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Miesko, their leader, was repelled, and obliged to do homage for his crown, and to give up Lusatia, which had been received by Boleslav from Henry II. In Italy, Conrad issued an edict making the smaller fiefs there hereditary. He seems to have designed to do away with dukes, and to make the allegiance of all vassals to the king immediate.
They avoided any interregnum by having their sons crowned in their lifetime. So with the great fiefs of the crown. The notion of kingship as an office conferred by the nation, of a duchy or county as an office held under the king, was still fully alive in England; in Gaul it was forgotten.
After that it had been counted as one of the fiefs comprised in the possessions of the Pentapolis; and later on, when the Saracens ravaged the shores of the Adriatic, they had come up the Valdedera and pillaged and burned again.
THE GERMAN KINGDOM. With the death of Louis the Child the German branch of the Carlovingian line was extinguished. The Germans had to choose a king from another family. Germany, like France, was now composed of great fiefs. But there were two parties, differing from one another in their character and manners.
Most of the new Norman countships and dukedoms thus created in Italy had declared themselves fiefs of the Church; and the successor of the Apostle might well hope, by aid of the Norman priest-knights, to extend his sovereignty over Italy, and then dictate to the kings beyond the Alps. The aid of Hildebrand in behalf of William's claims was obtained at once by Lanfranc.
Everyone possessing a fief of 10,000 koku or upwards was called a daimyo. These were again subdivided into three classes according to the sizes of their fiefs. Nevertheless, the rules of etiquette were strictly observed by provincial magnates attending Court functions.
Since Richard I had restored his independence to William the Lion, in 1189, the question of the overlordship had lain almost entirely dormant. On John's succession, William had done homage "saving his own right", but whether the homage was for Scotland or solely for his English fiefs was not clear.
Against this institution the nobles of both kingdoms were most violently opposed, regarding it as the complete destroyer, which in reality it was, of all their feudal privileges, and taking from them the long possessed right of trying their own fiefs, and the mischievous facility of concealing their own criminals.
Mr. Tooting had not exaggerated the tumult and affright at the Pelican Hotel. The private telephone in Number Seven was busy all evening, while more or less prominent gentlemen were using continually the public ones in the boxes in the reading room downstairs. The Feudal system was showing what it could do, and the word had gone out to all the holders of fiefs that the vassals should be summoned.
Let him keep the land who can, by the right of the most strong. For all these things the emperor menaces us very grievously. I pray God that he may do us no harm. Our fiefs and goods he promises to take from us, and lead us captive in bonds to Rome. We care not overmuch for this, and are not greatly frighted at his words.
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