Feudalism
Under the feudal system, lord has a wide, loose and varied meaning. An overlord was the person from whom a landholding or a manor was held by a mesne lord or vassal under various forms of feudal land tenure. The modern term "landlord" is a vestigial survival of this function. A liege lord was a person to whom a vassal owed sworn allegiance. Neither of these terms were titular dignities, rather factual appellations, which described the relationships of two persons within the highly stratified feudal social system. For example, a man might be lord of the manor to his own tenants but a vassal to his own overlord, who in turn was a vassal to the king. Where a knight was a lord of the manor, as was generally the case, he is referred to in contemporary documents as "John (Surname), knight, lord of (manor name)". A feudal baron was a true titular dignity, with the right originally to attend Parliament, yet even a feudal baron, lord of the manor of many manors, was a vassal to the king.
Read more about this topic: Lord
Other articles related to "feudalism":
... Plummer blamed bastard feudalism for the disorder and instability of the Wars of the Roses in the fifteenth century ... However, Bastard feudalism is primarily associated with his contemporary William Stubbs ... To him, what was central to bastard feudalism was not the financial aspect (the sums involved were mostly negligible) but the concept of service in exchange for good favour ...
... Brown rejected the label feudalism as an anachronism that imparts a false sense of uniformity to the concept ... Having noted the current use of many, often contradictory, definitions of feudalism, she argued that the word is only a construct with no basis in medieval reality, an invention ... does not object to the Marxist use of the term feudalism ...
... The Third Stage may be called Feudalism it appears after slave society collapses ... Dark Ages when society went from slavery to feudalism ... During feudalism there are many classes such as kings, lords, and serfs, some little more than slaves ...
... David I began the gradual introduction of feudalism in Scotland and established feudal land tenure over many parts of the south and east, which eventually spread northward ... As feudalism began to develop in Scotland a number of separate court systems developed ...
... of the Carolingian Empire and the Bavarian expansion in the eastern Alps introduced feudalism and the building of castles to support the growing number of dukedoms and kingdoms ...