but it was there and should not be disregarded. The high costs of fortification and the strong forces which successful kings or lords could bring to bear upon their rebel vassals both tended by the mid-eleventh century to prevent the disintegration of lordships and kingdoms. Overlordship might pass from one king or lord to another, but it did so only when the nobility of a region were prepared to transfer their allegiance because a new lord was an essential element in throwing off the old. Since it was rare for a regional nobility to act with any great unanimity in such matters, and since it was seldom obvious that the new lord would be more acceptable than the old, such transfers of territory were rare. Where they occurred they were prone to be a response to a manifest imbalance of power, and such imbalances were normally enduring. As a result the boundaries of kingdoms and of many great lordships showed a remarkable continuity and the divisions of the ninth and tenth centuries largely proved permanent. When Henry the Lion dreamed of his crown, he is likely to have been thinking of exclusive rights within his territories and not of a division of Germany between himself and its actual king.

A Reviving Economy

The social and political evolution described above was not the hallmark of a weak subsistence economy, but rather of one that was strongly reviving during this period. The costs of lordship, of its military expenditure, of service from vassals and of generosity from lords, were all incentives to encourage fresh forms of wealth as well as attempting to take a larger share of what there was already.

At the beginning of this period the main source of wealth was agriculture, and it remained so throughout. Lords had established their control over it in much the same way that they had established their rights over men, amalgamating rights which had been theirs on their own estates with public rights and then extending them over as many people as possible within their lordships. The control of local justice and of obligations to forced labour, the offer of 'protection' and levy-

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