"Feudal system" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... banks of a small tributary of the Seine, when it turns south-west and climbs the hills toward Nemours, the next post-town. These hills slope off westward to the desert or waste of La Pontoise, one of those blister-scars, still to be seen in France, left by the feudal system, which stripped the soil of the last grain of fertility and gave nothing in return. La Pontoise was aforetime a grand estate, possessed by a branch of the Foix family, the great ducal house of Nemours. Its farms wasted by the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various
... "John Locke has not emancipated himself from his admiration of the feudal system. Let this be our principle,— that those whose lives, properties, and liberties are most concerned in the administration of the laws shall be the people to form them. Let there be two bodies to be elected by the people,—a council and ...
— A True Hero - A Story of the Days of William Penn • W.H.G. Kingston
... once one of the great causes of the decay of Feudalism. Many of the old families had become wholly extinct; and under the feudal system their estates lapsed to their overlords, the kings. Other families were represented only by heiresses; and the marrying of these ladies became a recognized move in the game for power, in which the kings, and especially the emperor Frederick, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume VI. • Various
... They made their homes in what was then Tryon county, about thirty miles from Albany, then called Kingsborough, where now is the thriving town of Gloversville. To certain families tracts were allotted varying from one hundred to five hundred acres, all subjected to the feudal system. ...
— An Historical Account of the Settlements of Scotch Highlanders in America • J. P. MacLean
... that authority which wished to extinguish those remains of antiquity, and the people who desired to preserve them, recourse was had to what then went by the name of "the judgment of God," viz., a formal duel, attended with all the ceremonies which the feudal system had imported into Europe. The partisans of the Roman ritual placed their defence of it in the hands of one knight-errant, and those of the opposite party confided theirs to the care of another. He who defended the Roman rite was conquered in the fight; and although the conditions of the combat were ...
— Roman Catholicism in Spain • Anonymous
... however, having dawned and become penetrated with the light of Christianity, formed the first element of the feudal system. No prescribed series of duties within the cold enclosure of legal forms bound mutually to each other the lord and his vassal. They were bound by the all-embracing feeling of fidelity. Hence the Lombard law of feuds compares the relation to ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 5, November, 1863 • Various
... and no share in Napoleon's revolutionary reorganization of West Europe, the benefit they reaped from both movements was second only to that of the serfs. For the Jews and the serfs were the two most oppressed classes under the feudal system still surviving. And so the Jews imbibed with enthusiasm the libertarian principles of the Revolution and the "open career" administration of Napoleon. They threw off with avidity most of the shackles which prevented their joining in general European culture, and Jewish parents of ...
— The Menorah Journal, Volume 1, 1915 • Various
... ad servitium suum integrum nobis explendum et peragendum, cum opus adfuerit, secundum quod debent feodis et tenementis suis de jure nobis facere." This personal service in process of time degenerated into pecuniary commutations or aids, and at last the military part of the feudal system was abolished ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IV (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland II • Various
... is a large edifice, but not a handsome one—the monks reserving their magnificence for their churches—but was surrounded by a circuit of fortifications, which, when there was need, were manned by the vassals of the convent in the style of the Feudal system. This was in some degree the case at the present day. The Abbot, a gentlemanlike and respectable-looking man, attended by several of his monks, received us with the greatest politeness, and conducted us to the building, where we saw two great sculptured vases, or ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... de la France, 7. Dissertation sur la Nature des Richesses etc.) More recently this darker side has been dwelt upon by F. Moeser, Patriot. Phant., I, 28; Ortes, Economia nazionale, II, 17, and the would-be restorer of the middle ages, Ad. Mueller. While the latter writer lauds the feudal system as a "sublime fusion of person and thing" (Elemente I, 221), the present system of wages, because it is a system of compensation, he blames, and prefers the feudal for the opposite reason (?). "The only merit which the state recognizes in our day is ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... what Mr. Hobhouse thinks an error (about the feudal system in Spain);—it is not Spain. If he puts a few words of prose any where, ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... numerous class[23] on the manors was the third, that of the villeins or non-free tenants, who held their land by payment of services to the lord. The position of the villein under the feudal system is most complicated. He both was and was not a freeman. He was absolutely at the disposal of the lord, who could sell him with his tenement, and he could not leave his land without his lord's permission. He laboured under many disabilities, such as the merchet or fine ...
— A Short History of English Agriculture • W. H. R. Curtler
... English statutes in effect at the time of the first colonization held good for the colonies so far as applicable; and the principles of the common law were everywhere accepted. Second came the Crown. When the colonies were founded, the feudal system was practically dead in England; but the conception that the Crown held the original title to all the lands was applied in the colonies, so that all titles went back to Indian or royal grants. Parliament made no protest when the king divided up and gave ...
— Formation of the Union • Albert Bushnell Hart
... all the Slavic nations, the Bohemian is the only one in which the flower of chivalry has ever unfolded itself; and the cause of its development here is doubtless to be sought in their occidental feudal system, and in their constant intercourse with the Germans. The natural tendency of the Polish nobility to heroic deeds and chivalrous adventures was counterbalanced, partly by the oriental character of their relation to the peasantry, which impressed on them at least as much of the character of the ...
— Historical View of the Languages and Literature of the Slavic - Nations • Therese Albertine Louise von Jacob Robinson
... the despotic sovereignty of the family, the town, and the tribe, and replaced or tempered it by that of the state. But despotic power is the more vexatious the narrower its sphere of action. The old republics and the feudal system opprest individuals much more than did the state. The empire at times persecuted Christianity most severely, but at least it did not arrest its progress. Republics, however, would have overcome the new faith. Even Judaism would have smothered it but for the pressure of Roman authority. The Roman ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VIII (of X) - Continental Europe II. • Various
... millions of inhabitants. It was indeed a heterogeneous realm, composed of a vast number of distinct nations and provinces, differing in language, religion, government, laws, customs and civilization. In most of these countries the feudal system existed in all its direful oppression. Many of the provinces of the Austrian empire, like the Netherlands, Lombardy and Suabia, were separated by many leagues from the great central empire. The Roman Catholic religion ...
— The Empire of Austria; Its Rise and Present Power • John S. C. Abbott
... himself as king, and for fourteen years (not without the help of a few more murders) he kept some sort of rude order and justice in the wretched land. Remember him, for, bad man as he is, he does represent a principle. He initiated, by that gift of the lands to his soldiers, the feudal system in Italy. I do not mean that he invented it. It seems rather to be a primaeval German form, as old as the days of Tacitus, who describes, if you will recollect, the German war-kings as parting the conquered lands among their 'comites,' ...
— The Roman and the Teuton - A Series of Lectures delivered before the University of Cambridge • Charles Kingsley
... of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, now on the side of Edmund, Duke of York. Wat Tyler, the Lollards, Warwick the King-maker, all that anarchy from which freedom is to spring, had for foundation, avowed or secret, the English feudal system. The Lords were usefully jealous of the Crown; for to be jealous is to be watchful. They circumscribed the royal initiative, diminished the category of cases of high treason, raised up pretended Richards against Henry IV., appointed themselves arbitrators, ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... gods who presided over the destinies of Egyptian cities, and formed a true feudal system of divinities, belonged to one or other of these natural categories. In vain do they present themselves under the most shifting aspects and the most deceptive attributes; in vain disguise themselves with the utmost care; a closer examination generally ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 1 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... roads. I shall never forget the singular scene[126] on entering Tepaleen at five in the afternoon, as the sun was going down. It brought to my mind (with some change of dress, however) Scott's description of Branksome Castle in his Lay, and the feudal system. The Albanians, in their dresses, (the most magnificent in the world, consisting of a long white kilt, gold-worked cloak, crimson velvet gold-laced jacket and waistcoat, silver mounted pistols and daggers,) the Tartars with their ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.) - With his Letters and Journals. • Thomas Moore
... crowd, and the English crowd, and all the rest of the trading crowd, had sneered at Isaac Ford as a commercial soul-saver; but he, his son, knew different. When the natives, emerging abruptly from their feudal system, with no conception of the nature and significance of property in land, were letting their broad acres slip through their fingers, it was Isaac Ford who had stepped in between the trading crowd and its prey and taken possession of fat, ...
— The House of Pride • Jack London
... exert themselves, as in duty bound, for the amusement of their master and his guests. There is nothing republican in it; no feeling of equality; as far as I have seen, that feeling does not exist here, except between people of the same rank. It is more like some remains of the feudal system, where the retainers sat at the same table with their chief, but below the salt. The dances are monotonous, with small steps and a great deal of shuffling, but the music is rather pretty, and some of the dancers were very ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca
... Americans are detached from the actual conflicts by the Atlantic, and because Americans have had no real contact with the feudal or the imperial system for nearly 300 years. Pilgrim and Puritan, Covenanter and Quaker, Lutheran and Catholic alike left the feudal system and autocratic government behind them when they crossed the Atlantic. Americans, therefore, cannot help hoping that two results of the present war will be: (1) The abolition of secret diplomacy and secret understandings, and the substitution therefor of treaties publicly discussed and sanctioned, ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915 - What Americans Say to Europe • Various
... led in war and ruled in peace. They came together as magnates of the land, sitting in an Upper House as Lords of the shire, even as the Knights of the shire sat in the Commons. And this continued long after the feudal system had passed away, carried on not only by the force of tradition, but by a sentiment of respect and real affection; for these feelings were common enough until designing men laid themselves ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor
... almost cowardly. Single combats did certainly prove courage; but even in them, skill, and more than skill, personal strength, or the best horse, decided the victory. In fact, although not the origin, it was the upholder of the feudal system, in which might was right; and we may add, that the invention of gunpowder, which placed every man upon a level, if not the cause of, certainly much assisted to break up the system. How much more of ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... and towns into corporations, and conferring on them the privileges of municipal jurisdiction, the first check was given to the overwhelming evils of the feudal system; and under their influence freedom and independence began to peep forth from amid the rigours of slavery and the miseries ...
— A Walk through Leicester - being a Guide to Strangers • Susanna Watts
... Conquest this country was slowly beginning to be mixed up with the affairs of the Continent of Europe, and that not only with the kindred nations of Scandinavia, but with the Romanized countries also. But the Conquest of Duke William did introduce the complete Feudal system into the country; and it also connected it by strong bonds to the Romanized countries, and yet by so doing laid the first foundations of national feeling in England. The English felt their kinship with the Norsemen ...
— Signs of Change • William Morris
... national power at home and abroad, by the entrance of the Reformation "by a side door," and by the final separation of England from all ecclesiastical bondage in Parliament's famous Act of Supremacy. In previous reigns chivalry and the old feudal system had practically been banished; now monasticism, the third mediaeval institution with its mixed evil and good, received its death-blow in the wholesale suppression of the monasteries and the removal of abbots from the House of Lords. Notwithstanding the evil character of the king and ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... that primogeniture, though neither the law of succession in the Roman empire, nor originally of the nations of Northern Europe, in whom the allodial customs at first generally prevailed, came to be universally introduced with the feudal system, and the thorough establishment of a military aristocracy in every country of Europe. But, strange to say, there are some places where the rule is just the reverse, and the youngest son succeeds to the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various
... the machine together is a system of privileges. These may vary according to the opportunities and the tastes of those who seek them, from nepotism and patronage in all their aspects to clannishness, hero-worship or a fixed idea. They vary from military rank in armies, through land and services in a feudal system, to jobs and publicity in a modern democracy. That is why you can breakup a particular machine by abolishing its privileges. But the machine in every coherent group is, I believe, certain to reappear. For privilege is entirely relative, and uniformity is impossible. ...
— Public Opinion • Walter Lippmann
... for its living upon agriculture. The Feudal System had concentrated the ownership of practically all of the valuable agricultural land in the hands of the small group of persons which ruled because it controlled economic opportunity. The power of this class rested on its ownership of the resource upon which the ...
— The American Empire • Scott Nearing
... crowned heads, seldom amuse themselves with honest and virtuous girls of the working classes, but more generally with actresses of loose morals, dancing girls, and hysterical sirens and adventuresses of all kinds, so long as they are pretty. Since the time of the feudal system, the nobility, having lost its real reason for existence, only lives on its traditions. It remains in general in a state of idle depravity, faithful to its old traditions, except when it has succeeded in adapting itself to the work ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel
... seasonable repairs. A similar irregularity was, in our own country, put a stop to in the reign of Mary, when it was enacted that each parish should maintain its own roads. A custom was borrowed from the feudal system: the lord of the manor was empowered to demand from his vassals certain portions of their labour, including the use of such rude implements as were then in use. The peasant was bound by the tenure of his holding, to aid in cutting, carting, and housing his lord's hay and corn, ...
— Old Roads and New Roads • William Bodham Donne
... to the encroachments of the unbelievers, but also more indirectly in the quenching of rising heresies, in the greater purity of life which in many cases accompanied the taking of the Cross, the weakening of the feudal system, the impulse given to learning and civilization. Earnestness and self-devotion such as were shown by Godfrey de Bouillon, St. Louis of France, and no doubt by many more amongst the Crusaders, were rewarded and blessed, though not in what might have seemed ...
— A Key to the Knowledge of Church History (Ancient) • John Henry Blunt
... and monstrous abominations, the evil of great organic institutions crop out long after the departure of the institutions themselves. If you go to Europe you will find not only the roots, but likewise many of the deadly fruits of the old Feudal system still surviving in several of its old states and kingdoms. So, too, with slavery. The eighteen years of freedom have not obliterated all its deadly marks from either the souls or bodies of the black woman. The conditions of life, indeed, have been modified ...
— Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence - The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of - Slavery to the Present Time • Various
... tarried in the forest, entered, looking as pale as a ghost and very excited in manner, as if some extraordinary event had upset the balance of his mind. It was not without a very apparent effort that, remembering the composure of demeanour exacted by the feudal system from all pages, he repressed his excitement and took his ...
— The Rival Heirs being the Third and Last Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake
... and contempt of it?" After a preliminary discussion of the origin of chivalry and knight-errantry and of the ideal knightly characteristics, "Prowess, Generosity, Gallantry, and Religion," which he derives from the military necessities of the feudal system, he proceeds to establish a "remarkable correspondency between the manners of the old heroic times, as painted by their romancer, Homer, and those which are represented to us in the books of modern knight-errantry." ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... purchased. But by a gradual change in the government this civil equality and liberty in the possession of property was superseded by an aristocratic and almost absolute despotism. The Ottomans came in contact with a people ruling under Byzantine law, of which (as of the feudal system) they had but a confused knowledge. The feudal system having taken root in Greece, and having been already introduced into Albania, had necessarily much influence on the contiguous provinces of Moldavia and Wallachia, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 3 No 3, March 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... Amon, and Khnumu; temples were raised to him at Semneh, Shotaui, and Doshkeh; and the anniversary of a decisive victory which he had gained over the barbarians was still celebrated on the 21st of Pachons, a thousand years afterwards, under Thutmosis III. The feudal system spread over the land lying between the two cataracts, where hereditary barons held their courts, trained their armies, built their castles, and excavated their superbly decorated tombs in the mountain-sides. The only difference between Nubian Egypt and Egypt proper lay in the greater heat ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 2 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... distinction was set up, it was of a piece with all the rest—a part of the brutal, unchristian, blundering feudal system. Distinctions of rank were then so strongly insisted upon, that it would have been thought blasphemy to doubt them, as blasphemous as it is in parts of the United States now for a nigger to set up as the equal of a white man. A ruffian like Henry VIII. talked as gravely about ...
— The Book of Snobs • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the Sword-bearers. (p. 061) Several cities were founded, and the country was divided into fiefs, according to the feudal system of Western Europe. The towns were modeled after Hamburg, Bremen, and Luebeck. Riga grew into a large and ...
— The Story of Russia • R. Van Bergen
... more from cold than when the woods and turbaries were open. They are less religious than in the days of the Romish faith; and if we consider them in relation to their immediate superiors, we shall find reason to confess that the independence which has been gained since the total decay of the feudal system, has been dearly purchased by the loss of kindly feelings and ennobling attachments. They are less contented, and in no respect more happy—that look implies hesitation of judgment, and an unwillingness to be convinced. Consider the point; ...
— Colloquies on Society • Robert Southey
... their liberty to commerce, which created new species of power to undermine the feudal system. But let them beware of the consequence; the tyranny of wealth is still more galling and debasing than ...
— Letters written during a short residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark • Mary Wollstonecraft
... Your ancient feudal system of government has been but little improved upon today over its primitive status, for you still draw well-defined lines of class distinction between God's children—lines of demarcation based on wealth and natal origin. With your inhabitants, communal standing and social distinction is proportionate ...
— The Planet Mars and its Inhabitants - A Psychic Revelation • Eros Urides and J. L. Kennon
... throne by the shadow of rebellion. Does he really think of making us enamoured of the "good old times" by the faithful and harrowing portraits he has drawn of them? Would he carry us back to the early stages of barbarism, of clanship, of the feudal system as "a consummation devoutly to be wished?" Is he infatuated enough, or does he so dote and drivel over his own slothful and self-willed prejudices, as to believe that he will make a single convert to the beauty of Legitimacy, ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... districts of Scotland. The family of Hogg claimed descent from Hougo, a Norwegian baron; and the poet's paternal ancestors at one period possessed the lands of Fauldshope in Ettrick Forest, and were followers, under the feudal system, of the Knights of Harden. For several generations they had adopted the simple occupation of shepherds. On the mother's side, the poet was descended from the respectable family of Laidlaw,—one of the oldest in ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume II. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... one of the preachers of the Huguenots in France under the feudal system, about the year 1710, that gave utterance to the patriotic sentiment, emphasized in this country since the rise of the great trusts, "That governments exist and have a right to exist, only for the ...
— The Choctaw Freedmen - and The Story of Oak Hill Industrial Academy • Robert Elliott Flickinger
... importance of health is a dominant idea in the whole nation. This is probably due to the very permanent impress given to English civilization by the feudal system, to the demand made for the permanence of the family, and for the production of warrior barons and warrior retainers. The physical condition, that was formerly a necessity, is now maintained as a matter ...
— The Education of American Girls • Anna Callender Brackett
... is laid in the fifteenth century, when the feudal system, which had been the sinews and nerves of national defence, and the spirit of chivalry, by which, as by a vivifying soul, that system was animated, began to be innovated upon and abandoned by those grosser characters who centred their sum of happiness in procuring the ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... the teaching of Confucius so influential is based on the circumstances of the time. When this thoughtful, earnest youth awoke to the consciousness of life about him, he saw that the abuses under which the people groaned sprang from the feudal system, which cut up the country into separate territories, over which the power of the king had no control. China was in the position of France in the years preceding Philippe-Auguste, excepting that there ...
— Chinese Literature • Anonymous
... scarcely be said to be a gentry at all, in the former; while the latter, a conquered province, had received the frame-work of the English system, possessing Lords of the Manor, and divers other of the fragments of the feudal system. So great was the social equality throughout the interior of the New England provinces, indeed, as almost to remove the commoner distinctions of civilised associations, bringing all classes surprisingly near the same level, with the exceptions of the very ...
— Wyandotte • James Fenimore Cooper
... becoming the interest of every lord to raise as many peasants as he could, offering his lands on personal service, the value of an estate being determined by the number of retainers it could furnish, and hence arose the feudal system; how the monarchical principle, once again getting the superiority, asserted its power in Germany in Henry the Fowler and his descendants, the three Othos; how, by these great monarchs, the subjection of Italy was accomplished, and the morality of the German clergy vindicated ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... and the teacher supplementing this from his knowledge gained through wider reading. During the discussion an outline should be made on the board, largely by the suggestions of the pupils, and kept in their note-books for reference and review. (See p. 100, Lesson on the Feudal System.) ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: History • Ontario Ministry of Education
... very respectable antiquity and antecedents. By a certain provision of the Feudal System a freeman who had committed a felony, or become hopelessly involved in debt, might purge himself of either by becoming a serf. So, at a later date, persons in the like predicament were permitted to exchange their ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson
... the ruins of the feudal system, which had crumbled as all ancient and decrepit things must crumble when the wheels of progress roll over them, she stood there wrapped in the beliefs and customs of that other century to which she belonged. Her sentiments had clustered about the past, as his had done, until the border-line ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... war. Thus a knight held land of his baron, under promise to serve him so many days; a baron of his king, on condition that he brought so many men into the field for such and such a time at the call of his Overlord. William the Conqueror made the feudal system universal in every part of England, and compelled every English baron to swear homage to himself personally. Words relating to feudalism are, among others: Homage, fealty; esquire, vassal; herald, scutcheon, and others. ...
— A Brief History of the English Language and Literature, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John Miller Dow Meiklejohn
... indirectly, by all those causes which in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries tended to increase information, and to secure the liberty of the mass of the people. The invention of printing; the reformation; the destruction of the feudal system, at least in its most objectionable, degrading, and paralizing features; the contentions between the nobility and the sovereigns, and between the latter and the people; gave a stimulus to the human mind, and thus enlarged its capacities, desires, and views, in such a manner, that the ...
— Robert Kerr's General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 18 • William Stevenson
... increased reverence for secular rank, which grew out of the feudal system, when a great hereditary aristocracy arose and all European society was moulded into a compact hierarchy, of which the serf was the basis and the emperor the apex. The principle of subordination and obedience ran through the whole edifice, and a respect for rank was universally diffused. ...
— Historical and Political Essays • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... upon the sectarian government of the Lebanon. It was simple, and probably satisfactory, to Exeter Hall; but Downing Street was quite unaware, or had quite forgotten, that the feudal system prevailed throughout Lebanon. The Christians in the Druse districts were vassals of Druse lords. The direct rule of a Christian Caimacam was an infringement on all the feudal rights of the Djinblats and Yezbecks, of the Talhooks and the Abdel-Maleks. It would be equally fatal to ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli
... recorded-speech composition, enunciation training, semantics, and what Prestonby called English Illiterature. The class he visited was drowsing through one of the less colorful sections of "Gone With The Wind." World History, with half the students frankly asleep through an audio-visual on the Feudal System, with planted hints on how nice a revival of same would be, and identifying the clergy of the Middle Ages with the Fraternities of Literates. American History, with the class wide awake, since Custer's Massacre was obviously ...
— Null-ABC • Henry Beam Piper and John Joseph McGuire
... copyist, had been preserved from the ravages of time and barbarism. Gunpowder, whose explosive power had been perceived by Roger Bacon as early as 1280, though it was not used on the field of battle until 1346, had completely changed the art of war and had greatly contributed to undermine the feudal system. The polarity of the magnet, also discovered in the middle ages, and not practically applied to the mariner's compass until 1403, had led to the greatest event of the fifteenth century—the discovery of America by Christopher ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... Deputy-governors of provinces. In those days these functionaries were greatly looked down upon by the Court nobles, and this became one of the causes of the feudal system.] ...
— Japanese Literature - Including Selections from Genji Monogatari and Classical - Poetry and Drama of Japan • Various
... eleventh century the worship of the Virgin Mary became widely popular; the reverence bestowed upon the Virgin was extended to the female sex in general, and as a vassal owed obedience to his feudal overlord, so did he owe service and devotion to his lady. Moreover, under the feudal system, the lady might often be called upon to represent her husband's suzerainty to his vassals, when she was left in charge of affairs during his absence in time of war. Unmarried women were inconspicuous figures in the society ...
— The Troubadours • H.J. Chaytor
... can refer only very briefly. At the time of the great migration of the fifth century, the free barbarian nations were organised on a tribal or village basis. By the end of the tenth century, however, what is known as the Feudal System had been established all over Europe. "No land without a lord" was the underlying principle of the whole Feudal System. Either by conquest or usurpation, or by more or less compulsory voluntary agreement, even the free primitive communities (die Markgenossenshaften) of the Teutonic races ...
— The Digger Movement in the Days of the Commonwealth • Lewis H. Berens
... Naturally, the military man, being the more active, gradually absorbed much of the power formerly exercised by the governor. These military men were under the authority of Yoritomo and formed the beginning of that feudal system which was destined to prevail so long in Japan. He also received from the court, shortly after his visit to Kyoto, the title of sei-i-tai-shogun, which was the highest military title which had ever been bestowed on a subject. This is the title which, ...
— Japan • David Murray
... not stand high in English architecture. On September 14, O'Sullivan appeared again, and they all went into the Welsh mountains, where they examined the old fortresses of Rhyl and Conway, which were built by Edward Longshanks to hold the Welshmen in check. Those relics of the feudal system are very impressive, not only on account of their solidity and the great human forces which they represent, but from a peculiar beauty of their own, which modern fortifications do not possess at all. They seem to belong to the ground they stand on, and the people who live ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns
... bound to fish for the landlord from whom they hold their ground?-Along certain estates on the Moray coast there are certain villages to which a great many fishermen belong, and I think there is sort of feudal system of the same kind there. There are villages on the estate of Sarklet, near Wick, and at Clyth, and other places, where many of the fishermen have had it in their option to leave the place altogether, and they have usually come down to Wick and been dealt with there as free men. ...
— Second Shetland Truck System Report • William Guthrie
... by chronological tables of the Emperors and their reigns, of the suzerains and vassal nobles under the feudal system which was introduced about 1100 B.C., and also of the nobles created to form an aristocracy after the feudal system had been swept away and replaced by the old Imperial ...
— China and the Chinese • Herbert Allen Giles
... of a handful of rebellious colonists in a distant country had made the spirit of democracy an immediate force in the life and the thought of the world. Undoubtedly the condition of France was bad. {291} The feudal system, or what was left of the feudal system, worn out, degraded, and corrupt, was rapidly reducing France to financial, physical, and political ruin. It is no part of the business of this history to dwell upon the conditions prevailing in France towards the close of the ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... luggage-cart, monopolised space. The face of Mr. Horace Pendyce's coachman monopolised the light of the solitary station lantern. Rosy-gilled, with fat close-clipped grey whiskers and inscrutably pursed lips, it presided high up in the easterly air like an emblem of the feudal system. On the platform within, Mr. Horace Pendyce's first footman and second groom in long livery coats with silver buttons, their appearance slightly relieved by the rakish cock of their top-hats, awaited ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... over a great portion of the Western hemisphere. The commercial spirit was greatly fostered by several laws passed in the reign of Henry the Seventh; and in the same reign encouragement was given to arts and manufactures in the eastern counties, and some not unimportant modifications of the feudal system took place, by allowing the breaking of entails. These and other measures, and other occurrences, were making way for a new class of society to emerge, and show itself, in a military and feudal age; a middle class, between the barons or great landholders ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... legislation' was not even dreamed of. Absorbed in theory or wrapped in ignorance, men forget the practical meaning of Statehood and its responsibilities. Central Europe languished for centuries, under a sham Empire, in the unprogressive anarchy of feudalism. 'The feudal system', it has been said,[65] 'was nothing more nor less than the attempt of a society which had failed to organize itself as a State, to make contract do the work of patriotism.' It is the bitter experience which Germany went through under the anarchy of feudalism ...
— Progress and History • Various
... without being quite the same. A common quality, for instance, in the Anglo-Saxon race, is a touch of vulgarity, which is indeed the quality that makes them practically successful. A great many Anglo-Saxon people have a certain snobbishness, to give it a hard name; it is probably the poison of the feudal system lurking in our veins. We admire success unduly; we like to be respected, to have a definite label, to know the ...
— At Large • Arthur Christopher Benson
... opinion, they are right in their practice. The principle that social and political organizations are designed for the general good, of course requires they should be allowed to change, as the progress of society may demand. It is very possible that the feudal system may have been well adapted to the state of Europe in the middle ages. The change in the condition of the world, however, has gradually obliterated almost all its features. The villein has become the independent farmer; the lord of the manor, the simple landlord; ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... many of his associates, barons and earls, albeit the shrewdest of men, did not know exactly how to take the son of Hilary Vane. This was true also of the Honourable Hilary himself, who did not wholly appreciate the humour in Austen's parallel of the feudal system. Although Austen had set up for himself, there were many ways—not legal —in which the son might have been helpful to the father, but the Honourable Hilary hesitated, for some unformulated reason, to make use of him; and the consequence was that Mr. Hamilton Tooting ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... of culture. But as the value of land was increasing, in consequence of the growth of industries, and the nobility had acquired, under the State organization, a power which it never had had under the feudal system, it took possession of the best parts of the communal lands, and did its best to destroy ...
— Mutual Aid • P. Kropotkin
... are far less responsible in their attitude towards the working classes, and far less troubled by pricks of conscience than in older countries, where some remote traces of the feudal system still do something towards bridging the gulf between ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... was severed in 1854 when the Clergy Reserves were turned over to the municipalities for secular purposes, with life annuities for clergymen who had been receiving stipends from the Reserves. In Lower Canada the remnants of the old feudal system, the rights of the seigneurs, were abolished in the same year with full compensation from the state. An elective upper Chamber took the place of the appointed Legislative Council a year later. The Reformers, as the Clear Grits preferred ...
— The Canadian Dominion - A Chronicle of our Northern Neighbor • Oscar D. Skelton
... three hundred years ago, when the feudal system broke down before the beginnings of capitalism, the system which we are living under to-day, and which we Socialists think is breaking down as all other social systems have broken down before it. Under this system ...
— The Common Sense of Socialism - A Series of Letters Addressed to Jonathan Edwards, of Pittsburg • John Spargo
... all things, it interprets the Bible, it guides our national and almost all our individual life with its maxims; and its oppressions upon the moral existence of man have come to be ten thousand times more grievous than the worst tyrannies of the Feudal System ever were. Thus in the reversals of time, it is NOW the GENTLEMAN who must rise and overthrow Trade. That chivalry which every man has, in some degree, in his heart; which does not depend upon birth, but which ...
— Sidney Lanier • Edwin Mims
... diminution of that of Italy in consequence of the wars of Justinian; the depopulation of North Africa in consequence of theological quarrels; its restoration through the establishment of Mohammedanism; the increase of that of all Europe through the feudal system, when estates became more valuable in proportion to the number of retainers they could supply. The crusades caused a sensible diminution, not only through the enormous army losses, but also by reason of the withdrawal of so many able-bodied men from ...
— History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science • John William Draper
... popular in Edinburgh; in the Highlands his hold of the affections of the chieftains had a deeper origin. The oppressor of the English had endeavoured to become the emancipator of the chieftains. The rigour of the feudal system, which was carried to its utmost extent in the Highlands, although softened by the patriarchal character of the chiefs, was revolting to the chieftains or landholders under the yoke of some feudal nobleman or chief; and they became ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745. - Volume I. • Mrs. Thomson
... nation; and it is otherwise inconceivable, that a plant, set by so inauspicious a hand, could have attained to so vigorous a growth, and have flourished in the midst of such tempests and convulsions. The feudal system, with which the liberty, much more the power of the commons, was totally incompatible, began gradually to decline; and both the king and the commonalty, who felt its inconveniencies, contributed to favor this new power, which was ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part B. - From Henry III. to Richard III. • David Hume
... land early Irish law is very peculiar, and requires to be carefully studied. Primogeniture, regarded by all English lawyers trained under the feudal system as the very basis of inheritance, was simply unknown. Even in the case of the chieftain his rights belonged only to himself, and before his death a re-election took place, when some other of the same blood, not necessarily his eldest son, or even ...
— The Story Of Ireland • Emily Lawless
... condition. It is impossible to introduce into separate families even one half of the economies which the present state of science furnishes to man. In that particular, it is probable that even the feudal system is superior to the civic; for its combinations permit many domestic arrangements of an economic character, which are impracticable in small households. In order to economize labor, and dignify the laborer, it is absolutely necessary that men should cease to work in the ...
— Brook Farm • John Thomas Codman
... general classes of ancient and modern history. Each work attempts to give a picture of an important epoch, and to faithfully discuss the period. The series pertaining to modern history includes "The Normans and the Feudal System," "The Crusades," "The Beginning of the Middle Ages," "The Early Plantagenets," "Edward the III.," "The Era of the Protestant Revolution," "The Thirty Years' War," "The Houses of Lancaster and York," "The Age of Elizabeth," "The Fall of the Stuarts," "The Puritan Revolution," ...
— Hold Up Your Heads, Girls! • Annie H. Ryder
... the Delta and of Upper Egypt. Each of them had with him several battalions of those Libyan soldiers—Matsiou and Mashuash—who formed at this time the strength of the Egyptian army, and on whose fidelity it was always safe to count. Ere long these commands became hereditary, and the feudal system, which had anciently prevailed among the chiefs of nomes or cantons, re-established itself for the advantage of the members of the reigning house. The Pharaoh of the time continued to reside at Memphis, or at Bubastis, to receive the taxes, to direct as far as was possible the central administration, ...
— Ancient Egypt • George Rawlinson
... Greece, from the Persian War to the Dissolution of the Achaian League. 4th. Rise, Progress, and Decline of the Roman Empire. 5th. Progress of Christianity. 6th. Manners and Irruptions of the Northern Nations. Growth of the European States. Feudal System. 7th. State of the Eastern Empire, to the Capture of Constantinople by the Turks; including the Rise and Progress of the Mahommedan Religion, and the Crusades. 8th. History of Europe, to the Abdication of the Empire by Charles the Fifth. 9th. ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... civilization. But between ancient Greece and modern England there yawn immense gulfs of human history; the establishment and the partial failure of a common European religion, the barbarian invasions, the feudal system, the regrouping of modern Europe, the age of mechanical invention, and the industrial revolution. In an average page of French or German philosophy nearly all the nouns can be translated directly into exact equivalents in English; but in Greek that is not so. ...
— The Poetics • Aristotle
... The feudal system offers perhaps the best illustration of a patriotism wholly submerged in loyalty. The sense of mutual obligation and service was very clear in this case; the vassal in swearing fealty knew perfectly well what sort of a bargain he was striking. A feudal government, while it lasted, was ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... propertyless wage earner or salaried man for the first time obtains a definite status in the official political economy; he becomes the property of the nation viewed "as a business firm," a part of "our" capital. His position was much like a peasant or a laborer during the formation of the feudal system. To obtain any status at all, to become half free he had to become somebody's "man." Now he is the "man," the industrial asset, of the government. This paternal attitude towards the individual, however, is not at all ...
— Socialism As It Is - A Survey of The World-Wide Revolutionary Movement • William English Walling
... of the Empire—to the preservation of the integrity of the French territory—to the defence of the Emperor, of the laws of the Republic, and of the property which they have made sacred—to combat by all the means which justice, reason, and the laws authorise every attempt to reestablish the feudal system; in short, swear to concur with all your might in maintaining liberty and equality, which are the bases of all our institutions. ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... may be observed that in King John the great movements which led to Magna Charta are as good as left out of sight; on the contrary he lives and moves among the personal contrasts offered by the feudal system, and its mutual rights and duties. Bolingbroke's feeling that though his cousin is King of England yet he is Duke of Lancaster reveals the conception of these rights in the middle ages. The speech which Shakspeare ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke
... theoretical than those upon which we have dwelt. It is the influence of socialism, taking that word in its largest sense. An industrial civilisation has developed both the good and the evil of individualism in incredible degree. The unity of society which the feudal system and the Church gave to Europe in the Middle Age had been destroyed. The individualism and democracy which were essential to Protestantism notoriously aided the civil and social revolution, but the ...
— Edward Caldwell Moore - Outline of the History of Christian Thought Since Kant • Edward Moore
... fossil remains might now and then excite curiosity. But it was as impossible to put life into the old institutions as to animate the skeletons which are imbedded in the depths of primeval strata. It was as absurd to think that France could again be placed under the feudal system, as that our globe could be overrun by Mammoths. The revolution in the laws and in the form of government was but an outward sign of that mightier revolution which had taken place in the heart and brain of the people, ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... department of Ho-nan of the province of the same name. The reigning sovereign is known by the title of Chang [7], but the sovereignty was little more than nominal. The state of China was then analogous to that of one of the European kingdoms during the prevalence of the feudal system. At the commencement of the dynasty, the various states of the kingdom had been assigned to the relatives and adherents of the reigning family. There were thirteen principalities of greater note, and a large number of ...
— THE CHINESE CLASSICS (PROLEGOMENA) Unicode Version • James Legge
... close of the twelfth century this now inconsiderable town was the residence of Joritomo, the founder of the Shogun power, and the arranger of the Japanese feudal system. ] ...
— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold
... was no very large or pretentious place, but it was built in that quadrangular form so common to that age, and accommodated within its walls the dependents and retainers that every man of rank had about him under the old feudal system, which obliged him to bring to his lord's service on demand a certain following of armed and ...
— In the Wars of the Roses - A Story for the Young • Evelyn Everett-Green
... chivalry, but they are apt to imagine that these represent a purely ideal state of things. This is undoubtedly the case as far as knight-errantry is concerned, but certain distinctive habits and customs of chivalry prevailed in Spain and elsewhere long after the feudal system and the earlier and original form of chivalry had passed away. One of the most curious instances of this survival of chivalry occurred in Spain in the first half of the fifteenth century, and after commanding the admiration of Europe furnished Don ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XXVI., December, 1880. • Various
... with the vitality of new ambitions. The theatre was the same. The actors and the play had changed. The world was no longer governed by one man as monarch; it was directed by one man, who was the chief personage in the vast and intricate feudal system by which strong men agreed to live, and to which they forced ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 1 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... dominate their history. I placed ours in the foreground of the scene; I made them leading actors in this tragedy, wherever I endeavored to represent the three kinds of ambition by which we are influenced, and with them the beauty of self-sacrifice to a noble ideal. A treatise on the fall of the feudal system; on the position, at home and abroad, of France in the seventeenth century; on foreign alliances; on the justice of parliaments or of secret commissions, or on accusations of sorcery, would not perhaps have been read. ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... epic of Valmiki, bear witness to the same fact; it is shown in the slavery imposed on conquered peoples, in the hatred of foreigners felt by all the Hellenic tribes; in the omnipotence of Rome, the haughtiness of the Germanic orders; in the feudal system, in the Crusades; and finally, in the modern sense of our superiority to all other existing races. The quickness of perception, and the facile projection of human personality into natural objects, led to the manifold creations of Olympus, and this was an aesthetic obstacle to any nearer approach ...
— Myth and Science - An Essay • Tito Vignoli
... fellow when the men's forty days of service were ended. A more disciplined military force was provided by subjecting all owners of five hides of land to thegn-service, a step which recognized the change that had now substituted the thegn for the eorl and in which we see the beginning of a feudal system. How effective these measures were was seen when the new resistance they met on the Continent drove the northmen to a fresh attack on Britain. In 893 a large fleet steered for the Andredsweald, while the sea-king Hasting entered the Thames. ...
— History of the English People, Volume I (of 8) - Early England, 449-1071; Foreign Kings, 1071-1204; The Charter, 1204-1216 • John Richard Green
... infer that there could have been no lack of suggestion there. "My ancestor left England," he wrote, "in 1630. I return in 1853. I sometimes feel as if I myself had been absent these two hundred and twenty-three years, leaving England just emerging from the feudal system, and finding it, on my return, on the verge of republicanism." Herein lay a source of romantic possibilities from which he certainly meant to derive a story. But the greater part of his four years in England was spent in Liverpool, where his consular ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... were carefully guarded. Only one good timber tree on each holding in the life- time of a tenant might be cut by the Lord of the Manor, and the tenants themselves might only cut old rotten trees! But this is as much as you will wish to hear of these old customs, which prove that the Norman feudal system was kept out of this Episcopal manor. It was not even mentioned in Domesday Book, near as it was to Winchester. There it lay, peacefully on its island of chalk down, shut in by the well-preserved trees, till Stephen's brother, Bishop Henry de Blois, of Winchester, bethought ...
— Old Times at Otterbourne • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the labor of years with confusion worse confounded, as we go along. The Feudal system, with which Germany has been for centuries petrified, must be thrown off; the peasant laborers freed in some sort, whether social or political, the absurd restrictions of countless customs houses walling-in each ...
— Blood and Iron - Origin of German Empire As Revealed by Character of Its - Founder, Bismarck • John Hubert Greusel
... upon historical explanations with him, you would soon be in difficulties. You would find that so recently as the Feudal System—which was still living, so to speak, yesterday—the King, who stood for the State, held the land as the Realm, and the predecessors of the present owners held under him merely as the administrative officials who performed all sorts of public services and had ...
— New Worlds For Old - A Plain Account of Modern Socialism • Herbert George Wells
... Mediaeval Village.—The peasant village of the Middle Ages constitutes a distinct type of rural community. A consciousness of mutual dependence between the owner of the land and the peasants who were his serfs produced a feudal system in which the landlord undertook to furnish protection and to permit the peasant to use portions of his land in exchange for service. Strips of fertile soil were allotted to the village families for cultivation, while pasture-land, meadow, and forest ...
— Society - Its Origin and Development • Henry Kalloch Rowe
... people that prospered and overshadowed the rest were the Franks, who had no native nobility, whose law of succession to the Crown became for one thousand years the fixed object of an unchanging superstition, and under whom the feudal system was ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... conditions so greatly - by developing parties for and against seclusion - that the Mikado was enabled to regain his long-lost power, and in 1868 the ancient form of government was restored, the nobles being relegated to their original rank and their semi-feudal system overthrown. ...
— A History of The Nations and Empires Involved and a Study - of the Events Culminating in The Great Conflict • Logan Marshall
... on the subject of the present inquiry to notice the quarrels, the feuds, and revolutions, that took place during the dark ages, and the reign of the feudal system, previously to the time of the crusades; when a wild romantic spirit extended civilization a little more widely than before, and laid the foundation for a new order of things, and a new species of wealth and power, different from those of the ancient ...
— An Inquiry into the Permanent Causes of the Decline and Fall of Powerful and Wealthy Nations. • William Playfair
... needy not pride, which is the heritage of the human race. It is a very remarkable fact that this extreme form of pride should be found exclusively amongst the adherents of the religion which teaches the deepest humility. Still, this pride must not be put down to religion, but, rather, to the feudal system, which made every nobleman a petty sovereign who recognized no human judge, and learned to regard his person as sacred and inviolable, and any attack upon it, or any blow or insulting word, as an offence punishable with death. The principle of knightly honor and of the duel were ...
— The Essays Of Arthur Schopenhauer: The Wisdom of Life • Arthur Schopenhauer
... accountability of each one of his subjects to himself. For he had learned one most important lesson from his enemy, Harold the Fair-haired. This king was the first to establish in Europe what is called the feudal system of land-tenure. He declared all land to be the property of the crown, and merely held in fief by the nominal owners. In recognition of the king's proprietorship, the latter, therefore, pledged themselves to pay a certain tribute, and to support ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various
... that, whatever may have been the case at the outset, this assignment of whole regions to the control of officials whose responsibility was limited to the collection of taxes for the uses of the Court, could not but tend to create a provincial nobility and thus lay the foundations of a feudal system. The mythological accounts of meetings of the Kami for purposes of consultation suggest a kind of commonwealth, and recall "the village assemblies of primitive times in many parts of the world, where the cleverness of one and the general willingness to follow ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... not in his power to give permanency to an institution which, in its origin, was as independent as royalty itself, arising naturally out of the feudal system: but which was utterly inconsistent with the genius and circumstances of a modern colony. The sovereign might endow the members of such an aristocracy with grants of the lands of the crown to support their dignity, but what benefit could such grants be, even to the recipients, ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... plunder the people placed themselves under the guardianship of some powerful chieftain in the vicinity, and paid a certain amount of their earnings for the privilege of enjoying the remainder. Hence there grew up, in the Gothic communities of Europe, that peculiar state of society known as "the feudal system." A great chieftain or lord lived in a strong castle built for defense against neighboring lords. A retinue of soldiers was in immediate attendance, who, when not engaged in war, passed their time in hunting and debauchery. All ...
— Ten Great Events in History • James Johonnot
... of this little incident was a French military officer. His services were necessarily dispensed with on the abolition of the feudal system. Memories of him still linger in Matsue; and old people remember a popular snatch about him—a sort of rapidly-vociferated rigmarole, supposed to be an imitation of ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan • Lafcadio Hearn
... characteristic. The desire to imitate foreign nations was not a real reason for the overthrow of feudalism, but there was, rather, a more or less conscious feeling, rapidly pervading the whole people, that the feudal system would be unable to maintain the national integrity. As intimated, the matter was not so much reasoned out as felt. But such a vast illustration is more difficult to appreciate than some individual instances, of which I ...
— Evolution Of The Japanese, Social And Psychic • Sidney L. Gulick
... the Rajput policy and the feudal system of Europe, Tod's Rajasthan may be consulted. The parallel is not really so close as it appears to be at first sight. In some respects the organization of the Highland clans is more similar to that of the Rajputs than the feudal system is. The Chambal river rises in Malwa, and, after ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... is said to exhibit the feudal system in its most perfect form. The chief, or rajah, issues his orders to the Pangerans, or princes of the blood; to the Datus, or nobles of royal descent; or to the Orang Kayas, or wealthy vassals. All these obey and follow him to war, free of expense, ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel
... a semi-feudal system. The land was divided between the great lords or daimios, who possessed strong castles and large landed estates, with a powerful armed following, and into whose treasuries much of the revenue of the kingdom ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 12 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... research on the part of the author. There is, for one example, a discussion of the course of commerce in different ages of the world, and of the influences that have wrought from time to time to bring about the changes occurring. For another example, there is a discussion of the feudal system. ...
— Classic French Course in English • William Cleaver Wilkinson
... who governed the other provinces, bore the title of Vitaxae, and were fourteen or fifteen in number. The remark has been made by the historian Gibbon that the system thus established "exhibited under other names a lively image of the feudal system which has since prevailed in Europe." The comparison is of some value, but, like most historical parallels, it is inexact, the points of difference between the Parthian and the feudal system being probably more numerous than those of resemblance, but the points of resemblance being very ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 6. (of 7): Parthia • George Rawlinson
... Norman civilisation, however, had its effect, though the unsettled state of the country prevented any rapid development of industrial arts. The feudal system by which every powerful baron became a petty sovereign, often at war with his neighbour, rendered it necessary that household treasures should be few and easily transported or hidden, and the earliest oak chests which ...
— Illustrated History of Furniture - From the Earliest to the Present Time • Frederick Litchfield
... was waste, dirt, destruction of all kinds, in the rambling old chateau; old servants, too weak or too lazy to work; old tradesmen, presuming on old-established habits of imposition, unquestioned so long as to have become a right—for the feudal system of fine and forfeiture has only changed hands. The power still flourishes, only it is the villein who takes tithe of ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... childhood to regard the Monarchy of France as the type of a splendid, powerful, and enduring polity now saw a National Army constituted in complete independence of the Crown; a Representative Body assuming absolute power and denying the King's right to dissolve; the summary abrogation of the whole feudal system, which a year before had seemed endowed with perpetual vigour; an insurrection of the peasantry against their territorial tyrants, accompanied by every horror of pillage, arson, and bloodshed; the beautiful and stately Queen flying, half naked, for her life, amid the slaughter ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... power.[648] Corresponding with the growth of monarchy was the well-marked gradation of social ranks which prevailed in the various tribes from the king downwards through chiefs, warriors, and landholders, to slaves. The resulting political constitution has been compared to the old feudal system ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... Tarnside and a duty goes with owning land," Grace remarked. "A landlord who need not work ought to serve the State. That idea was perhaps the best thing in the feudal system and it's not altogether forgotten yet. Father was right when he decided to ...
— The Buccaneer Farmer - Published In England Under The Title "Askew's Victory" • Harold Bindloss
... action indeed was determined by a curious medley of chance circumstances and rooted prejudices. The canon law was fast spreading over his foreign states, and wherever the canon law came in the civil law followed in its train. But in England local liberties were strong, the feudal system had never been completely established, insular prejudice against the foreigner and foreign ways was alert, the Church generally still held to national tradition, the king was at deadly feud with the Primate, and was quite resolved to have no customs ...
— Henry the Second • Mrs. J. R. Green
... the accomplished and philosophic lawyer. Cromarty, originally a Lowland settlement, had had from the Reformation down till the latter quarter of the last century no Gaelic place of worship. On the breaking up of the feudal system, however, the Highlanders began to drop into the place in quest of employment; and George Ross, affected by their uncared-for religious condition, built for them, at his own expense, a chapel, and had influence ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... how the King of Poland succumbed to dictation! I am another and a different man, and I care neither for your approbation nor for your blame. It is my purpose to make Hungary prosperous, and therefore I have abolished the feudal system which is unfavorable to the development of the resources of the country. You Magyars would interfere with me. You have a constitution at variance with my laws, and for the sake of a piece of rotten parchment three hundred years old, Hungary must be suffered to remain uncivilized ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach |
