conquered tribe, while the freemen of the conquering tribe, the “gentle-men,” 62 or men of the Gens, were the holders of the land, under some tenure or other. The irresistible tendency of the new society, therefore, whatever circumstances it had to deal with, was towards a hierarchical system, under which, while no man was positively owned by another, no man was free of service to another; even the serfs, the lowest rank, had certain rights, the chief of which was the use of a portion of the Manor; the right of livelihood, in fact, was not withheld from them, in theory at least. The theory of the feudal system is an unbroken chain of service from the serf up to the kaiser, and of protection from the kaiser down to the serf. It recognised no absolute ownership of land. God was the owner of the earth, the kaiser and his kings were His viceregents there, who might devolve their authority to their vassals, and they in turn to theirs, and so on till it reached the serf; the difference being in the quality of the service, the men of the conquering tribe paying none but military duties of some kind, while the serf paid productive labour. Except the right of livelihood 63 guaranteed by custom, the latter had in general no rights, but his lord, nevertheless, was bound to protect him against wrongs from outside. And the theory of the system at least invested the lord with a quasi-religious character.
The change to this system was much furthered by the domination of the Teutonic races in Italy, France, and Spain, so that the old Roman, or Roman provincial slave-owning noble, was gradually superseded by the barbarian lord of the manor, who naturally carried with him the custom of the tribe, developing little by little into the complete feudal system. This was helped on by the break-up of the world-market of ancient civilisation; which break-up brought about at last conditions under which the land was the only source of livelihood, and, as we have seen, was cultivated mainly for the behoof of the lords by a population of serfs and of tenants in villeinage,—although there were everywhere in Teutonic countries remains of the old holding by the freemen of communal lands.