bastard feudalism

bastard feudalism, the name given by late Victorian historians to forms of lordship and clientship, increasingly recorded in written contracts, typical of English, and Irish, society in the later Middle Ages. These relationships—involving military, household, or administrative service in return for annuities and other types of patronage—were blamed for faction, disorder, and abuse of the legal system. Disapproval is strongly marked in the writings of Irish scholars, who have regarded such ties as less reputable than those, based on land tenure, associated with earlier feudalism. Recent work on England and Scotland suggests that the purely feudal age is a mirage, and that relationships akin to bastard feudalism have a long history; their spread was a response to the complexity of government and society in the later medieval period, one feature of which was the literacy and archival consciousness that has ensured the survival of the evidence. The Irish material includes contracts of varying types made from the late 13th century between magnates and lesser Anglo‐Irish and Gaelic lords, preserved in collections such as the Ormond deeds and the Red Book of the earls of Kildare. It awaits fuller study in the light of less hostile interpretations of medieval lordship.

Robin Frame