...survey called Doomsday Book! which was finished in the next year: and in the latter end of that very year the king was attended by all his nobility at...their lands to the yoke of military tenure, became king's vassals, and did homage and fealty to his person." Thus was the feudal system (with all its...

...imposition of feudal tenures by the Normans. 'All the principal landholders of the kingdom', he noted, 'submitted their lands to the yoke of military tenure,...the King's vassals and did homage and fealty to his person'. From that relationship was born the essential fiction of the feudal tenure system: that the...