These tenants-in-chief have on their estates a number of sub-tenants,
who are bound to them by similar contracts and a similar personal
relation. The homage of the sub-tenant to his immediate lord ought to be
qualified by a reservation of the allegiance which all subjects owe to
the King. Whether this reservation shall be made or, when made, shall
have any practical consequences, will depend upon the King's resources
and personality. Where effective, it means that he can claim from the
sub-tenants the discharge of certain national duties, can call on them
for military service, can judge them in his court, can tax them with the
consent of his council, that is of their lords; on the other hand, it
means that these sub-tenants may not allege the commands of their lord
as an excuse for making war upon the King or committing any breach of
the public peace. Where the general duty of allegiance has lapsed into
oblivion, the tenant-in-chief is in all but name a dependent king, and
the feudal state becomes a federation under a hereditary president, who
occasionally arbitrates between the members of the federation and
occasionally leads them out to war.

The other members of the feudal state group themselves or are forcibly
grouped under the rule of different persons in the feudal hierarchy. In
the open country the soil is partly tilled by small free-holders, who
pay to this or that lord a rent in money, kind, or services. Like the
feudal sub-tenants these free-holders are, for most purposes, subject to
the jurisdiction of their lord; though in the well organised state the
royal judges protect them against the grosser forms of violence. But the
greater part of the land is divided between servile village-communities,
who give up perforce a large proportion of their working-days to the
cultivation of the lord's demesne. The tendency of feudal law is to
treat these peasants as slaves, to deny them the assistance of the royal