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By a process called "subinfeudation," lands were granted in parcels to other men by those who received them from the king or otherwise, and by these lower landholders to others again; and as the first recipient became the vassal of the king and the suzerain of the man who held next below him, there was created a regular descending scale of such vassalage and suzerainty, in which each man's allegiance was directly due to his feudal lord, and not to the king himself.
The bearer of the Bull, John of Salisbury, carried back from Rome a gold ring, set with an emerald stone, as a token of Adrian's friendship, or it may be, his subinfeudation of Henry. As a title, however powerless in modern times such a Bull might prove, it was a formidable weapon of invasion with a Catholic people, in the twelfth century.
One who held a fief might himself become a lord by granting a portion of his fief to a vassal upon terms similar to those upon which he held of his lord or suzerain. This was called subinfeudation, and the vassal of a vassal was called a subvassal or subtenant. There was still another way in which the number of vassals was increased.
The bearer of the Bull, John of Salisbury, carried back from Rome a gold ring, set with an emerald stone, as a token of Adrian's friendship, or it may be, his subinfeudation of Henry. As a title, however powerless in modern times such a Bull might prove, it was a formidable weapon of invasion with a Catholic people, in the twelfth century.
The terms which were granted her, as they are made known in a letter from Lanfranc to William, are especially interesting as giving us one of the earliest glimpses we have of that extensive dividing out of land to under-vassals, the process of subinfeudation, which must already have taken place on the estates granted to the king's tenants in chief.
He prohibited further subinfeudation by enacting that when an estate was sold, the purchaser should become the vassal of the vendor's lord and not of the vendor himself; and the social pyramid was thus rendered more stable, because its base was broadened instead of its height being increased.
This prohibition of further subinfeudation stopped the creation of new manors and prevented the rivetting of new links in the feudal chain, which were the necessary condition of its strength. Though passed at the request of the barons, it was a measure much more helpful to the king than to his vassals. It stood to the barons as the statute of Mortmain stood to the Church.
In later times this feudal distribution of estates had greatly increased as the bulk of the nobles followed the king's example and bound their tenants to themselves by a similar process of subinfeudation.
Besides the National lands, there were lands reserved to the Crown, which, under the name of benefices, were bestowed upon personal followers of the king, held more or less on military tenure; and the king's vassals acquired vassals for themselves by a similar process of subinfeudation.
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