ON THE CONDITION OF THE FEU Late Government Lecturer in History, Training Coll A knowledge of the principles and practices which during the Feudal age of English history must the highest interest and importance to us, for t reason that they lie at the foundation of our con monarchy, and were the original of our modern manners. Indeed, as Sir James Macintosh has well "Feudalism and its offshoot, Chivalry, constitute distinction between ancient and modern civilisati which observation I may add that they are also the p features which distinguish the politics and society of World from those of the New. Woman never occu important a position in Greek and Roman society does in ours; while the powerful sentiments of loya allegiance which bind our English society together, a centre the Sovereign, are feelings to which the Am are strangers. In so far as the latter people have bo their legal principles and social customs from us, th tinged with the spirit of Feudalism; but, as their m government is essentially democratic, and Feudalism essentially aristocratic, their political institutions an instincts created by them are different from ours, be they are based upon a different foundation. Our whole life, political and social, is thoroughly fe and so long as the English gentleman receives the g ich prevailed ever be of the simple nstitutional rn code of observed, the great ion;" to prominent the Old upied so as she Ity and s to its ericans rrowed ey are de of was the ause lal; sts he invites to his table with stately ceremony and etiquette, the English farmer regards his landlord with respectful awe, and the retired capitalist aspires to the dignity of a landowner and the lordship of the manor, so long will the spirit of Feudalism fashion our ideas and influence our social relations. I am therefore all the more confident in reading this paper to you, because the nature of my subject must have already enlisted your interest, whatever may be the attention which my mode of treatment may deserve at your hands. When the battle of Hastings gave to William of Normandy the crown and realm of England, and the subjection of the various counties and districts followed, each Norman chieftain was left to carve out his own portion of the conquered territory, and maintain his own right therein. During the twenty years of confusion and civil warfare which necessarily ensued, the position of the king was that of the successful leader of a band of adventurers established in the lands and habitations of a conquered nation. A kingdom so defenceless as this condition of things must have rendered England, was a tempting prey to a foreign invader, and hence we read that the Duke of Normandy's newly-acquired dominion was very soon threatened by formidable armaments preparing by the King of Denmark. The Conqueror immediately availed himself of the impending danger to place his kingdom in a state of defence-a measure which he was the more readily enabled to accomplish by the information which the Great Survey of the realm, then just completed, afforded him of the strength and resources at his command. For this purpose he held a great council and military array of the kingdom on Salisbury Plain, in the year 1086. There were present 60,000 men, all possessors of at least a portion of land sufficient to maintain a horse, or to provide a complete ルク suit of armour. All of these, before they sep tarily surrendered to the king the estates they ha and received them back on such conditions as i realm and crown for the future a well-appoint the defence of both, and revenue and services for of the latter. Thus was the Feudal System blished in England; and the tenures by which it were those which affected the subject either as defender of the country, or as a farmer and t producer of its wealth and subsistence. If we could have accompanied one of the great from this first feudal array of the realm to that p soil which he had hitherto appropriated by the sword, but which the sovereign had now by law him in fief, we should probably have witnessed th act on his arrival was to assemble, in like man king had done, all the dwellers or tenants on his then divide anew his lands among them. Perch summit of some isolated rock or commanding em castle-keep, strengthened by both nature and art, his little realm. In this fortress himself and f personal attendant freemen made their abode, al them lay that portion of the estate which the lo castle retained as his own domain, to be cultivate own immediate support by his slaves or villeins, wh together in the group of huts which formed the feud situated beneath the frowning walls of the donjon ke rest of the estate beyond this domain of the lord wa to the freemen or liberi homines of the manor, of wh were two classes-the knights or military tenants, th born, who held their fiefs by the tenure of knight-s chivalry, the same as that by which their lord held king; and the socage-men or yeomanry, who held, name implies, by a plough or agricultural tenure, parated, volu had conquered, insured to the landowners nence, his 1 of the 1 for his huddled allotted -ice or their lands for the mutual benefit of their lord and themselves. Whereas, in the earlier years of the Feudal period, the knightly tenants were the Norman followers of their lord; these were generally Saxon thanes, reduced from their rank of nobility. They were termed ignoble; and the service by which they held their lands, though worthy of a freeman, was considered base and degrading in an age when the sword and the battle-axe were held to be more honourable implements than the spade or the shuttle. But, if peaceful, and therefore derogatory to a gentleman, their occupation, the training they received in forestry and field sports, contributed to too many victories for them to be despised; and, as the bowmen and billmen of Old England, they will ever have their deeds of prowess sung in strains as triumphant as those which record the exploits of the Black Prince or Henry of Monmouth. Of this free and sturdy class, Chaucer has given us two characteristic portraits in the prologue to his Canterbury Tales-the Yeoman and the Miller. The former is represented as in attendance upon his lord while making the pilgrimage to the shrine of St. Thomas à Becket; but as he was a military yeoman, who rendered personal military service, in addition to other obligations, for the land which he farmed, we will pass on to the Miller, who belonged more directly to the peasantry or farming class, paying his fee to the lord in kind, as by meal, malt or other produce. "The Miller was a stout carle for the nones; And thereto broad, as though it were a spade. Upon the cop right of his nose he had A wart, and thereon stood a tuft of hairs His nosê-thirlés blacké were and wide; He was a jangler and a goliardeis, And that was most of sin and harlotries. Well could he stealen corn, and tollen thrice, A white coat and a blue hood weared he. A baggêpipe well could he blow and soun, This Miller is a perfect type of the class to belonged, who, being all freeholders, and inheritin of individual liberty of their Saxon forefathers, w outspoken, rollicking set of men, ever ready, as t Kent, for a riot or a brawl. Thus the Miller, pilgrims set out from the Tabard Inn, "for drinki pale, so that unethes (uneasily) on his horse he sa before he began his tale, which he persisted in telli his turn, he says "But first I make a protestatioun That I am drunk, I know it by my soun, It is time, however, that we now turn our attentio villein or slave class of tenants upon the lord's estate. free tenants were divided by their birth into the two of noble and ignoble, so these were composed of two g First, there were those who had been partially pated, or who, being freemen, held tenements, on the co of rendering services which were base and uncert which, though personally free, they were territoria |