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CHAPTER III. THE MEDIEVAL SYSTEM. The Norman Conquest was the means of introducing great and systematic changes in the government and laws of England, and not least in the law governing the tenure of land. If we are to fix a date, however, to which to refer the active carrying out of these changes, we must look nearly a century onwards from the Conquest itself. It was the general and uniform jurisdiction of the King's Courts, represented by his judges who regularly went round the country, that achieved the work of breaking up the diversity of local customs and fixing the new pattern of English institutions. This ' jurisdiction was put into effectual working order under Henry II., and feudalism was at its most perfect stage in England in the first half of the thirteenth century. From the latter part of that century onwards the system underwent a series of grave modifications. Grave as these were, however, the main lines of the feudal theory were always ostensibly preserved. And to this day, though the really characteristic incidents of the feudal tenures have disappeared or left only the faintest of traces, the scheme of our land laws can, as to its form, be described only as a modified feudalism. In order to do justice to the feudal system we must consider it not only in its proper shape but with regard i to its proper and original purpose. From the point of view of agricultural economy there is nothing to be said for it, except that the system of common ownership and cultivation which it superseded was probably still worse. From any modern point of view the surviving peculiarities of feudal law, such as primogeniture, can be defended only by those ingenious arguments which, beingmanifestly begotten of afterthought, appear convincing only to persons who need no c...
