You have a barony. The men are all assigned to the castes (90% farmers, 7% soldiers, 2% lords and 1% wizards). The women are generally married to the men and thus be expected to perform similar duties. The male offspring of each marriage is assigned to his fathers caste whereas the women have no caste restrictions on who they can marry (barring the wizard's injunctions against incest). Thus the farmer's daughter, if pretty enough, could catch the eye of the baron's son and her children will be lordly caste. Likewise the baron, in an effort to cement ties, could marry his daughters to a wealthy merchant (farmer caste) or a strong warrior to encourage him to swear fealty and fight for him. Wizards? Wizards don't get laid. So a baron is really a leader of a clan rather than a head of a nuclear family lording it over unworthy helots. The baron isn't the brother of everybody in his barony but he is at least a cousin to many or most of the important men in his fief and they likewise are kin with the men beneath them.
That's the basic model. I won't say it's perfect because the leadership is always going to be subject to numerous social pressures (gold and glory for example) that will often interfere with kinship ties.
Now let's say that the King levies fighting troops from the Baron and they're gone for a while and the bandits are running around creating havoc. hat's bad enough but a neighboring lord has unlawfully seized property and won't hand it back. The Baron can't hire mercenaries because they are currently serving the King who not only pays better but offers pillage as well. So what can the good Baron do? He can't create more warriors.
This does raise the problem that once the bastards have been given arms they generally avoid handing them back. So the Baron generally keeps them close and if they get too strong, arranges for the inquisition to torch a couple to purify the barony and to keep the other bastards in line.
2) Get a wizard to impugn the parentage of strong farmers. Although farmer marriages are valid, they tend to have lots of little problems like not having any supporting documentation. Barons have been known to bribe wizards to declare marriages invalid so as to make the offspring illegitimate and chase them off the farm in order to give it to somebody else. A desperate Baron could bribe a wizard to retrospectively declare a couple of marriages invalid making the offspring bastards. This is somewhat degrading for the farmer involved and is likely to turn him against the Baron. An ambitious farmer chafing against caste restrictions might on the other hand be all too willing to blacken his parent's name in order to get out from behind the plow.
3) Get a dispensation. Some wizards have been known to churn out dispensations (magical permissions to ignore certain caste laws) for sizable sums of money. Although condemned by the Ecclessiarch, it is magically valid (ie doesn't show up on your soul via magical vision) although if you, a mere farmer, cast powerful magic in front of an inquisitor then your goose is well and truly cooked. The big disadvantage of the dispensation is money - if you had enough money to purchase dispensations to restock your army then you can pay more than the King.
3) Turn to the women. Although arming women has stronger scriptural justification than arming bastards, it is far less socially acceptable.
--Peter Metcalfe
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