It was a world of knights in armour, of ecclesiastics in vestments and stoles, of lawyers in robes, of princes in silk and velvet and cloth of gold, and of peasants in laced shoe, brown cloak, and cloth hat.
But although the whole feudal organization was outwardly intact, the thinker who was watching the signs of the times would not have been long in arriving at the conclusion that feudalism was "played out," that the whole fabric of mediaeval civilization was becoming dry and withered, and had either already begun to disintegrate or was on the eve of doing so.

Causes of change had within the past half-century been working underneath the surface of social life, and were rapidly undermining the whole structure.

The growing use of firearms in war; the rapid multiplication of printed books; the spread of the new learning after the taking of Constantinople in 1453, and the subsequent diffusion of Greek teachers throughout Europe; the surely and steadily increasing communication with the new world, and the consequent increase of the precious metals; and, last but not least, Vasco da Gama's discovery of the new trade route from the East by way of the Cape--all these were indications of the fact that the death-knell of the old order of things had struck.
Notwithstanding the apparent outward integrity of the system based on land tenures, land was ceasing to be the only form of productive wealth.

Hence it was losing the exclusive importance attaching to it in the earlier period of the Middle Ages.

The first form of modern capitalism had already arisen.