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Feudalism, also known as the feudal system, was a combination of legal, economic, military, cultural, and political customs that flourished in medieval Europe from the 9th to 15th centuries. Broadly defined, it was a way of structuring society around relationships derived from the holding of land in exchange for service or labour.
A fief (/ f iː f /; Latin: feudum) was a central element in medieval contracts based on feudal law. It consisted of a form of property holding or other rights granted by an overlord to a vassal, who held it in fealty or "in fee" in return for a form of feudal allegiance, services or payments.
In the Middle Ages, especially under the European feudal system, feoffment / ˈ f ɛ f m ən t / or enfeoffment was the deed by which a person was given land in exchange for a pledge of service.
The feudal system, in which the land was owned by a monarch, who in exchange for homage and military service granted its use to tenants-in-chief, who in their turn granted its use to sub-tenants in return for further services, gave rise to several terms, particular to Britain, for subdivisions of land which are no longer in wide use.
Feudalism took root in England with William of Normandy's conquest in 1066. Over a century earlier, before the unification of England, the seven relatively small individual English kingdoms, known collectively as the Heptarchy , maintained an unsteady relationship of raids, ransoms, and truces with Vikings from Denmark and Normandy from around ...
A vassal swears the oath of fealty before Count Palatine Frederick I of the Palatinate.. A vassal [1] or liege subject [2] is a person regarded as having a mutual obligation to a lord or monarch, in the context of the feudal system in medieval Europe.
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Fealty and homage were key elements of European feudalism. Fealty is distinct from other parts of the homage ceremony, and is usually used only to refer to that part of the ceremony where a vassal swore to be a good vassal to his lord.