the serfs--there can be no doubt that its effect upon the higher
classes was very great. It added to the existing FEUDALISM--the
system of Baronage, with its concomitants of castellated residences
filled with armed men. It led to frequent contests between
neighboring lords, in which the liberty and rights of the FREEMEN
were imperilled. It also eventuated in the formation of a distinct
order-the peerage--and for a time the constitutional influence of
the assembled people, the FOLC-GEMOT, was overborne.

The principal Norman chieftains were barons in their own country,
and they retained that position in England, but their holdings in
both were feudal, not hereditary. When the Crown, originally
elective, became hereditary, the barons sought to have their
possessions governed by the same rule, to remove them from the
class of TERRAREGIS (FOLC-LAND), and to convert them into chartered
land. Being gifts from the monarch, he had the right to direct the
descent, and all charters which gave land to a man and his heirs,
made each of them only a tenant for life; the possessor was bound
to hand over the estate undivided to the heir, and he could neither
give, sell, nor bequeath it. The land was BENEFICIA, just as
appointments in the Church, and reverted, as they do, to the patron
to be re-granted. They were held upon military service, and the
major barons, adopting the Saxon title Earl, claimed to be PEERS of
the monarch, and were called to the councils of the state as
barons-by-tenure. In reply to a QUO WARRANTO, issued to the Earl
of Surrey, in the reign of Edward I., he asserted that his
ancestors had assisted William in gaining England, and were equally
entitled to a share of the spoils. "It was," said he, "by their
swords that his ancestors had obtained their lands, and that by his
he would maintain his rights." The same monarch required the Earls