contra inimicos et alienigenas defendere." The terms of this law (as ſir Martin Wright has obſerved[1]) are plainly feodal: for, firſt, it requires the oath of fealty, which made in the ſenſe of the feudiſts every man that took it a tenant or vaſal; and, ſecondly, the tenants obliged themſelves to defend their lord's territories and titles againſt all enemies foreign and domeſtic. But what puts the matter out of diſpute is another law of the ſame collection[2], which exacts the performance of the military feodal ſervices, as ordained by the general council. "Omnes comites, et barones, et milites, et ſervientes, et univerſi liberi homines totius regni noſtri praedicti, habeant et teneant ſe ſemper bene in armis et in equis, ut decet et oportet: et ſint ſemper prompti et bene parati ad ſervitium ſuum integrum nobis explendum et peragendum cum opus fuerit; ſecundum quod nobis debent de feodis et tenementis ſuis de jure facere; et ſicut illis ſtatuimus per commune concilium totius regni noſtri praedicti."
This new polity therefore ſeems not to have been impoſed by the conqueror, but nationally and freely adopted hy the general aſſembly of the whole realm, in the ſame manner as other nations of Europe had before adopted it, upon the ſame principle of ſelf-ſecurity. And, in particular, they had the recent example of the French nation before their eyes; which had gradually ſurrendered up all it's allodial or free lands into the king's hands, who reſtored them to the owners as a beneficium or feud, to be held to them and ſuch of their heirs as they previouſly nominated to the king: and thus by degrees all the allodial eſtates of France were converted into feuds, and the freemen became the vaſals of the crown[3]. The only difference between this change of tenures in France, and that in England, was, that the former was effected gradually, by the conſent of private perſons; the latter was done at once, all over England, by the common conſent of the nation[4].
