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Feudalism was practiced in many different ways, depending on location and period, thus a high-level encompassing conceptual definition does not always provide a reader with the intimate understanding that detailed historical examples provide.
Stafford tenants were themselves lords of the manors they held from him, which is altogether different from their being barons. Henry D'Oilly, who held 3 fees from Robert de Stafford, also held, as a tenant-in-chief, over 30 fees elsewhere that had been granted to him directly by the king. Thus while Henry was the vassal of his overlord Robert, Henry was himself a lord of his manors held Tenant-in-chief and subinfeudation many of his manors which he did not keep Demesne, that is to say under his management using simple employees. It would also have been possible and not uncommon for a situation where Robert of Stafford was a vassal of Henry elsewhere, creating the condition of mutual lordship/vassalage between the two. These complex relationships invariably create loyalty problems through conflicts of interest. To resolve this the concept of a liege lord existed, which meant that the vassal was loyal to his liege lord above all others, except the king himself, no matter what. However, even this sometimes broke down when a vassal would pledge himself to more than one liege lord.
From the perspective of the smallest landholder, multiple networks of tenancy were layered on the same small plot of land. A chronicle of the time says "Different lordships lay on the land in different respects". Each tenant laid claim to a certain aspect of the service from the land.
Magna Carta was used in 1215 by the barons to force King John to respect feudal rights, limiting the power of the King by defying his rights under feudal law.
Such was (allegedly) the case of Hugh de Lusignan and his relations with his lord William V of Aquitaine. Between 1020 and 1025 Hugh wrote or possibly dictated a complaint against William and his vassals describing the unjust treatment he had received at the hands of both. Hugh describes a convoluted intermingling of loyalties that was characteristic of the period and instrumental in developing strain between nobles that resulted in competition for each other's land. According to Hugh's account, William wronged him on numerous occasions, often to the benefit of William's vassals. Many of his properties suffered similar fates: seized by opponents and divided between them and William. William neglected to send military aid to Hugh when necessary and dealt most unfairly in the exchange of . Each time Hugh reclaimed one of his properties, William ordered him to return it to whoever had recently taken it from him. William broke multiple in succession yet Hugh continued to put faith in his lord's word, to his ruin. In his last contract with William, over possession of his uncle's castle at Chiza, Hugh dealt in no uncertain terms and with frank language:
Hugh: You are my lord, I will not accept a pledge from you, but I will simply rely on the mercy of God and yourself.
William: Give up all those claims over which you have quarreled with me in the past and swear fidelity to me and my son and I will give you your uncle's honor Chizes or something else of equal value in exchange for it.
Hugh: My lord, I beg you through God and this blessed crucifix which is made in the figure of Christ that you do not make me do this if you and your son were intending to threaten me with trickery.
William: On my honor and my son I will do this without trickery.
Hugh: And when I shall have sworn fidelity to you, you will demand Chizes castle of me, and if I should not turn it over to you, you will say that it is not right that I deny you the castle which I hold from you, and if I should turn it over to you, you and your son will seize it because you have given nothing in pledge except the mercy of God and yourself.
William: We will not do that, but if we should demand it of you, don't turn it over to us.
While perhaps an embellishment of the truth for the sake of Hugh's cause, and not necessarily a microcosm of the feudal system everywhere, the Agreement Between Lord and Vassal is evidence at least of corruption in feudal rule.
The feudal system was almost completely wiped out in France by the revolution in 1789 by eliminating the rights of the seigneur.
Portugal has its roots in a feudal state in northern Iberia, the County of Portugal, established in 868 within the Kingdom of Asturias. The Vímara Peres, the local counts' dynasty, was suppressed in 1071, but twenty-two years later, in 1093, King Alphonse VI of Léon and Castille gave the county as a fiefdom to Henry of Burgundy (a younger Capetian dynasty who was participating in the reconquista), when he married Theresa, the king's natural daughter.
Despite their vassal link, Henry had remarkable autonomy, especially after his father-in-law died in 1109. The Portuguese independence was obtained by his son, Afonso I of Portugal when, after defeating the Muslims at the Battle of Ourique, proclaimed himself King of Portugal in 1139, cutting definitively all feudal bonds with the Kingdom of León. Upon seeing the weakness of feudal society due to the Muslim invasion, Portugal became independent from the Kingdom of León as Castile had done a century earlier.
In contrast to other European forms of serfdom and feudalism there was a lack of vassalage and loyalty to the lord whose land the serfs worked. It took a much longer period for feudalism to develop but when it did it took on a much harsher form than elsewhere in Europe. Serfs had no rights whatsoever; they could be traded like livestock by their lords. They had no ownership of anything, including their own families, all of which belonged to their lord.
Another major difference was the lack of independent principalities; this was due to the lack of vassalage. Separate lords did not command their troops to protect their lands.
During the Zhou dynasty, each lord was given land, and his power was legitimized by nominal allegiance to the central Zhou king; politics thus revolved around these noble households. Each local state was governed independently with taxes, currency, and laws set by the aristocratic clan chief in charge of the territory, (2025). 9780521884471, Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9780521884471 but the nobles were required to pay regular homage to the Zhou kings as an act of fealty and acknowledgement of the king's ritual authority. In times of war, the nobles were required to provide armed service to the king.
Broadly, while fengjian shared several similarities with later Western feudalism, the local chiefs were afforded greater autonomy in their own territories, but the king owed them no mutual defense. The matter was further complicated by a bifurcation in territorial administration, where the western heartland of the Zhou royals was more directly governed, but certain lineages enjoyed greater independence from the royal house, which was junior to their own lineages within the Ji ancestral temple community.
Early Chinese titles were a mixture of political and kinship terms, and did not attain systematization until the late Spring and Autumn period. As the Zhou dynasty's control weakened, the regional magnates caused further title inflation by referring to themselves as Kings; the inflation was such that under the Han dynasty, many local lords were established with the title of "king"; in imperial China, the character is thus more normally rendered as "prince". The notion of "prime minister" in early China came from the aristocratic meaning of "chief housekeeper" or "butler" of a noble household, in a similar way to the development of such European titles as "constable".
At the transition from the Western Zhou to the Eastern Zhou, the political power of the Zhou royal house fell sharply. The collapse of central authority led to a geopolitical situation marked by considerable infighting by the landed aristocracy and their successors, often ministerial lineages.
After the last King of Qin, known to posterity as the First Emperor of Qin, defeated his rival states, founding the Qin dynasty, he formally abolished the largely defunct fengjian system, replacing it with a bureaucratized system of literate civil servants. Despite the rapid collapse of the Qin and an abortive attempt at reinstitution of fengjian by Xiang Yu, the following Han dynasty maintained the vast majority of Qin's bureaucratic reforms, establishing them as the new standard of government for the next two thousand years of imperial Chinese history. Han dynasty scholarship would decry the First Emperor as a tyrant whose crimes included deconstructing the fengjian system, which was misunderstood in anachronistic overly systematized form as an integral component of the idealized society of the Western Zhou. While most Chinese dynasties began with imperial relatives being granted control of some local territories, and there were many instances of aristocratic clans surpassing the power of the imperial house, officially devolved power for a military elite present in the fengjian system would not again be implemented in China.
However, according to Melvyn Goldstein, for the 20th century, the Tibetan political system can not be categorized as feudal since Tibet possessed a centralized state.
Scots law is quite different from English law. One scholar explained it in 1924 as follows:
The system of land tenure in Scotland was until recently feudal. In theory, this meant that the land was held under The Crown as the ultimate feudal superior. Historically, The Crown would make a grant of land in return for military or other services and the grantees would in turn make sub-grants for other services and so on. Those making grants – the "superiors" – retained a legal interest in the land ("dominium directum"), and so a hierarchical structure was created with each property having several owners, co-existing simultaneously. Only one of these, the vassal, has what in normal language would be regarded as ownership of the property ("dominium utile").
The Abolition of Feudal Tenure etc. (Scotland) Act 2000 abolished the feudal system of land tenure in Scotland and replaced it with a system of outright ownership of land. Since the Act became fully effective on 28 November 2004, the vassal owns the land outright, and superiority interests disappeared. The right of feudal superiors to enforce conditions was ended, subject to certain saving provisions of a restricted nature. Feu duty was abolished although compensation may be payable. The delay between royal assent and coming into force was caused by the great number of transitional arrangements needed to be put into place before final abolition and because of the close relation that the 2000 Act has to the Title Conditions Act 2003.
In the New Forest Common Rights created 900 years ago still exist for around 500 commoners who exercise their rights to graze certain animals and collect wood for fuel. Managed by Verderers, who uphold the law in the Court of Verderers.
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