This is an important new interpretation of the development of land law in England during the century after the Norman Conquest. Norman society was based on land and lordship, and the relative power of lord and vassal was crucial to the control of the land. John Hudson exploits a wealth of surviving charter and chronicle evidence in this scholarly analysis. His approach integrates social, political, administrative and intellectual history. Dr Hudson examines the uses to which lords and vassals put their lands, the relationship between them, and the constraints upon them. He traces the increasing sophistication of law and the changes in royal reassessment of legal developments in the eleventh and twelfth centuries.