But peace was banished, and industry was crushed, in the disorders of the feudal system.
In the beginning of the eleventh century, Italy was exposed to the feudal tyranny, alike oppressive to the sovereign and the people.
In Europe, the lower ranks of society were relieved from the yoke of feudal servitude; and freedom is the first step to curiosity and knowledge.
In the feudal system of Europe, arms were the title of distinction and the measure of allegiance; and amidst their tumult, the still voice of law and reason was seldom heard or obeyed.
The use of these words in the Greek and Latin of the feudal times may be amply understood from the Glossaries of Ducange, (Græc.
Rome to confound the marks of filial and of feudal subjection.
But the independence, rapine, and discord of the feudal lords were unmixed with any semblance of good; and every hope of industry and improvement was crushed by the iron weight of the martial aristocracy.
And the scene continues, weirdly dramatic, like some old romantic tale of feudal days.
The family, once famous among the Languedoc Crusaders, and owning a great feudal estate, had dwindled down to the possession of a patrimony hardly so large and not half so rich as a modern farm.
In Europe, feudal castles are complete ruins; in a country such as this, where contests are of a guerilla character, they are neglected, but neither destroyed nor totally abandoned.
I cannot present what I have to say on the feudal monarchy of Servia more appropriately than in connexion with the architectural monuments of the period.
The further we walked the nobler appeared the last relic of the dotage of oldfeudal Servia.
In either case, such a holding by military service was a fief, and from the institution of such fiefs the so-called Feudal System, with all its manifold workings for good and for evil, had its rise.
But so far as the Feudal System existed, either in England or in any other country, it existed wholly as a system which had grown up by the side of an earlier system which it wholly or partially displaced.
On the principles of feudal law nothing can be said against this, as the lord had a property in his villain which he would lose by the villain’s ordination.
The Feudal System, as something spreading into every corner of the land, and affecting every relation of life, never obtained the same complete establishment in England which it did in some continental countries.
But it is only indirectly that my subject has anything to do with the Feudal System, and especially with its social working.
I have to do with the comitatus, out of which the feudal relation grew, mainly in another aspect equally indirect, namely, the way in which it affected our earliest political institutions.
Though he fought for church and king, there was lacking the vow of knighthood, the religious dedication of oneself to the service of the cross and of one’s feudal suzerain.
In feudal ages the lord might treat the serf like a beast of the field.
If his kingdom remained essentially feudalin character, its limits were at least extended over the adjacent lands.
On four occasions he had succeeded in acquitting his obligations by making the prescribed payment in kind; but this time he was compelled to discharge the debt in money, and to impose taxes which strained the structure of his feudal rule.
Panic had taken hold of the feudal levies, and his countrymen were being massacred (924 [C.
The sovereignty of the Bagratids was essentially feudal in character; and the loose ties of such a political organisation were ill adapted to withstand the strain to which they were subjected at the hands of their Mussulman neighbours.
Was he impressed with the cohesion of the Christians among themselves, and by the contrast thus offered to the fissiparous tendencies of his feudal polity?
Similar examples abound in the annals of our European nations while they were still in the feudal stage of development.
It is a mere fleck of rock, picturesquely encircled by feudal walls and towers.
Our ramble terminated at Manor-beer Castle, one of the most extensive and complete of feudal fortresses in Great Britain.
The old church of Monzievaird, now converted into a mausoleum, was the scene of a dreadful tragedy, characteristic of the spirit of feudal times.
The chief of Monzievaird was accustomed to execute a man on the first day of every month, and this celebration of the almanac at Tom-an-Tosach was apparently designed to prevent the feudal rights of pit and gallows from falling into desuetude.
About 1189 the King made over to Gilbert the lands of Maderty with all their feudal rights and privileges.
So, in the same way, she looked about her on the condition of the serfs, and saw nothing of the slow upbuilding of the feudal system, of the service that once had meaning, but only the apostolic equality of all men and the nobility of labor.
For the dinner in the great Hall was one of the chief institutions about which centred the social life of feudal days.
The bailiff was a man who trusted in the stability of the feudal structure of society as few trust in the permanence of heaven.
The empire of the day broke into a thousand feudal baronies of burning coal.
The feudalages were a wonderful seed-time in a world all gaunt with ruins.
Though the feudal hierarchy was originally based on conquest or domestic subjection, it came to have a fanciful or chivalrous or political force.
A feudal government, while it lasted, was accordingly highly responsive and responsible.
Other interpreters might find in the phrase the whole feudal system, all the chivalry, legality, and foolishness of the Middle Ages.
The feudal system offers perhaps the best illustration of a patriotism wholly submerged in loyalty.
It represents feudal traditions rather than the tendency really involved in contemporary industry, science, or philanthropy.
The feudal lord was a genuine representative of a very small part of his vassal's interests.
It would be a curious inquiry to trace the origin of services and other customs, paid by tenants to their feudal sovereign.
She was leaning in front of her maidens, beside a richly-carved canopy of state, underneath which, on days of feudal hospitality and pomp, presided the master of the banquet.
Fierce came the beams of the morning sun through the eastern oriel of the hall, and the guards and retainers of this feudal fortress were waiting the appearance of their lord.
The custom of heriotship, or a fine payable on the death of the landholder to the feudal lord, was then in most cases rigorously exacted.
The news of his arrival had drawn hither not a few of the surrounding peasantry to gaze upon the pomp and to pay homage at the court of their feudal lord; and a crowd of idlers was accumulating beneath the walls of the fortress.
The captivity of the superior lord was one of those cases provided for by the feudal tenures, and all vassals were, in that event, obliged to contribute towards his ransom.
Holt of Grislehurst held the manorial rights, and was feudal lord over a widely-extended domain, the manor of Spotland descending to him by succession from his grandfather.
It was a vast and smoky den, such as could only exist in those days of feudal magnificence.
Those were wild and lawless times when the feudalspirit and power had not yet lost all its sway, and when each man's house was often made to be his castle, and himself called upon to defend it with his life.
The breaking up of the feudal system, with the gradual consolidation of the provinces into one kingdom, and the development of the sentiment of nationality, are traced and illustrated.
Charlemagne's work and the subsequent growth of feudal institutions are next considered.
The feudal exclusiveness, on the subject of taxation, is done away with, all men being equally liable to taxation.
How is this different from the arrogance of the feudal lords and landlords?
Long ago the farmers, no longer able to bear the burden of harsh exploitation, sent representatives to the feudal lords to plead for reductions in the amount of rice they had to send as tribute.
That is why the feudallords and landlords issued orders for rice to be sent to them.
Since in those days (the feudal age) the feudal lords seized food directly from the farmers, there was no need to include the farmers in the monetary economy.
Long ago the cities expropriated agricultural produce through the feudal lords and landlords, and in more recent times they forced the farmers to give it up by means of the Food Control Act.
The insolents were thefeudal lords (idlers) who, in order to continue their own extravagance and gluttony, cruelly robbed the farmers.
It was perpetuated from a savage past in the custom of cutting off the right hand of a man who died without heir, and sending it as proof of main-morte to the feudal lord.
The hostility this excited in the liberal press, largely written by Jews, served to bring the feudal Christian Socialists and Radical anti-Semites together.
The landowner loves his rural life, as did the Virginian planter in North America before the Civil War, and lives on the fazenda in a sort of semi-feudal patriarchal way, often with grown-up sons and daughters around him.
The labouring class, who gather like feudal dependents round the estancia, are of two classes.
And many contradicted him, and there arose a noise and loud disturbance among them; for they feared that if they doubled their service it would become a custom, and be turned into a feudal right.
No bells were rung, indeed, and no delegation of citizens as such, headed by the selectmen, met him at the station; and other feudal expressions of fealty were lacking.
Certain feudal chiefs from the North Country, of whose allegiance Mr. Worthington had felt sure, had obeyed the summons of their old sovereign, Jethro Bass, and had come South to hold a conclave under him at the Pelican.
You pay the Seigneur twenty-six livres annualfeudal rent of your holding.
To this day if a noble returning from the hunt were to slay two of his serfs to bathe and refresh his feet in their blood, he could still claim in his sufficient defence that it was his absolute feudal right to do so.
The peasant cannot take a step upon the road, cross a crazy bridge over a river, buy an ell of cloth in the village market, without meeting feudal rapacity, without being taxed in feudal dues.
Consider a few of these feudal rights that are in danger of being swept away should the Privileged yield even to the commands of their sovereign; and admit the Third Estate to an equal vote with themselves.
Is it cant that the feudal grip is on all things that live, crushing them like grapes in the press, to its own profit?
It was a veritable feudal castle and, as we have said, grand, gloomy and forbidding to look at.
It combined the characteristics of a feudal castle and a fortress.
It is only now getting rid of hereditary feudal nobility.
