VOLUME IV, CHAPTER 2
The Other Shapes of Enfeoffment
Last chapter set the skeleton of enfeoffment and the five laws, and covered the two oldest kinds, of land and of office. This chapter finishes the set, adding the remaining four: voter enfeoffment, military enfeoffment, dynastic enfeoffment, and party enfeoffment. Three sections. The first looks at two kinds that run in very different directions, one where the people at the very bottom lift a position up with their votes, one where a position is won by the obedience of the gun. The second looks at the oldest and the most modern, one that sets the position inside a bloodline to pass down the generations, one that twists scattered people into a single strand and lifts a leader up on a platform and a discipline. The third turns back, gathers all six kinds together, walks each of them past the five laws, and then says at last what the word enfeoffment truly means, closing the half of the book that asks what enfeoffment is. Through this chapter you will meet one sentence again and again: a thousand differences of form, one skeleton beneath, no kind of enfeoffment advanced and no kind backward.
Chapter contents
Section One. Voter enfeoffment and military enfeoffment
Section Two. Dynastic enfeoffment and party enfeoffment
Section Three. The five laws of enfeoffment
Credit to the ancestors; the mistakes are mine: Tiger Lyon.