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Bastard feudalism is a term that has been used to describe feudalism in the Late Middle Ages, primarily in England. Its main characteristic is military service in return for money.
The term was coined by the historian Charles Plummer in 1885, but it is primarily associated with his contemporary William Stubbs. According to Stubbs, a shift in English history took place under Edward I, when the feudal levy was replaced with royal payment in return for military service by the great magnates. Thus, instead of vassals rendering military service when required by the lord, they paid a portion of their income into the lord's treasury. In turn the lord would supplant the owed military service with hired retainers, a sort of private army in full time service to the lord.[clarify] These armed militias, loyal to their lord and without needs of economy led to what we might relate to today as armed gang violence.
In historical terms this led to ever increasing greed and ambition among the nobility, a tendency only exacerbated by the many sons of Edward III. The inevitable outcome was the disastrous civil strife of the late 15th century, known to posterity as the Wars of the Roses.
A strong challenge to the ideas of Stubbs was presented by K. B. McFarlane in the mid-20th century. McFarlane stripped the term of any negative connotation. To him, what was central to bastard feudalism was not the financial aspect (the sums involved were mostly negligible) but the concept of service in exchange for good favour. In a society governed on a personal basis, service to a lord was the best way to obtain favour in the form of offices, grants, etc. Furthermore, since the crown and the nobility essentially had the same interests at heart, military commissioning of great magnates was not in itself disruptive to society. The civil wars of the 15th century were caused by personal factors (particularly the failings of Henry VI), not by institutional ones. Recent historical research has shown that payment for military service goes back much further than the reign of Edward I, further discrediting the ideas of Stubbs.
Among today's historians, the concept of feudalism is considered problematic, bastard feudalism no less so. The term is therefore used only with caution, although it is not a dead concept.
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