The Medieval Feudal System: KS3 History Guide

When William the Conqueror surveyed his new kingdom in 1086, he commissioned the Domesday Book — a record of who held land and owed what to whom. That survey is one of our richest windows into what historians call the feudal system: an interlocking web of land, loyalty, and obligation that shaped life in medieval England for centuries.

What was the feudal system?

At its simplest, the feudal system was an arrangement in which land was granted in exchange for military service or labour. Those higher up the social ladder gave land — called a fief — and expected loyalty and military support in return; those lower down received the land and owed service, goods, or money. This relationship was sealed by homage: a formal ceremony in which a vassal knelt before his lord, placed his hands between the lord's, and swore allegiance.

Historians debate, however, whether "the feudal system" was ever as neat and coherent as that description implies. Before settling on an argument about how it functioned, consider whether you are reading a primary document from the period or a later historian's attempt to impose a tidy framework on complex local realities.

The feudal hierarchy

The conventional picture arranges medieval society into a pyramid. The table below sets out each level, its occupants, and its key obligations:

Level | Who | Key obligations
King | The monarch (e.g. William I) | Granted land (fiefs) to barons and bishops; expected knight-service, loyalty, and financial aid
Barons and bishops | Tenants-in-chief of the Crown | Provided a fixed number of armed knights per knight's fee; attended the royal council
Knights | Military tenants of the barons | Fought for 40 days per year; administered manors on behalf of lords
Villeins / serfs | Unfree peasants (the majority) | Performed labour service on the lord's demesne (home farm); paid tallage; bound to the manor
Freemen | Smallholders and craftsmen | Paid rent in cash or kind; possessed more legal rights than villeins

The evidence pushes in different directions about how rigid this pyramid actually was. Domesday records reveal considerable local variation — some villeins held substantial landholdings, whilst some nominal knights were barely wealthier than the peasants beneath them.

Life for ordinary people: village and manor

For the majority of medieval people, daily life centred on the village and the manor. Peasants farmed using the three-field system: cultivated land was divided into three large open fields, with two cropped in rotation and one left fallow each year to restore fertility. Because individual strips were interleaved across the fields, cooperation between neighbours was essential.

The lord's authority was enforced through the manor court, where disputes were settled, fines imposed, and the condition of villeinage upheld. If a villein wished to leave the manor, marry, or send a son to be educated, they theoretically required the lord's permission. Manor court rolls held at the National Archives give vivid glimpses of individual lives — names, fines, boundary disputes — and repay careful comparison with the broader narrative sources.

Why did the feudal system decline?

The decline of feudalism was gradual and multi-causal. Historians weigh several overlapping factors:

The Black Death (1347–1353) killed between a third and a half of England's population. With fewer labourers available, surviving peasants could demand higher wages and more favourable terms; labour services became increasingly difficult for lords to enforce.

The Peasants' Revolt (1381) was triggered partly by the Poll Tax — a flat-rate levy that bore most heavily on the poor. Although the revolt was suppressed, it signalled deep unrest and accelerated the commutation of labour services into cash rents.

The wool and cloth economy drew peasants into market production, making cash relationships more important than tied labour obligations.

Before settling on a single cause, consider which types of evidence — tax records, manorial rolls, wage data — each argument depends upon, and what that choice of evidence reveals about the historian making the argument.

Was "feudalism" even a real thing?

The word feudalism does not appear in any medieval document. It was coined by lawyers and antiquarians in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, then popularised by Enlightenment writers who wanted a term for the "old order" they believed modernity had swept away. The medievalist Susan Reynolds, in her influential work Fiefs and Vassals (1994), argued that imposing this concept onto the Middle Ages distorts our understanding — actual relationships were far more personal, negotiated, and locally varied than any tidy pyramid implies.

This matters for your history writing. If you describe "the feudal system" as a fixed, universal structure, you are adopting a particular scholarly interpretation that many specialists now question. Historians debate whether the term helps or hinders genuine understanding of the period. A strong answer at KS3 and beyond will show awareness that the very framework you are using is a historian's tool, not a medieval reality.

Frequently asked questions

What was the feudal system in medieval England?

The feudal system was an arrangement in which the king granted land to barons and bishops in exchange for military service and loyalty; they in turn granted land to knights; at the base, villeins and serfs farmed the lord's demesne and paid labour services in exchange for protection and access to land. The evidence for how consistently this operated varies considerably across the country, and some historians now argue the term "feudalism" oversimplifies what were, in practice, messy and negotiated arrangements.

Who were the villeins in the feudal system?

Villeins were unfree peasants who formed the largest single group in medieval English society. They were legally bound to the manor, owed regular labour service on the lord's land, and needed the lord's permission for major life decisions. Manor court rolls held at the National Archives treat villeins as named individuals — not merely a social category — and these records reward careful reading as evidence of how the system worked in practice.

How did the Black Death affect the feudal system?

The Black Death (1347–1353) drastically reduced the labour supply, giving surviving peasants considerably greater bargaining power. Many lords found they could no longer enforce unpaid labour services and shifted to cash rents instead. The evidence pushes in different directions about how decisive this break was: some historians see 1348 as the turning point in feudalism's decline; others argue that economic and legal changes were already eroding the system well before the plague arrived.

Was feudalism the same across medieval Europe?

The evidence pushes in different directions here. Legal arrangements varied significantly between England, France, and the Holy Roman Empire. England after 1066 is often described as having a particularly centralised version of feudal tenure — the Conquest gave William direct control that many Continental rulers lacked. Even within England, however, manorial records reveal considerable regional variation, a reminder that "the feudal system" always simplifies a far more complex reality than any single model can capture.

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