Alod and Fee

The Cambridge Historical Journal. 1937. Vol. 5. №3. P. 225-234.
The degree to which England had already adopted or grown into feudalism by the generation before the Norman Conquest is one of the oldest of historical controversies and one in which the opposing views having reacheds somethingl ike a stalemate, seem now disposed to concede a measure of recognition to each other's premisses. Recent treatments of the tenth and eleventh centuries are cautious and compromising. They are apt to speak of "nascent feudalism", or of the Normans' mission to develop and give precision to a Saxon feudalism which is never clearly delineated, but which is assumed to be far advanced.