Feudalism was once the system in European medieval societies of the tenth to thirteenth centuries CE whereby a social hierarchy used to be mounted primarily based on nearby administrative manage and the distribution of land into gadgets (fiefs). A landowner (lord) gave a fief, alongside with a promise of army and prison protection, in return for a fee of some variety from the individual who obtained it (vassal). Such charge got here in the structure of feudal provider which may want to imply navy provider or the everyday charge of produce or money. Both lord and vassal had been freemen and the time period feudalism is no longer typically utilized to the relationship between the unfree peasantry (serfs or villeins) and the character of greater social rank on whose land they laboured.