Today Europe is divided into many countries. But from about the ninth to the fifteenth centuries, it was like a single country. It was divided into great estates, and the people who lived on them didn’t think of themselves as Frenchmen, Germans, or Englishmen. Instead, each man owed loyalty to his landlord, and the landlord owed it to a still greater landlord, and the greatest of all owed it to the king.

The local lords who ruled over vast estates did not wish to have the trouble and expense of administering the whole of their estates.