Others have maintained that, so far from feudalism being introduced
from Normandy into England, it would be truer to say that feudalism was
introduced from England into Normandy, and thence spread throughout
France. These speculations serve, at any rate, to show that feudalism
was a very vague and elusive system, consisting of generalizations from
a vast number of conflicting data. Spelman was the first to attempt to
reduce these data to a system, and his successors tended to forget more
and more the exceptions to his rules. It is now clear that much that we
call feudal existed in England before the Norman Conquest; that much of
it was not developed until after the Norman period; and that at no time
did feudalism exist as a completely rounded and logical system outside
historical and legal text-books.

The political and social arrangements summed up in the phrase related
primarily to the land and the conditions of service upon which it was
held. Commerce and manufactures, and the organization of towns which
grew out of them, were always exceptions to the feudal system; the
monarchy saved itself, its sheriffs, and the shires to some extent from
feudal influence; and soon it set to work to redeem the administration
of justice from its clutches. In all parts of the country, moreover,
there was land, the tenure of which was never feudalized. Generally,
however, the theory was applied that all land was held directly or
indirectly from the king, who was the sole owner of it, that there was
no land without a lord, and that from every acre of land some sort of
service was due to some one or other. A great deal of it was held by
military service; the tenant-in-chief of this land, who might be either
a layman or an ecclesiastic, had to render this military service to the
king, while the sub-tenants had to render it to the tenants-in-chief.
When the tenant died his land reverted to the lord, who only granted it
to the heir after the payment of a year's revenue, and on condition of