Lord's Rewards
Benjamin Thompson reviews two new titles on medieval lordship.
- Fiefs and Vassals: The Medieval Evidence Reinterpreted by Susan Reynolds (Oxford University Press xi + 544 pp.)
- Bastard Feudalism by Michael Hicks (Longman xii + 243 pp.)
Lordship must always be a central concept to medieval political and social history; indeed the power of the nobility is one of the most characteristic features of the period. Yet this is often envisaged – and not only popularly – in terms of disruptive warrior-landowners undermining the legitimate processes of 'public' authority and government through their corrupt exercise of 'private' power (or privatised public power), as in the chaos of eleventh- and twelfth-century France, or the Wars of the Roses in England. That both 'feudalism' and 'bastard feudalism' conjure up such images emphasises the need, for books which investigate the integral role of lordship in this hierarchical and unequal society, and its essential function in structuring political relationships and mediating authority in the era before comprehensive bureaucratic government.
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