the same service being rendered. If the heir were a minor, and thus
incapable of rendering military service, the land was retained by the
lord until the heir came of age; heiresses could only marry with the
lord's leave some one who could perform his services. The tenant had
further to attend the lord's court--whether the lord was his king or
not--submit to his jurisdiction, and pay aids to the lord whenever he
was captured and needed ransom, when his eldest son was made a knight,
and when his eldest daughter married.

Other land was held by churchmen on condition of praying or singing for
the soul of the lord, and the importance of this tenure was that it was
subject to the church courts and not to those of the king. Some was
held in what was called free socage, the terms of which varied; but its
distinguishing feature seems to have been that the service, which was
not military, was fixed, and that when it was performed the lord had no
further hold on the tenant. The great mass of the population were,
however, villeins, who were always at the beck and call of their lords,
and had to do as much ploughing, sowing, and reaping of his land as he
could make them. Theoretically they were his goods and chattels, who
could obtain no redress against any one except in the lord's court, and
none at all against him. They could not leave their land, nor marry,
nor enter the church, nor go to school without his leave. All these
forms of tenure and kinds of service, however, shaded off into one
another, so that it is impossible to draw hard and fast lines between
them. Any one, moreover, might hold different lands on different terms
of service, so that there was little of caste in the English system; it
was upon the land and not the person that the service was imposed; and
William's Domesday Book was not a record of the ranks and classes of
the people, but a survey of the land, detailing the rents and service
due from every part.