In Saxon England [says Mr. Belloc] there was no systematic organization by which the local landowner definitely recognized a feudal superior and through him the power of a Central Government.... When William landed, the whole system of tenure was in disorder in the sense that the local lord of the village was not accustomed to the interference of the superior, and that no groups of lords had come into existence by which the territorial system could be bound in sheaves, as it were, and the whole of it attached to one central point at the Royal Court.
Such a system of groups _had_ arisen in Gaul, and to that difference ultimately we owe the French territorial system of the present day, but William the Norman's new subjects had no comprehension of it.[16]
The order introduced by William was not strong enough to endure in face of the ancient customs of the populace and the lack of any bond between scattered and locally independent units. A recrudescence of the early independence of the landowners was felt in the reign of Henry II, while under John it blazed out into successful revolt. Throughout the Middle Ages we may see the village landlord gradually growing in independence and usurping, as a class, the power of the Central Government.
What the outcome of this state of affairs would have been had events been allowed to develop without interruption, it is impossible to say. Whether or not the peasant would have acquired freedom and wealth, at the expense of the landlord; whether then a strong Central Government would have arisen; whether property would have become more or less equally distributed and the State have been composed of a mass of small owners, all possessed of the means of production--these are things we can only guess. What we do know, and what Mr. Belloc has made abundantly clear, is that "with the close of the Middle Ages the societies of Western Christendom, and England among the rest, were economically free." In England the great mass of the populace was gradually becoming more and more possessed of property; but at the same time there existed a very considerable class of large landowners, who were not only wealthy and powerful, but incapable of rigid control by the Crown.