Social Sciences in China (Chinese Edition)

No.10, 2022

 

The Feudal Contract and English Kingship in the Middle Ages

(Abstract)

 

Meng Guanglin

 

In interpreting the feudal contract between kings and nobles in medieval Western Europe, Western historians have tended to elaborate on its interaction, equivalence, and even equality with an emphasis on the resulting restrictions on the king’s authority. However, this was not the case in England during this period. After the Norman Conquest, the “imported feudal system” became a firm support for the English monarchy. On this basis, the feudal contract between kings and nobles evolved from an oral to a textual contract and from individual commitment to collective negotiation a process strongly marked by the coercion and inequality bestowed upon it by feudal hierarchical status. In the course of this process, the English kings ceaselessly consolidated their power by breaking down the feudal customs reflected in agreements between the two sides. Although the Magna Carta, as a text-based feudal contract, made explicit provisions on feudal custom, it failed to effectively constrain royal power. History shows that if we seek to elaborate on the equivalence and even equality of the feudal contract from the perspective of modern contract theory, thereby magnifying the nobles’ right to resist the king, we will inevitably create a myth of “feudal contract determinism.”