HIST-281 Lecture Notes - Lecture 24: Geoffrey Chaucer, Pope Gregory Vii
3 Nov 2020
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Thus the earl of percy, for example, held a tenancy-in-chief that was scattered among no fewer than forty counties from cornwall to northumbria. The sprawl of his (and other chief tenants") lands over so wide a territory had two important repercussions for anglo-norman england. Fewer than eight hundred lesser nobles held fiefs from the tenants-in-chief, and virtually none of them held territories large enough for further sub-infeudation. Second, the tenants-in-chief had to professionalize the maintenance of their own territories since they could hardly run them all themselves. Large corps of bailiffs, stewards, sheriffs, reeves, and other officials soon dotted the landscape and provided avenues for modest advancement by diligent locals. Just as significantly, the realm-wide basis of major tenancies meant that the chief tenants themselves remained concerned for the well-being of the entire kingdom rather than their own parochial corner of it since those parochial corners did not exist.
