SQA Higher History

Between the 11th and 14th centuries the kingdoms of England and Scotland were organised around the holding of land. Almost everybody's position in society was defined by who held land from whom and what they owed in return, and the church, which was itself a great landholder, shaped belief, government and daily life alongside the king and the nobles.

The nature of feudal society

In theory the king owned all the land of his kingdom. He kept a share of it for himself, the royal demesne, and granted the rest to tenants-in-chief in return for loyalty and service, usually military. In England this arrangement was built up after the Norman Conquest of 1066, when William I gave land to his followers and to the church. In Scotland it spread more slowly, and it was above all in the reign of David I (1124–53) that the king began to grant land to knights, many of them of Anglo-Norman origin, on feudal terms. The tenants-in-chief then granted parts of their land to lesser tenants, who granted parts to others in turn, so that a chain of obligation ran from the king down to the peasant who ploughed the field.

The landed classes

The landed classes were the nobility (barons and earls), the bishops and abbots who held church lands, and the knights beneath them. Barons held large estates, often scattered across several counties, and each was expected to provide the king with a fixed number of knights for a set period each year. In return the baron received protection, justice from the king's court and the right to profit from his estates. The great landholders were also the king's chief advisers, sat on his council, and ran their own lands as small lordships with courts, castles and followers. They gave a king strength when they supported him, and they were also the most serious threat to royal authority if they did not, because they had the men, money and fortresses to resist. Much of the history of medieval kingship is a history of the king's attempts to keep the landed classes loyal and within the law.

The peasant classes

The great majority of the population were peasants, and most of them worked the land of a lord. Their condition varied. Villeins in England (known as nativi or bondmen in Scotland) were unfree: they were tied to the manor, could not leave without the lord's permission, owed labour on the lord's own fields at set times of the year, paid fines on the marriage of a daughter or on inheriting a holding, and used the lord's mill and oven for a fee. Free peasants paid rent and had more freedom to leave, and at the bottom, cottars held a small cottage and perhaps a patch of land and worked for others for wages. Lords depended on peasant labour for their income, and peasants depended on the lord's protection and on the land he allowed them to hold. They had little say in their own governance, but the village community, working its open fields together under the custom of the manor, provided a form of cooperation within which peasants could defend their customary rights against a lord who asked too much.

The role of the king

The king was the head of the feudal pyramid. He raised armies, dispensed justice, defended the realm, made grants of land and rewarded loyalty. A strong king controlled his barons, kept the peace and dealt fairly with his tenants; a weak one allowed the nobility to fight among themselves, as happened in England in the civil war between Stephen and Matilda in the 1140s. The king also depended on the church for administration: the clergy, who could read and write, staffed his chancery and his courts. Kings were crowned and anointed by bishops, and a king who defied the church could find his authority challenged, as Henry II did over the murder of Thomas Becket in 1170.

The changing role of knights

In the 11th and 12th centuries knights were the military backbone of the feudal system. A knight held land, or was maintained by a lord, in return for fighting on horseback for forty days a year, and he also served as a garrison in his lord's castle. They were expensive, because a horse, armour and weapons cost a great deal, and over time kings found that campaigns lasted longer than forty days and that paid soldiers were more reliable. The payment of scutage, a money tax instead of service, grew common from the 12th century, and the king used it to hire mercenaries. By the 13th and 14th centuries many knights had become local landowners who served as sheriffs, tax collectors and judges, and who sat in Parliament as representatives of their county. The title of knight became a mark of social status as much as a military role, and some men who held enough land to be knights avoided the cost and the duties by paying fines. A knight's loyalty also increasingly went to a lord who paid him a fee, rather than to the lord from whom he held land, so that the old chain of obligation weakened.

The role of the clergy

The clergy formed a separate estate with its own courts, and they had a place in every community. Bishops and abbots were great landholders, with the same duties as barons to provide knights, and they were often among the king's chief ministers. Parish priests were in daily contact with ordinary people.

The role of the church in medieval society

The church was the only organisation that covered the whole of western Christendom, and it was led by the Pope in Rome. In each kingdom it had bishops, who ran dioceses, and a system of parishes.

The secular and the regular church

The secular church was made up of the clergy who lived in the world among the laity: the bishops, cathedral clergy and parish priests. They conducted services, administered the sacraments such as baptism, marriage and the last rites, collected tithes, and ran the church courts. The regular church was made up of those who lived under a rule (regula): monks, canons and nuns in monasteries and priories, and later friars. Benedictines, Cistercians and Augustinians were among the orders found in both kingdoms. Monks prayed for the souls of the living and the dead, copied manuscripts, offered hospitality, cared for the sick and the poor, and managed large estates. David I founded abbeys such as Kelso, Melrose and Holyrood, and settled monks from English and French houses there, which was one way in which he brought new people and new ideas into Scotland.

Religious, political, social and economic roles

Religious role

The church taught that salvation depended on the sacraments and on good works, and it was the only road to the afterlife. Fear of hell and purgatory, kept alive by sermons and by wall paintings of the Last Judgement, gave the clergy great influence over people's behaviour, and many people left land or money to the church so that prayers would be said for them after death.

Political role

Bishops sat on the king's council and acted as his advisers, ambassadors and judges, and men trained as clergy ran the royal administration. The church could also be a rival to the Crown. It claimed that clergy should be tried in church courts rather than royal ones, and the question of how far kings could control appointments to bishoprics produced long conflicts. In England these included the quarrels between Henry II and Becket and between John and the Pope. The church could also support a king: the coronation oath and anointing gave kings a sacred authority.

Social role

The church provided hospitals, schools, relief for the poor and a place for travellers to stay. It marked the stages of life with its sacraments and set the calendar through its festivals and holy days. Its buildings were the centre of village and town life, and the parish church was often the only large stone building most people ever entered.

Economic role

The church was among the largest landowners of the period. It collected the tithe, a tenth of the produce or income of its parishioners, and gifts of land from the faithful. Monastic houses, especially the Cistercians, made large amounts of money from sheep farming and the wool trade, and they cleared woodland and drained marsh to create new farmland. Church courts and fees also brought in income, and the Pope claimed taxes from the church in each country.

The church's wealth was also a source of criticism by the 14th century. Critics, including the English priest John Wycliffe, argued that the clergy were too rich and too worldly, and that argument fed into the wider questioning of authority in the later Middle Ages.