These tribunals were subsequently
called the Baron's Court, or Court of the Manor, and were the only
tribunals of justice in the earlier period of the feudal society. The
Lord presided, and was assisted by his principal tenants or vassals. The
Baron or Manorial Court was of the utmost importance in those rude times,
for there were recorded all the transactions relating to the land within
the manor; and there assembled all the tenants who had rent, suit, or
service to pay or render, or who had complaint to make of disturbance,
injury, or grievance, from a fellow tenant, or vassal. The decision of
this court was final, the disobedience of which was punished by heavy
fines, forfeitures, and disqualifications.

We thus see that the feudal society arose not more from choice than from
the necessity and circumstances of the time. At this unsettled and
warlike period, protection was required for the tribe or clan from the
enmity or rapacity of neighbouring hordes. The tribe therefore united
under one common chief to defend their own territory and people, and when
necessary, to make war on a neighbouring or distant community. Rule and
internal government were also necessary for the comfort and security of
the tribe itself. These were therefore the circumstances which induced,
or rather compelled the various tribes or hordes of the barbarian
population of mediaeval Europe to enter the feudal society. And in this
manner sprung up, soon after the dissolution of the Roman Empire, that
vast net-work of feudal society, which eventually extended itself from
Cape Trafalgar to the Euxine Sea, and from the Gulf of Bothnia to the
Pillars of Hercules.

It was among the vast forests and plains of Russia, Hungary, Germany, and
France, and by a people just emerging from barbarism, that the feudal
system arose, and that about the fifth century of the Christian era;
thence it was carried by the Continental invaders into their newly
conquered territories. But in no country was the system more
predominant, than in Gaul, or France, whence it was carried by their Duke
of Normandy, or our William the Conqueror, after the battle of Hastings
in the eleventh century into Britain, and was more rigorously established
here for the protection of the conquerors and the subjection of the
native races than it had ever been in Normandy itself. The Conqueror
parcelled out all the richest parts of the territory among seven hundred
of his Captains or wa