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<blockquote data-quote="S'mon" data-source="post: 5121795" data-attributes="member: 463">England's lower population density and relative poverty when compared to continental Europe - especially France - might be one reason for the Yeoman's survival.&nbsp; It's notable that in Scotland, even poorer and more sparsely populated, knights were relatively unimportant and the spear Schiltron remained the dominant military element.Another thought which occurs to me is that England was very unusual in feudal terms, with the whole country supposedly belonging to the King by right of conquest.&nbsp; This gave the King a vested interest in maintaining the 'rights and liberties' of non-noble elements as a counterbalance to the threat of noble power.&nbsp; And in general weaker nobles = stronger non-nobles = yeomen.&nbsp; In a pure feudal system the king is just another noble, perhaps not even the most powerful, and the nobility will tend to seek to turn all the non-urban population into serfs.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="S'mon, post: 5121795, member: 463"] England's lower population density and relative poverty when compared to continental Europe - especially France - might be one reason for the Yeoman's survival. It's notable that in Scotland, even poorer and more sparsely populated, knights were relatively unimportant and the spear Schiltron remained the dominant military element. Another thought which occurs to me is that England was very unusual in feudal terms, with the whole country supposedly belonging to the King by right of conquest. This gave the King a vested interest in maintaining the 'rights and liberties' of non-noble elements as a counterbalance to the threat of noble power. And in general weaker nobles = stronger non-nobles = yeomen. In a pure feudal system the king is just another noble, perhaps not even the most powerful, and the nobility will tend to seek to turn all the non-urban population into serfs. [/QUOTE]

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