ABSTRACT
Few problems in early English history have generated as much controversy and yet remained so far from being satisfactorily resolved as that of military obligation on the eve of the Conquest. It is not difficult to account for the interest; the topic is, after all, intimately connected with the long and often bitter debate over the origins of English feudalism. The land-books with their reservations of the 'common burdens', the legal compilations, and the Domesday Book custumals all represent military service in late Anglo-Saxon England as rooted in the soil. The attempt to characterise these duties as Germanic or feudal is fruitless. Military obligation had evolved and changed as the king's need for and ability to exact armed service from his subjects had changed. By the beginning of the eleventh century fyrd service was intimately connected with bookland. The Rectitudines asserts that a thegn was to 'do three things in respect of his land'.
