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Updated: April 30, 2025
By conquest, purchase, or marriage, they increased the number of their fiefs. By promptly destroying the castles of those who refused to meet their obligations, they secured their control over their vassals. By granting fiefs of land or money to subvassals, they gained new dependents. Of these subnations none was more important or interesting than Normandy.
Lastly, the bishop was usually a feudal lord, with the obligations that that implied. He might have vassals and subvassals, and often was himself a vassal, not only of the king but also of some neighboring lord. As one reads through the archives of a bishopric, it is hard to tell whether the bishop should be called, first and foremost, a churchman or a feudal lord.
These words, "in fee, with right of inheritance," leave no doubt that the great vassals of the crown were absolute proprietors, and that all their subvassals had the same right of holding in perpetuity. The estate, however, reverted to the crown if the race of the original feoffee became extinct, and in cases, also, of felony and treason.
Next to them came an intermediate class of nobles of the second order, generally subvassals of the king, and below these the simple knights. The great complexity of the feudal system of land tenure made it necessary for the feudal lords to keep careful registers of their possessions.
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