid of fiefs originally existed, with the king the sole landowner and the great lords—the tenants-in-chief, of Chepstow and other vast estates—the only direct fief-holders. The tenants-in-chief sub-granted some of their lands to lesser lords and knights, who in turn often further subdivided them. The lords seized the opportunity to exact relief from inheriting vassals, and by the end of the twelfth century this payment had been widely fixed at a year’s revenue of the fief. Magna Carta set a barony’s relief at one hundred pounds, and that of a knight’s fee (fief) at a maximum of five pounds.

  In case of a minor succeeding to a fief, the lord in England (and Normandy) enjoyed the revenues of the fief until the heir was of age, with only the obligation of protecting him. Elsewhere an older relative was commonly assigned as protector.

  “Alienation,” or sale, of a fief ran counter to the whole sense of the feudal system, with its hereditary relationships, its emphasis on military-style loyalty, and its religious sanctions. Yet inevitably a commerce in fiefs developed. Inheritance might lead to holdings that could be consolidated by judicious trading. Or a poor knight might simply be desperate for money. By the twelfth century, transactions in fiefs were a recognized part of the system, with the lord merely taking care to be formally included in the document to protect his own rights against erosion. In 1159 Thierry of Alsace, the count of Flanders, issued a charter respecting the trade of a piece of land by one of his vassals for a larger tract, presumably of equal value, belonging to the church of St. Nicholas of Furnes:

  It is my wish that the following facts be known, that 451/2 measures of land held of me in fief by Leonius and of the latter by his brother Guy were resigned by Guy to Leonius and by the latter to me, and that I have now given them to the church of St. Nicholas of Furnes to possess freely and for ever. And in exchange for them I have received from the church 91 measures of land which I have given to the said Leonius to be held in fief of me, and he has handed them over to his brother to hold them in fief of him.

  Concern over the growing transformation of the feudal relationship was expressed by Holy Roman Emperor Frederick Barbarossa in 1158:

  We have heard bitter complaints from the princes of Italy…that the fiefs which their vassals hold from them are either used as security for loans or sold without the permission of their lords…whereby they lose the service owed, and the honor of the Empire and the strength of our army is diminished.

  Having taken the advice of bishops, dukes, margraves, counts…and other leading men, we decree, God willing, this permanent law: No one may sell or pledge the whole or part of a fief or alienate it in any way without the consent of his lord from whom he is known to hold the fief…

  We also forbid those clever tricks by which fiefs are sold and money is received…under color of a pretended enfeoffment [granting of a fief]…In such illegal contracts, both seller and buyer shall lose the fief, which then will revert to the lord. The notary who knowingly draws up such a contract shall lose his office…and have his hand cut off.

  But the trend was too deeply embedded in the resurgent European economy to be checked. By the thirteenth century, with commerce flourishing, money abundant, and a new-rich class constantly growing, fiefs were bought and sold, except in form, like any other property. A baron whose family had held land for hundreds of years might, coming on hard times, sell some or all to a city burgher who, having made a fortune in banking or the cloth trade, wished to invest in land to protect his capital and gain entry to the aristocracy.

  Another problem developing for the feudal system in the later Middle Ages was that of multiple fiefs, automatically demanding multiple homage and so destroying the ideological foundation of the system, the sworn loyalty of a subordinate to a chief. When Henry I, son of William the Conqueror, succeeded in purchasing the vassalage of Count Robert of Flanders, Count Robert spelled out the disingenuous means by which he would fulfill the agreement at the expense of his true feudal lord, the king of France:

  If King Philip plans to attack King Henry in England, Count Robert, if he can, will persuade King Philip to stay at home…And if King Philip invades England and brings Count Robert with him, the count shall bring as few men with him as he can without forfeiting his fief to the king of France.

  …After Count Robert is summoned by the king of England, he shall get a thousand knights together as quickly as possible in his ports, ready to cross to England. And the king shall find…enough ships for these knights, each knight having three horses.

  …And if King Henry wishes Count Robert to help him in Normandy or in Maine…the Count shall go there with a thousand knights and shall aid King Henry faithfully, as his ally and lord from whom he holds a fief.

  …And if at this time, King Philip shall attack King Henry in Normandy, Count Robert shall go with King Philip with only twenty knights, and all his other knights shall remain with King Henry.

  The king promises to protect Count Robert in life and limb…and give as a fief to Count Robert 500 pounds of English money every year.

  In other words, Count Robert was to receive a “money fief” of 500 pounds a year to fight on King Henry’s side with 1,000 knights, or, if he was simultaneously summoned by King Philip, to fight on both sides at once, taking the field in person for Philip, but with only 20 knights, while sending 980 knights to fight for Henry.

  The Count of Flanders was deliberately placing himself in an awkward position in order to profit from a handsome money payment, but many lords found themselves in similar situations merely through their inheritances. In the thirteenth century John of Toul had four lords, and foresaw a variety of complications of loyalty that he tried to meet:

  If it should happen that the Count of Grandpré should be at war with the Countess and Count of Champagne for his own personal grievances, I will personally go to the assistance of the Count of Grandpré and will send to the Countess and Count of Champagne, if they summon me, the knights I owe for the fief which I hold of them. But if the Count of Grandpré shall make w
ar on the Countess and Count of Champagne on behalf of his friends and not for his own personal grievances, I shall serve in person with the Countess and Count of Champagne and I will send one knight to the Count of Grandpré…

  The significance of such dilemmas as those of Count Robert and John of Toul was not the problems created for the vassals by multiple loyalty but the freedom of choice conferred. A baron with multiple loyalties could always find a solution that met with his own self-interest. Basically, the baron enjoying a fief consisting of a strong castle and broad manors had a powerful position for bargaining with anyone. With his revenues from fines, tolls, taxes, and fees, he could maintain a high degree of independence, regardless of how lawyers described his situation.

  The most powerful barons, holders of castles and fiefs from a number of lords, were the strong men of the thirteenth century, able to resist kings and emperors. Even the powerful king of England had to acknowledge their rights in Magna Carta.

  William Marshal was universally praised by contemporaries for his “loyalty,” that is, his unwavering fidelity to the obligations between vassal and lord, even when it came into conflict with his relations with the king. William stuck to his lord, young Henry, eldest son of Henry II, when the young man rebelled against his father; he refused to do homage to Richard the Lionhearted for the Irish lands that he held of Richard’s brother John; and in 1205 he declined to fight for John against Philip Augustus, to whom he had done homage for his Norman lands. Marshal’s old-fashioned feudal code, however, was beginning to come into conflict with the new stirrings of nationalism. In 1217, when as regent for Henry III he concluded a lenient peace with the invading forces of Prince Louis of France and the rebel English barons, he had to resist strong pressures from those who wanted to fight on in hopes of recovering Normandy for the English crown. While William would doubtless have been happy to recover Normandy for his sovereign, he regarded the question as academic as far as his own baronial interests were concerned, because he saw no reason why a man should not hold lands simultaneously of the king of England and the king of France. Despite his famous loyalty, “sovereignty” was to him a feebler, less material concept than “lordship.” A new day was dawning, however, and emphasis shifting. After William’s death, Henry criticized his moderation, and much later, in 1241, even went so far as to condemn it to one of William’s sons as treachery.