However, in the Kingdom of England after the Norman Conquest, the king became in law the sole lord paramount and only holder of land by allodial title.
[7] The kings of the House of Normandy, however, eventually imposed on all free men who occupied a tenement (i.e. those whose tenures were "freehold", that is to say for life or heritable by their heirs), a duty of fealty to the crown rather than to their immediate lord who had enfeoffed them.
[2] The lands held by a tenant-in-chief in England, if comprising a large feudal barony, were called an honour.
[9] Scutage (literally shield money, from escutcheon) was a tax collected from vassals in lieu of military service.
[8] Once a tenant-in-chief received a demand for scutage, the cost was passed on to the sub-tenants and thus came to be regarded as a universal land tax.
[9] This tax was a development from the taxation system created under the Anglo-Saxon kings to raise money to pay off the invading Danes, the so-called Danegeld.