estowed upon personal
followers of the king, held more or less on military tenure; and the
king's vassals acquired vassals for themselves by a similar process of
subinfeudation. On the other hand freeholders inclined, for the sake of
protection, to commend themselves, as the phrase was, to their stronger
neighbours and so to assume the relation of vassal to liege lord. The
essential principle was a mutual contract of support and fidelity,
confirmed by the ceremonies of homage, fealty, and investiture, which
conferred upon the lord the right to various reliefs, fines, and rights
capable of conversion into money payments.

Gentility, now hereditary, was derived from the tenure of land; the idea
of it was emphasised by the adoption of surnames and armorial bearings.
A close aristocracy was created, somewhat modified by the right claimed
by the king of creating nobles. Prelates and abbots were in the same
position as feudal nobles, though the duty of personal service was in
many cases commuted for an equivalent. Below the gentle class were
freemen, and the remainder of the population were serfs or villeins. It
was not impossible for villeins to purchase freedom. In France the
privileges possessed by the vassals of the Crown were scarcely
consistent with the sovereignty. Such were the rights of coining money,
of private war, and of immunity from taxation.

Such legislation as there was appears to have been effected by the king,
supported by a Royal Council or a more general assembly of the barons.
It was only by degrees that the Royal ordinances came to be current in
the fiefs of the greater vassals. It was Philip the Fair who introduced
the general assembly of the Three Estates. This assembly very soon
claimed the right of granting and refusing money as well as of bringing
forward grievances. The kings of France, however, sought to avoid
convocation of the States General by obtaining grants from provincial
assemblies of the Three Estates.

The old system of jurisdiction by elected officers was superseded by
feudal jurisdiction, having three degrees of power, and acting according
to recognised local customs, varied by the right to ordeal by combat.
The Crown began to encroach on these feudal jurisdictions by the
establishment of Royal courts of appeal; but there also subsisted a
supreme Court of Peers to whom were added the king's household officers.
The peers ceased by degrees to attend this court, while the Crown
multip