The Legal Framework of English Feudalism: The Maitland Lectures Given in 1972

Professor Milsom works out a fresh view of the beginnings of the common law concerning land. The received picture depends upon progressive assumptions: key words began with their later meanings
the law began with abstract ideas of property
a tenant's title to his tenement was never subject to his lord's control
the lord had no discretion, only the power to decide disputes according to external criteria
jurisdiction in that sense was all the lord lost as royal remedies developed
and all the tenant gained was better protection of unaltered rights. It is a picture of procedural changes taking place against an unchanging background, with the feudal structure at the beginning almost as insubstantial as it was to be at the end.