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Untitled Article
£ fcl crown-vassal soon manifested a desire to make his fief equal to freehold , in the one as in the other to be absolute , arid to secure the one like the other to his successor . Instead of representing the king- in the duchy or the county he would represent himself , and he had dangerous means at hand for the
purpose . The very resources which he drew from his estates , that very martial array which he could muster forth from among his vassals , and by means of which he was in condition to be useful to the Crown in his office , made him a proportionately formidable and insecure instrument of it . If he possessed many demesnes in the country which he held in fief or wherein
he discharged a judicial office—and from this very circumstance would it be intrusted to him in preference—then the greater part of the freemen who were settled in the provinces usually were in dependence upon him . Either they held their possessions of him in fief , or they had to respect in him a powerful neighbour who might be mischievous to them . As judge of
their dissensions likewise he often had their prosperity in his hands , and as royal Stadtholder he could oppress or relieve them . If now the kings omitted to bring themselves to the remembrance of the people—under which name we must always understand the arm-bearing freemen and lower proprietors—by frequently traversing the counties and the exercise of their
supreme judicial dignity , or were prevented doing so by foreign enterprises , then the high lords would in the end appear to the lower freemen the proximate hands from which their oppressions as well as their advantages came . Since generally in every system of subordination the most direct oppression is most vividly
felt , so the higher noble would very soon gain an influence over the lower , which would speedily shuffle their whole force into his hands . If then it came to a struggle between the king and his vassal , the latter could reckon upon the support of the undertenant much more than the former ; and this would put him in condition to bid defiance to the Crown . It was now too late ,
and also too dangerous , to wrest from him or his heirs the fief which in case of necessity he could maintain with the united force of the canton . And thus the monarch must be contented , if a too powerful vassal did not grudge him even the shadow of supreme fieflal power , and condescended to receive investiture
for a property which he had forcibly appropriated . What is here said of the crown vassal is equally applicable to the officers and fiefholders of the high clergy , who were so far in the same condition with the king , that powerful barons held in fee o £ them .
Thus , imperceptibly , effieffed dignities and territories transferred on teudal tenure , became hereditary possessions , and freeholders de facto arose from vassals , of which condition they now retained only the mere external show . Many ftefe and
Untitled Article
3 * 4 A Review of the State of Europe
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), June 2, 1836, page 344, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2658/page/16/
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