Does anybody know anything about the feudal system?
I know a little bit from my Property Law class. The king (or the nobility) basically rented land to the serfs in exchange for money, crops, and service in the royal army. Only the nobility owned land. Here’s a funny tidbit–if someone wanted to sell feudal land to someone else, they had a ceremony where the seller passed to the buyer a clod of dirt as symbolic of the passing of title. It was called livery of seisin. And at this ceremony, they would hire a boy of around 8-11 years old to watch. He was there to remember that it had happened, because so few people could read or write, and there wasn’t a system of deeds. But just to be sure the boy would remember the ceremony, they’d whip him…hence the term “whipping boy”!
