eserving his lands and honor with all fidelity, and defend him against
his enemies." But this injunction is little more than the demand of the
oath of allegiance which had been taken to the Anglo-Saxon kings and is
here required not of every feudal dependent of the King, but of every
freeman or freeholder whatsoever.

In that famous council of Salisbury of 1086, which was summoned
immediately after the making of the _Domesday_ survey, we learn from the
_Chronicle_ that there came to the King "all his witan, and all the
landholders of substance in England whose vassals soever they were, and
they all submitted to him, and became his men and swore oaths of
allegiance that they would be faithful to him against all others." In
this act have been seen the formal acceptance and date of the
introduction of feudalism, but it has a very different meaning. The oath
described is the oath of allegiance, combined with the act of homage,
and obtained from all land-owners, whoever their feudal lord might be.
It is a measure of precaution taken against the disintegrating power of
feudalism, providing a direct tie between the sovereign and all
freeholders which no inferior relation existing between them and the
mesne lords would justify them in breaking. The real importance of the
passage as bearing on the date of the introduction of feudal tenure is
merely that it shows the system to have already become consolidated; all
the land-owners of the kingdom had already become, somehow or other,
vassals, either of the king or of some tenant under him. The lesson may
be learned from the fact of the _Domesday_ survey.

The introduction of such a system would necessarily have effects far
wider than the mere modification of the law of tenure; it might be
regarded as a means of consolidating and concentrating the whole
machinery of government; legislation, taxation, judicature, and military
defence were all capable of being organized on the feudal principle, and
might have been so had the moral and political results been in harmony
with the legal. But its tendency when applied to governmental machinery
is disruptive. The great feature of the Conqueror's policy is his defeat
of that tendency. Guarding against it he obtained recognition as the
King of the nation and, so far as he could understand them and the
attitude of the nation allowed, he maintained the usages of the nation.
He kept up the popular institutions of the hundred court and the shire