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Some Notations on Mr. Hollister's “Irony”

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 January 2014

Fredric Cheyette
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Extract

For several years C. Warren Hollister has been picking his way through the “treacherous bog” of Anglo-Saxon and early Anglo-Norman military institutions. Out of that bog he has brought medievalists fresh knowledge of the nature of the Anglo-Saxon fyrd, the relation of fyrd-service to knight's service, the importance before and after 1066 of mercenary troops, to name only a few of the questions he has touched on. As a result of his work, in fact (along with that of Eric John and Michael Powicke), the Berkshire customal in Domesday Book threatens to become as written about as the final clauses of the Statute of York. But inevitably the presentday medievalist decides to emerge from his dusty inquests and cartularies, to step boldly out from behind his philological barricade and survey the surrounding landscape, to extract more from his laconic charters than a few plausible conclusions about some minor issues. Old-fashioned self-inhumation in the details of local antiquities is no longer for him, nor Bury's sanguine belief that if each historian adds his little stone to the dry wall of History, some future age may finally be able to see its shape. Thus the historian's growing concern with his generalizations. Thus especially the recent debates about the proper definition and delimitation of “feudalism.” Thus Hollister, after ducking the general issue of “feudalism” in his Anglo-Saxon Military Institutions, recently on these pages decided to attack it head on.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of British Studies , Volume 5 , Issue 1 , November 1965 , pp. 1 - 14
Copyright
Copyright © North American Conference of British Studies 1965

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References

1. Hollister, C. Warren, “The Annual Term of Military Service in Medieval England,” Medievalia et Humanistica, XIII (1960), 40–47Google Scholar; “The Significance of Scutage Rates in Eleventh- and Twelfth-Century England,” E.H.R., LXXV (1960), 577–88CrossRefGoogle Scholar; “The Five-Hide Unit and the Old English Military Obligation,” Speculum, XXXVI (1961), 61–74Google Scholar; “The Norman Conquest and the Genesis of English Feudalism,” A.H.R., LXVI (1961), 641–63Google Scholar; “The Knights of Peterborough and the Anglo-Norman Fyrd,” E.H.R., LXXVII (1962), 417–36CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Anglo-Saxon Military Institutions (Oxford, 1962)Google Scholar. See also Holt, J. C., “Feudalism Revisited,” Econ. Hist. Rev., second series, XIV (1961), 333–40Google Scholar, and the further discussion between Hollister and Holt, “Two Comments on the Problem of Continuity in Anglo-Norman Feudalism,” ibid., XVI (1963), 104-18.

2. John, E., Land Tenure in Early England (Leicester, 1960)Google Scholar; Powicke, M., Military Obligation in Medieval England (Oxford, 1962)Google Scholar; see also Prestwich, J. O., “Anglo-Norman Feudalism and the Problem of Continuity,” Past and Present, No. 26 (1963), 39–57Google Scholar.

3. For example Coulborn, R. (ed.), Feudalism in History (Princeton, 1956)Google Scholar; Bryce Lyon, review of Dunham, W. H. Jr., Lord Hastings' Indentured Retainers, in Speculum, XXXII (1957), 557–58Google Scholar; Dunham, review of Lyon, From Fief to Indenture, in ibid., XXXIII (1958), 300-04; and more recently, Hall, J. W., “Feudalism in Japan — a Reassessment,” Comparative Studies in Society and History, V (1962), 15–51CrossRefGoogle Scholar, esp. 15-32; Richardson, H. G. and Sayles, G. O., The Governance of Medieval England (Edinburgh, 1963), pp. 30 ff., 61, 62–91Google Scholar; White, L. Jr., Medieval Technology and Social Change (Oxford, 1962), pp. 2–14, 28–38Google Scholar; Douglas, D. C., William the Conqueror (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1964), pp. 95 ff., 265–88Google Scholar.

4. Hollister, C. Warren, “The Irony of English Feudalism,” J.B.S., II (1963), 1–26Google Scholar, and the exchange with Hoyt, R. S. that follows, “The Iron Age of English Feudalism,” 27–30Google Scholar, “The Irony of the Iron Age,” 31-32. In Military Institutions Hollister wrote (p. 102), “As to the aptness of the term feudal to describe the pre-Conquest military system, I would prefer not to commit myself. Feudalism can be and has been defined in a bewildering variety of ways …. As a whole, the Old English system was decidedly unlike that of Norman feudalism. Was it feudal at all? That question I will leave to others who may be more certain than I as to how feudalism ought to be defined.”

5. Hollister, , “Irony,” J.B.S., II (1963)Google Scholar, implicitly, 1-3, 5, 15-16, explicitly, 31.

6. Ibid., 30.

7. Review of Lyon, , From Fief to Indenture, in Speculum, XXXIII (1958), 304Google Scholar.

8. On the significance of this further division of ban and judicial rights in the late twelfth and thirteenth centuries, see Duby, G., L'économie rurale et la vie des campagnes dans l'occident médiéval (Paris, 1962), pp. 481–82Google Scholar.

9. Hollister, , “Irony,” J.B.S., II (1963), 2–3Google Scholar.

10. See Brunner, O., “‘Feudalismus.’ Ein Beitrag zur Begriffsgeschichte,” Akademie der Wissenschaften und der Literatur in Mainz, Abhandlungen der geistes- und sozialwissenschaftlichen Klasse (1958), No. 10, pp. 598–612Google Scholar.

11. See Ganshof, F. L., Feudalism (New York, 1961), pp. 106 ff.Google Scholar

12. Ibid., pp. 108-09.

13. Maitland, F. W., Collected Papers, ed. Fisher, H. A. L. (Cambridge, 1911), I, 489Google Scholar.

14. A gratifying change from the usual story of the Conqueror's introducing “the feudal system” is Douglas, William the Conqueror, ch. ii, a model of institutional history.

15. Richardson, and Sayles, , Governance, pp. 32–41Google Scholar.

16. Elton, G. R., England under the Tudors (London, 1962), p. 2Google Scholar. Elton has apparently revised his opinion since writing these lines; see “The Tudor Revolution: A Reply,” Past and Present, No. 29 (1964), 26Google Scholar.

17. Barlow, F., The Feudal Kingdom of England (London, 1955), pp. 109–10Google Scholar.

18. For a brief history of the term see Brunner, , “‘Feudalismus,’” Akademie der Wissenschaften und der Literatur in Mainz, AbhandlungenGoogle Scholar.

19. Stubbs, William, The Constitutional History of England (Oxford, 1883), I, 273–74Google Scholar. The authors cited in Stubbs's note 2 are Montesquieu, Eichhorn, Waitz, Roth, and Sohm.

20. Hollister, , “Irony,” J.B.S., II (1963), 3Google Scholar.

21. Pace, one must suppose, Dunham, W. H. Jr., Lord Hastings' Indentured Retainers, 1461-1483 [Trans. of the Conn. Academy of Arts and Sciences, 30] (New Haven, 1955), pp. 7–10Google Scholar.

22. Hollister, , “Irony,” J. B. S., II (1963), 3Google Scholar.

23. Ibid., 15-16.

24. McFarlane, K. B. also sums up this “common view” in “Bastard Feudalism,” Bull. Inst. Hist. Res., XX (1945), 162Google Scholar.

25. Schumpeter, J., Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy (New York, 1950), p. 17Google Scholar, note 10.

26. Bloch, M., Feudal Society, tr. Manyon, L. A. (Chicago, 1961), pp. 68–69, 208–10, 236–38Google Scholar.

27. Richardson, and Sayles, , Governance, p. 39Google Scholar.

28. It is to be hoped that the judicious remarks of Lewis, P. S. in “Decayed and Non-Feudalism in Later Medieval France,” Bull. Inst. Hist. Res., XXXVII (1964), 157, 160Google Scholar, have finally put an end to this particular discussion.

29. Duby, G., “La Féodalité? Une mentalité médiévale,” Annales: E. S. C., XIII (1958), 765–71CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

30. Duby, G., La Société aux XIe et XIIe siècles dans la région mâconnaise (Paris, 1953), p. 186Google Scholar.

31. Génicot, L., L'économie rurale namuroise au bas Moyen-Age, II: Les hommes. La noblesse [Univ. de Louvain, Recueil de Travaux d'hist. et de philol., 4me sér., fasc. 10] (Louvain, 1960), pp. 296–97Google Scholar.

32. Richard, J., Les dues de Bourgogne et la formation du Duché du XIe au XIVe siècle [Publ. de l'Univ. de Dijon, 12] (Paris, 1954), pp. 21–49Google Scholar; Lemarignier, J. F., Recherches sur l'hommage en marche et les frontières féodales [Trav. et mém. de l'Univ. de Lille, nouv. sér., Droit et Lettres, XXIV] (Lille, 1945)Google Scholar.

33. Strayer, J. R., in his review of Faroux, M., Recueil des Actes des Ducs de Normandie, 911-1066, in Speculum, XXXVII (1962), 608Google Scholar, writes, “Many scholars have failed to see that there were really two feudalisms — the feudalism of the armed retainer or knight, and the feudalism of the counts and other great lords.” Perhaps he does not go far enough.

34. Richardson, and Sayles, , Governance, pp. 72 ff.Google Scholar