Land tenure in England
When William the Conqueror asserted sovereignty over England in 1066, he confiscated the property of the recalcitrant English landowners.In order to legitimise the notion of the Crown's paramount lordship, a legal fiction—that all land titles were held by the King's subjects as a result of a royal grant—was adopted.Thus the modern concept of "ownership" is not helpful in explaining the complexity of the distribution of rights.The feudal system in England gradually became more and more complex until eventually the process became cumbrous and services difficult to enforce.As tenancies came to an end, the number of layers in the feudal pyramid was reduced.