lord; his son succeeded him by allodial right. The relief was paid by
the heir before he could obtain his father's lands; between the death of
the father and livery of seisin to the son the right of the "overlord"
had entered; the ownership was to a certain extent resumed, and the
succession of the heir took somewhat of the character of a new grant.
The right of wardship also became in the same way a reëntry, by the
lord, on the profits of the estate of the minor, instead of being, as
before, a protection, by the head of the kin, of the indefeasible rights
of the heir, which it was the duty of the whole community to maintain.

There can be no doubt that the military tenure--the most prominent
feature of historical feudalism--was itself introduced by the same
gradual process which we have assumed in the case of the feudal usages
in general. We have no light on the point from any original grant made
by the Conqueror to a lay follower, but judging by the grants made to
the churches we cannot suppose it probable that such gifts were made on
any expressed condition, or accepted with a distinct pledge to provide a
certain contingent of knights for the king's service. The obligation of
national defence was incumbent, as of old, on all land-owners, and the
customary service of one fully armed man for each five hides of land was
probably the rate at which the newly endowed follower of the king would
be expected to discharge his duty. The wording of the _Domesday_ survey
does not imply that in this respect the new military service differed
from the old; the land is marked out, not into knights' fees, but into
hides, and the number of knights to be furnished by a particular
feudatory would be ascertained by inquiring the number of hides that he
held, without apportioning the particular acres that were to support the
particular knight.

It would undoubtedly be on the estates of the lay vassals that a more