or civil war to serve under him (S122). In this most important
respect the great landholders of England differed from those of the
Continent, where the lesser tenants were bound only to serve their own
masters, and might, and in fact often did, take up arms against the
King. William removed this serious defect. By doing so he did the
country an incalculable service. He completed the organization of
feudal land tenure, but he never established the Continental system of
feudal government. (See, too, the Constitutional Summary in the
Appendix, p. v, S6.)

[2] See the Constitutional Summary in the Appendix, pp. iii-v, SS5, 6.


The building is Ludlow Castle, Shropshire. Manor houses proper, as
distinct from castles, existed in England at least from the thirteenth
century

(See Gibbin's "Industrial History of England" and Cheyney's
"Industrial and Social England")

The inhabitants of a manor, or the estate of a lord, were: (1) the
lord himself, or his representative, who held his estate on condition
of furnishing the King a certain number of armed men (SS113, 150); (2)
the lord's personal followers, who lived with him, and usually a
parish priest or a number of monks; (3) the farm laborers, or
villeins, bound to the soil, who could not leave the manor, were not
subject to military duty, and who paid rent in labor or produce; there
might also be a few actual slaves, but this last class gradually rose
to the partial freedom of villenage; (4) certain free tenants or
"sokemen," who paid a fixed rent either in money or service and were