Peasants were treated differently depending on their social rank and the size of their tenements. A freeman, or peasant with little allodial or hereditary property (free from the claims of an overlord), became a serf by ceding his property to a bigger landowner—a lord—in exchange for protection and aid.

The lord returned the freeman's land with a clear statement of his economic and legal rights. Despite the fact that the land was no longer his, he had full custody and use of it, and the number of services and quantity of products he had to deliver to the lord were meticulously specified.

Henry I (r. 1100–1135), William's son, died without a male heir, putting England into virtual anarchy until the accession of Henry II (r. 1154–1189). Henry, son of the count of Anjou and Matilda, daughter of Henry I, ascended to the throne as head of the new Plantagenet dynasty, the family name of the Angevin (or Anjouan) line of monarchs who governed England until Richard III's death in 1485.

Henry attempted to restore his grandfather's regime's efficiency and stability, but in doing so, he drove the English monarchy fast into repressive tyranny. Henry brought nearly the whole west coast of France to the throne as a result of his father's inheritance (Anjou) and his marriage to Eleanor of Aquitaine (ca. 1122–1204).

Following that, William embarked on a twenty-year conquest that finally gave him control of all of England.

Every landholder, no matter how great or little, was now his vassal, officially owning land as a fief from the monarch. William skillfully structured his new English country. He formed a powerful monarchy whose power was not diluted by the existence of separate territorial rulers. As a flexible form of central control over towns, he retained the Anglo-Saxon tax system and the practice of court writs (legal warnings).

And he was careful not to disrupt the Anglo-Saxon quasi-democratic practice of periodic "parleying," or consultations between the king and minor authorities with vested interests in royal choices.

Alfred the Great (r. 871–899) was the first to promote the practice of parleying

Alfred, a powerful and determined king who had forcefully united England, valued the opinion of his councilors in the formulation of legislation. Canute (r. 1016–1035), the Dane who restored order and brought unity to England following the civil wars that had plagued the nation under the reign of the inept Ethelred II (r. 978–1016), admired and followed his example.

Although the new Norman monarch, William, firmly subordinated his aristocratic vassals to the crown, he continued the custom of parleying by conferring with them on a regular basis.

With the acquisition of additional kingdoms abroad, Henry II grew increasingly despotic at home. In the Clarendon Constitutions, he imposed his will on the clergy (1164). These reforms restricted legal appeals to Rome, subjugated the clergy to civil tribunals, and gave the king power over bishop election. As a result, both the nobles and the church voiced strong political opposition.

The archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas à Becket (1118?–1170), who had previously served as Henry's obedient chancellor, openly defied the monarch and fled to Louis VII. Becket's subsequent assassination in 1170 and canonization by Pope Alexander III in 1172 heightened widespread indignation of the king's harsh tactics. Geoffrey Chaucer, writing in an era of two hundred years later.

The Magna Carta set constraints on despotic conduct such as that of the Norman and Plantagenet rulers. It also protected the privileged's rights against the monarchy. The privileged retained their right to be represented at the highest levels of government on key topics such as taxes in Magna Carta. The monarchy, on the other hand, was protected and strengthened. The objective of feudal rule has always been a balancing effort that handed authority to both parties.

Magna Carta was more of a political accident than a political genius. Nonetheless, the English were able to prevent both the nobility's collapse of the monarchy and the monarchy's infringement on the nobility's privileges. Despite King John's continuous resistance,

The English battle in the High Middle Ages was to safeguard the rights of the favored few, not the king's power. (From 1154 until 1485, the Plantagenets ruled unbrokenly in the male line.) The French, on the other hand, experienced the opposite dilemma.

In 987, noblemen picked Hugh Capet to succeed the final Carolingian emperor, ushering in the Capetian, a third Frankish dynasty that governed France for twelve generations until 1328. Powerful feudal nobles resisted Capetian rule over the next two centuries, until the reign of Philip II Augustus (r. 1180–1223), burying the notion of election.