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$Title{History Of Europe During The Middle Ages
Part VI}
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$Author{Hallam, Henry}
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Title:       History Of Europe During The Middle Ages
Book:        Book II: The Feudal System
Author:      Hallam, Henry

Part VI

     In every age and country until times comparatively recent, personal
servitude appears to have been the lot of a large, perhaps the greater,
portion of mankind.  We lose a good deal of our sympathy with the spirit of
freedom in Greece and Rome when the importunate recollection occurs to us of
the tasks which might be enjoined, and the punishments which might be
inflicted, without control either of law or opinion, by the keenest patriot of
the Comitia, or the Council of Five Thousand.  A similar, though less
powerful, feeling will often force itself on the mind when we read the history
of the middle ages.  The Germans, in their primitive settlements, were
accustomed to the notion of slavery, incurred not only by captivity, but by
crimes, by debt, and especially by loss in gaming. When they invaded the Roman
empire they found the same condition established in all its provinces.  Hence,
from the beginning of the era now under review, servitude, under somewhat
different modes, was extremely common.  There is some difficulty in
ascertaining its varieties and stages.  In the Salic laws, and in the
Capitularies, we read not only of Servi, but of Tributarii, Lidi, and Coloni,
who were cultivators of the earth and subject to residence upon their lord's
estate, though not destitute of property or civil rights. ^j Those who
appertained to the demesne lands of the crown were called Fiscalini.  The
composition for the murder of one of these was much less than that for a
freeman. ^k The number of these servile cultivators was undoubtedly great, yet
in those early times, I should conceive, much less than it afterwards became.
Property was for the most part in small divisions, and a Frank who could
hardly support his family upon a petty allodial patrimony was not likely to
encumber himself with many servants.  But the accumulation of overgrown
private wealth had a natural tendency to make slavery more frequent. Where the
small proprietors lost their lands by mere rapine, we may believe that their
liberty was hardly less endangered. ^l Even where this was not the case, yet,
as the labor either of artisans or of free husbandmen was but sparingly in
demand, they were often compelled to exchange their liberty for bread. ^m In
seasons also of famine, and they were not infrequent, many freemen sold
themselves to slavery.  A capitulary of Charles the Bald in 864 permits their
redemption at an equitable price. ^n Others became slaves, as more fortunate
men became vassals, to a powerful lord, for the sake of his protection.  Many
were reduced into this state through inability to pay those pecuniary
compositions for offences which were numerous and sometimes heavy in the
barbarian codes of law; and many more by neglect of attendance on military
expeditions of the king, the penalty of which was a fine called Heribann, with
the alternative of perpetual servitude. ^o A source of loss of liberty which
may strike us as more extraordinary was superstition; men were infatuated
enough to surrender themselves, as well as their properties, to churches and
monasteries, in return for such benefits as they might reap by the prayers of
their new masters. ^p

[Footnote j: These passages are too numerous for reference.  In a very early
charter in Martenne's Thesaurus Anecdotorum, t. i. p. 20, lands are granted,
cum hominibus ibidem permanentibus, quos colonario ordine vivere constituimus.
Men of this class were called, in Italy, Aldiones.  A Lombard capitulary of
Charlemagne says, Aldiones ea lege vivunt in Italia sub servitute dominorum
suorum, qua Fiscalini, vel Lidi vivunt in Francia. l Muratori, Dissert. 14.
[Note XIV.]]

[Footnote k: Originally it was but 45 solidi (Leges Salicae, c. 43), but
Charlemagne raised it to 100.  Baluzii Capitularia, p. 402.  There are several
provisions in the laws of this great and wise monarch in favor of liberty.  If
a lord claimed any one either as his villein or slave (colonus sive servus),
who had escaped beyond his territory, he was not to be given up till strict
inquiry had been made in the place to which he was asserted to belong, as to
his condition and that of his family: p. 400. And if the villein showed a
charter of enfranchisement, the proof of its forgery was to lie upon the lord.
No man's liberty could be questioned in the Hundred-court.]

[Footnote l: Montesquieu ascribes the increase of personal servitude in France
to the continued revolts and commotions under the two first dynasties, l. xxx.
c. II.]

[Footnote m: Du Cange, v. Obnoxatio.]

[Footnote n: Baluzii Capitularia.  The Greek traders purchased famished
wretches on the coasts of Italy, whom they sold to the Saracens. - Muratori,
Annalia d'Italia, A.D. 785.  Much more would persons in this extremity sell
themselves to neighboring lords.]

[Footnote o: Du Cange, Heribannum.  A full heribannum was 60 solid; but it was
sometimes assessed in proportion to the wealth of the party.]

[Footnote p: Beaumanoir, c. 45. [Note XV.]]

     The characteristic distinction of a villein was his obligation to remain
upon his lord's estate.  He was not only precluded from selling the lands upon
which he dwelt, but his person was bound, and the lord might reclaim him at
any time, by suit in a court of justice, if he ventured to stray.  But,
equally liable to this confinement, there were two classes of villeins, whose
condition was exceedingly different.  In England, at least from the reign of
Henry II., one only, and that the inferior species, existed; incapable of
property, and destitute of redress, except against the most outrageous
injuries. ^q The lord could seize whatever they acquired or inherited, or
convey them, apart from the land, to a stranger. Their tenure bound them to
what were called villein services, ignoble in their nature and indeterminate
in their degree: the felling of timber, the carrying of manure, the repairing
of roads for their lord, who seems to have possessed an equally unbounded
right over their labor and its fruits. But by the customs of France and
Germany, persons in this abject state seem to have been called serfs, and
distinguished from villeins, who were only bound to fixed payments and duties
in respect of their lord, though, as it seems, without any legal redress if
injured by him. ^r "The third estate of men," says Beaumanoir, in the passage
above quoted, "is that of such as are not free; and these are not all of one
condition, for some are so subject to their lord that he may take all they
have, alive or dead, and imprison them, whenever he pleases, being accountable
to none but God; while others are treated more gently, from whom the lord can
take nothing but customary payments, though at their deatth all they have
escheats to him." ^s

[Footnote q: Littleton, l. ii. c. II. Non potest aliquis (says Glanvil), in
villenagio positus, libertatem suam propriis denariis suis quaerere - quia
omnia catalla cujuslibet nativi intelliguntur esse in potestate domini sui. -
l. v. c. 5.]

[Footnote r: This is clearly expressed in a French law-book of the thirteenth
century, the Conseil of Pierre des Fontaines, quoted by Du Cange, voc.
Villanus.  Et sache bien que selon Dieu tu n'as mie pleniere poeste sur ton
vilain. Dont se tu prens du sien fors les droites redevances que te doit, tu
les prens contre Dieu, et sur le peril de t'ame et come robierres. Et ce qu'on
dit-toutes les choses que vilains a, sont son Seigneur, c'est voir a garder.
Car s'il estoient son seigneur propre, il n'avoit nule difference entre serf
et vilain, mais par notre usage n'a entre toi et ton vilain juge fors Dieu,
tant com il est tes couchans et tes levans, s'il n'a autre loi vers toi fors
la commune.  This seems to render the distinction little more than
theoretical.]

[Footnote s: Beaumanoir, c. 45; Du Cange, Villanus, Servus, and several other
articles.  Schmidt, Hist. des Allemands, t. ii. p. 171, 435.  By a law of the
Lombards, a free woman who married a slave might be killed by her relations,
or sold; if they neglected to do so, the fisc might claim her as its own. -
Muratori, Dissert. 14.  In France also she was liable to be treated as a
slave. - Marculfi Formulae, l. ii. 29.  Even in the twelfth century it was the
law of Flanders that whoever married a villein became one himself after he had
lived with her a twelvemonth - Recueil des Historiens, t. xiii. p. 350.  And,
by a capitulary of Pepin, if a man married a villein believing her to be free,
he might repudiate her and marry another. - Baluze, p. 181.

     Villeins themselves could not marry without the lord's license, under
penalty of forfeiting their goods, or at least of a mulct. - Du Cange, v.
Forismaritagium.  This seems to be the true origin of the famous mercheta
mulierum, which has been ascribed to a very different custom. - Du Cange, v.
Mercheta Mulierum; Dalrymple's Annals of Scotland, vol. i. p. 312;
Archaeologia, vol. xii. p. 31.]

     Under every denomination of servitude, the children followed their
mother's condition, except in England, where the father's state determined
that of the children; on which account bastards of female villeins were born
free, the law presuming the liberty of their father. ^t The proportion of
freemen, therefore, would have been miserably diminished if there had been no
reflux of the tide which ran so strongly towards slavery.  But the usage of
manumission made a sort of circulation between these two states of mankind.
This, as is well known, was an exceedingly common practice with the Romans;
and is mentioned, with certain ceremonies prescribed, in the Frankish and
other early laws.  The clergy, and especially several popes, enforced it as a
duty upon laymen; and inveighed against the scandal of keeping Christians in
bondage. ^u As society advanced in Europe, the manumission of slaves grew more
frequent. ^v By the indulgence of custom in some places, or perhaps by
original convention, villeins might possess property and thus purchase their
own redemption.  Even where they had no legal title to property, it was
accounted inhuman to divest them of their little possession (the peculium of
Roman law), nor was their poverty, perhaps, less tolerable, upon the whole,
than that of the modern peasantry in most countries of Europe.  It was only in
respect of his lord, it must be remembered, that the villein, at least in
England, was without rights; ^w he might inherit, purchase, sue in the courts
of law; though, as defendant in a real action or suit wherein land was
claimed, he might shelter himself under the plea of villenage.  The peasants
of this condition were sometimes made use of in war, and rewarded with
enfranchisement; especially in Italy, where the cities and petty states had
often occasion to defend themselves with their own population; and in peace
the industry of free laborers must have been found more productive and better
directed.  Hence the eleventh and twelfth centuries saw the number of slaves
in Italy begin to decrease; early in the fifteenth a writer quoted by Muratori
speaks of them as no longer existing. ^x The greater part of the peasants in
some countries of Germany had acquired their liberty before the end of the
thirteenth century; in other parts, as well as in all the northern and eastern
regions of Europe, they remained in a sort of villenage till the present age.
Some very few instances of predial servitude have been discovered in England
so late as the time of Elizabeth, ^y and perhaps they might be traced still
lower. Louis Hutin, in France, after innumerable particular instances of
manumission had taken place, by a general edict in 1315, reciting that his
kingdom is denominated the kingdom of the Franks, that he would have the fact
to correspond with the name, emancipates all persons in the royal domains upon
paying a just composition, as an example for other lords possessing villeins
to follow. ^z Philip the Long renewed the same edict three years afterwards; a
proof that it had not been carried into execution. ^a Indeed there are letters
of the former prince, wherein, considering that many of his subjects are not
apprised of the extent of the benefit conferred upon them, he directs his
officers to tax them as high as their fortunes can well bear. ^b

[Footnote t: Littleton, s. 188. Bracton indeed holds that the spurious issue
of a neif, though by a free father, should be a villein, quia sequitur
conditionem matris, quasi vulgo conceptus, l. i. c. 6.  But the laws under the
name of Henry I. declare that a son should follow his father's condition; so
that this peculiarity is very ancient in our law. - Leges Hen. I. c. 75 and
77.]

[Footnote u: Enfranchisements by testament are very common.  Thus in the will
of Seniofred, Count of Barcelona, in 966, we find the following piece of
corrupt Latin: De ipsos servos meos et ancillas, illi qui traditi fuerunt
faciatis illos libros propter remedium animae meae; et alli qui fuerunt de
parentorum meorum remaneant ad fratres meos. - Marca Hispanica, p. 887.]

[Footnote v: No one could enfranchise his villein without the superior lord's
consent; for this was to diminish the value of his land, apeticer le fief. -
Beaumanoir, c. 15.  Etablissemens de St. Louis, c. 34.  It was necessary,
therefore, for the villein to obtain the suzerain's confirmation; otherwise he
only changed masters and escheated, as it were, to the superior; for the lord
who had granted the charter of franchise was estopped from claiming him
again.]

[Footnote w: Littleton, s. 189.  Perhaps this is not applicable to other
countries.  Villeins were incapable of being received as witnesses against
freemen. - Recueil des Historiens, t. xiv. preface, p. 65.  There are some
charters of kings of France admitting the serfs of particular monasteries to
give evidence, or to engage in the judicial combat, against freemen. -
Ordonnances des Rois, t. i. p. 3.  But I do not know that their testimony,
except against their lord, was ever refused in England; their state of
servitude not being absolute, like that of negroes in the West Indies, but
particular and relative, as that of an apprentice or hired servant.  This
subject, however, is not devoid of obscurity.]

[Footnote x: Dissert. 14.]

[Footnote y: Barrington's Observations on the Ancient Statutes, p. 274.]

[Footnote z: Ordonnances des Rois, t. i. p. 583.]

[Footnote a: Id. p. 653.]

[Footnote b: Velly, t. viii. p. 38.  Philip the Fair had emancipated the
villeins in the royal domains throughout Languedoc, retaining only an annual
rent for their lands, which thus became censives, or emphyteuses. It does not
appear by the charter that he sold this enfranchisement, though there can be
little doubt about it.  He permitted his vassals to follow the example. -
Vaissette, Hist. de Languedoc, t. iv.; Appendix, p. 3, 12.

     It is not generally known, I think, that predial servitude was not
abolished in all parts of France till the revolution.  In some places, says
Pasquier, the peasants are taillables a volonte, that is, their contribution
is not permanent, but assessed by the lord with the advice of prud' hommes,
resseants sur les lieux, according to the peasant's ability. Others pay a
fixed sum.  Some are called serfs de poursuite, who cannot leave their
habitations, but may be followed by the lord into any part of France for the
taille upon their goods.  This was the case in part of Champagne and the
Nivernois.  Nor could these serfs, or gens de mainmorte, as they were
sometimes called, be manumitted without letters-patent of the king, purchased
by a fine. - Recherches de la France, l. iv. c. 5.  Dubos informs us that, in
1615, the Tiers Etat prayed the king to cause all serfs (hommes de pooste) to
be enfranchised on paying a composition; but this was not complied with, and
they existed in many parts when he wrote. - Histoire, Critique, t. iii. p.
298.  Argou, in his Institutions du Droit Francois, confirms this, and refers
to the customaries of Nivernois and Vitry, I. i. c. I.  And M. de Brequigny,
in his preface to the twelfth volume of the collection of Ordonnances, p. 22,
says that throughout almost the whole jurisdiction of the parliament of
Besancon the peasants were attached to the soil, not being capable of leaving
it without the lord's consent; and that in some places he even inherited their
goods in exclusion of the kindred.  I recollect to have read in some part of
Voltaire's correspondence an anecdote of his interference, with that zeal
against oppression which is the shining side of his moral character, in behalf
of some of these wretched slaves of Franche-Comte.

     About the middle of the fifteenth century, some Catalonian serfs who had
escaped into France being claimed by their lords, the parliament of Toulouse
declared that every man who entered the kingdom en criant France should become
free.  The liberty of our kingdom is such, says Mezeray, that its air
communicates freedom to those who breathe it, and our kings are too august to
reign over any but freemen.  Villaret, t. xv. p. 348. How much pretence
Mezeray had for such a flourish may be decided by the former part of this
note.]

     It is deserving of notice that a distinction existed from very early
times in the nature of lands, collateral, as it were, to that of persons. Thus
we find mansi ingenui and mansi serviles in the oldest charters,
corresponding, as we may not unreasonably conjecture, to the liberum
tenementum and villenagium, or freehold and copyhold of our own law.  In
France, all lands held in roture appear to be considered as villein tenements,
and are so termed in Latin, though many of them rather answer to our socage
freeholds.  But although originally this servile quality of lands was founded
on the state of their occupiers, yet there was this particularity, that lands
never change their character along with that of the possessor; so that a
nobleman might, and often did, hold estates in roture, as well as a roturier
acquire a fief.  Thus in England the terre tenants in villenage, who occur in
our old books, were not villeins, but freemen holding lands which had been
from time immemorial of a villein quality.

     At the final separation of the French from the German side of
Charlemagne's empire by the treaty of Verdun in 843, there was perhaps hardly
any difference in the constitution of the two kingdoms.  If any might be
conjectured to have existed, it would be a greater independence and fuller
rights of election in the nobility and people of Germany.  But in the lapse of
another century France had lost all her political unity, and her kings all
their authority; while the Germanic empire was entirely unbroken under an
effectual, though not absolute, control of its sovereign.  No comparison can
be made between the power of Charles the Simple and Conrad the First, though
the former had the shadow of an hereditary right, and the latter was chosen
from among his equals. A long succession of feeble princes or usurpers, and
destructive incursions of the Normans, reduced France almost to a dissolution
of society; while Germany, under Conrad, Henry, and the Othos, found their
arms not less prompt and successful against revolted vassals than external
enemies.  The high dignities were less completely hereditary than they had
become in France; they were granted, indeed, pretty regularly, but they were
solicited as well as granted; while the chief vassals of the French crown
assumed them as patrimonial sovereignties, to which a royal investiture gave
more of ornament than sanction.

     In the eleventh century these imperial prerogatives began to lose part of
their lustre.  The long struggles of the princes and clergy against Henry IV.
and his son, the revival of more effective rights of election on the
extinction of the house of Franconia, the exhausting contests of the Swabian
emperors in Italy, the intrinsic weakness produced by a law of the empire,
according to which the reigning sovereign could not retain an imperial fief
more than a year in his hands, gradually prepared that independence of the
German aristocracy which reached its height about the middle of the thirteenth
century.  During this period the French crown had been insensibly gaining
strength; and as one monarch degenerated into the mere head of a confederacy,
the other acquired unlimited power over a solid kingdom.

     It would be tedious, and not very instructive, to follow the details of
German public law during the middle ages; nor are the more important parts of
it easily separable from civil history.  In this relation they will find a
place in a subsequent chapter of the present work.  France demands a more
minute attention; and in tracing the character of the feudal system in that
country, we shall find ourselves developing the progress of a very different
polity.

     To understand in what degree the peers and barons of France, during the
prevalence of feudal principles, were independent of the crown, we must look
at their leading privileges.  These may be reckoned: 1. The right of coining
money; 2. That of waging private war; 3. The exemption from all public
tributes, except the feudal aids; 4. The freedom from legislative control;
and, 5. The exclusive exercise of original judicature in their dominions.
Privileges so enormous, and so contrary to all principles of sovereignty,
might lead us, in strictness, to account France rather a collection of states,
partially allied to each other, than a single monarchy.

     1. Silver and gold were not very scarce in the first ages of the French
monarchy; but they passed more by weight than by tale.  A lax and ignorant
government, which had not learned the lucrative mysteries of a royal mint, was
not particularly solicitous to give its subjects the security of a known stamp
in their exchanges. ^c In some cities of France money appears to have been
coined by private authority before the time of Charlemagne; at least one of
his capitularies forbids the circulation of any that had not been stamped in
the royal mint.  His successors indulged some of their vassals with the
privilege of coining money for the use of their own territories, but not
without the royal stamp.  About the beginning of the tenth century, however,
the lords, among their other assumptions of independence, issued money with no
marks but their own. ^d At the accession of Hugh Capet as many as a hundred
and fifty are said to have exercised this power.  Even under St. Louis it was
possessed by about eighty, who, excluding as far as possible the royal coin
from circulation, enriched themselves at their subjects' expense by high
duties (seigniorages), which they imposed upon every new coinage, as well as
by debasing its standard. ^e In 1185 Philip Augustus requests the abbot of
Corvey, who had desisted from using his own mint, to let the royal money of
Paris circulate through his territories, promising that, when it should please
the abbot to coin money afresh for himself, the king would not oppose its
circulation. ^f

[Footnote c: The practice of keeping fine gold and silver uncoined prevailed
among private persons, as well as in the treasury, down to the time of Philip
the Fair.  Nothing is more common than to find, in the instruments of earlier
time, payments or fines stipulated by weight of gold or silver.  Le Blanc
therefore thinks that little money was coined in France, and that only for
small payments. - Traite des Monnoyes.  It is curious that, though there are
many gold coins extant of the first race of kings, yet few or none are
preserved of the second or third before the reign of Philip the Fair. - Du
Cange, v. Moneta.]

[Footnote d: Vaissette, Hist. de Languedoc, t. ii. p. 110; Rec. des
Historiens, t. xi. pref. p. 180; Du Cange, v. Moneta.]

[Footnote e: Le Blanc, Traite des Monnoyes, p. 91.]

[Footnote f: Du Cange, voc. Moneta; Velly, Hist. de France, t. ii. p. 93;
Villaret, t. xiv. p. 200.]

     Several regulations were made by Louis IX. to limit, as far as lay in his
power, the exercise of this baronial privilege, and, in particular, by
enacting that the royal money should circulate in the domains of those barons
who had mints, concurrently with their own, and exclusively within the
territories of those who did not enjoy that right. Philip the Fair established
royal officers of inspection in every private mint.  It was asserted in his
reign, as a general truth, that no subject might coin silver money. ^g In
fact, the adulteration practised in those baronial mints had reduced their
pretended silver to a sort of black metal, as it was called (moneta nigra),
into which little entered but copper.  Silver, however, and even gold, were
coined by the dukes of Brittany so long as that fief continued to exist.  No
subjects ever enjoyed the right of coining silver in England without the royal
stamp and superintendence ^h - a remarkable proof of the restraint in which
the feudal aristocracy was always held in that country.

[Footnote g: Du Cange, v. Moneta.  The right of debasing the coin was also
claimed by this prince as a choice flower of his crown.  Item, abaisser et
amenuser la monnoye est privilege especial au roy de son droit royal, si que a
luy appartient, et a non autre, et encore en un seul cas, c'est a scavoir en
necessite, et lors ne vient pas le ganeg, ne convertit en son profit especial,
mais en profit et en la defence du commun.  This was in a process commenced by
the king's procureur-general against the Comte de Nevers, for defacing his
coin. - Le Blanc, Traite des Monnoyes, p. 92.  In many places the lord took a
sum from his tenants every three years, under the name of monetagium or
focagium, in lieu of debasing his money.  This was finally abolished in 1830.
- Du Cange, v. Monetagium.]

[Footnote h: I do not extend this to the fact; for in the anarchy of Stephen's
reign both bishops and barons coined money for themselves. - Hoveden, p. 490.]

     2. The passion of revenge, always among the most ungovernable in human
nature, acts with such violence upon barbarians, that it is utterly beyond the
control of their imperfect arrangements of polity.  It seems to them no part
of the social compact to sacrifice the privilege which nature has placed in
the arm of valor.  Gradually, however, these fiercer feelings are blunted, and
another passion, hardly less powerful than resentment, is brought to play in a
contrary direction.  The earlier object accordingly of jurisprudence is to
establish a fixed atonement for injuries, as much for the preservation of
tranquillity as the prevention of crime.  Such were the weregilds of the
barbaric codes, which, for a different purpose, I have already mentioned. ^i
But whether it were that the kindred did not always accept, or the criminal
offer, the legal composition, or that other causes of quarrel occurred,
private feuds (faida) were perpetually breaking out, and many of Charlemagne's
capitularies are directed against them.  After his time all hope of
restraining so inveterate a practice was at an end; and every man who owned a
castle to shelter him in case of defeat, and a sufficient number of dependents
to take the field, was at liberty to retaliate upon his neighbors whenever he
thought himself injured.  It must be kept in mind that there was, frequently,
either no jurisdiction to which he could appeal, or no power to enforce its
awards; so that we may consider the higher nobility of France as in a state of
nature with respect to each other, and entitled to avail themselves of all
legitimate grounds of hostility.  The right of waging private war was
moderated by Louis IX., checked by Philip IV., suppressed by Charles VI.; but
a few vestiges of its practice may be found still later. ^j

[Footnote i: The antiquity of compositions for murder is illustrated by Iliad.
498, where, in the description of the shield of Achilles, two disputants are
represented wrangling before the judge for the weregild or price of blood.]

[Footnote j: The subject of private warfare is treated so exactly and
perspicuously by Robertson, that I should only waste the reader's time by
dwelling so long upon it as its extent and importance would otherwise demand.
- See Hist. of Charles V. vol. i. note 21.  Few leading passages in the
monuments of the middle ages relative to this subject have escaped the
penetrating eye of that historian; and they are arranged so well as to form a
comprehensive treatise in small compass.  I know not that I could add any much
worthy of notice, unless it be the following: - In the treaty between Philip
Augustus and Richard Coeur de Lion (1194), the latter refused to admit the
insertion of an article that none of the barons of either party should molest
the other; lest he should infringe the customs of Poitou and his other
dominions, in quibus consuetum erat ab antiquo, ut magnates suetum erat ab
antiquo, ut magnates causas proprias invicem gladiis allegarent. - Hoveden, p.
741 (in Saville, Script. Anglic.).]

     3. In the modern condition of governments, taxation is a chief engine of
the well-compacted machinery which regulates the system.  The payments, the
prohibitions, the licenses, the watchfulness of collection, the evasions of
fraud, the penalties and forfeitures, that attend a fiscal code of laws,
present continually to the mind of the most remote and humble individual the
notion of a supreme, vigilant, and coercive authority.  But the early European
kingdoms knew neither the necessities nor the ingenuity of modern finance.
From their demesne lands the kings of France and Lombardy supplied the common
expenses of a barbarous court. Even Charlemagne regulated the economy of his
farms with the minuteness of a steward, and a large portion of his
capitularies are directed to this object.  Their actual revenue was chiefly
derived from free gifts, made, according to an ancient German custom, at the
annual assemblies ^k of the nation, from amercements paid by allodial
proprietors for default of military service, and from the freda, or fines,
accruing to the judge out of compositions for murder. ^l These amounted to
one-third of the whole weregild; one-third of this was paid over by the count
to the royal exchequer.  After the feudal government prevailed in France, and
neither the heribannum nor the weregild continued in use, there seems to have
been hardly any source of regular revenue besides the domanial estates of the
crown; unless we may reckon as such, that during a journey the king had a
prescriptive right to be supplied with necessaries by the towns and abbeys
through which he passed; commuted sometimes into petty regular payments,
called droits de gist et de chevauche. ^m Hugh Capet was nearly indigent as
King of France, though, as Count of Paris and Orleans, he might take the
feudal aids and reliefs of his vassals.  Several other small emoluments of
himself and his successors, whatever they may since have been considered, were
in that age rather seigniorial than royal.  The rights of toll, of customs, of
alienage (aubaine), generally even the regale or enjoyment of the
temporalities of vacant episcopal sees and other ecclesiastical benefices, ^n
were possessed within their own domains by the great feudatories of the crown.
They, I apprehend, contributed nothing to their sovereign, not even those aids
which the feudal customs enjoined. ^o

[Footnote k: Du Cange, Dissertation quatrieme sur Joinville.]

[Footnote l: Mably, l. i. c. 2, note 3; Du Cange voc. Heribannum, Fredum.]

[Footnote m: Velly, t. ii. p. 329; Villaret, t. xiv. p. 174-195; Recueil des
Historiens, t. xiv. preface, p. 37.  The last is a perspicuous account of the
royal revenue in the twelfth century.  But far the most luminous view of that
subject, for the three next ages, is displayed by M. de Pastoret in his
prefaces to the fifteenth and sixteenth volumes of the Ordonnances des Rois.]

[Footnote n: The Duke of Burgundy and Count of Champagne did not possess the
regale.  But it was enjoyed by all the other peers; by the dukes of Normandy,
Guienne, and Brittany; the counts of Toulouse, Poitou, and Flanders. - Mably,
1. iii. c. 4; Recueil des Historiens, t. ii. p. 229, and t. xiv. p. 53;
Ordonnances des Rois, t. i. p. 621.]

[Footnote o: I have never met with any instance of a relief, aid, or other
feudal contribution paid by the vassals of the French crown; but in this
negative proposition it is possible that I may be deceived.]