Page:A History of Domestic Manners and Sentiments in England During the Middle Ages.djvu/120

 oo Hijiory of T)omeftic Majiners ladies are reprefented as warming themfelves, even in the prelence of the other fex, in a very free and eafy manner. The fuel chiefly employed was no doubt flill wood, but the remark of Giraldus Cambrenfls that the name of ColefliuUe (in Flintfhire) fignified the hill of coals {carhonum coU'is) Implies that mineral coals were then known. It is hardly necelfary to remark that, in the change in the mode of living which had fuddenly taken place in this country, a form of fociety had alfo been introduced abruptly which differed entirely from that of the Anglo-Saxons. On the continent, throughout the now disjointed empire which had once been ruled by Charlemagne, there had arifen, during the No. 71. hidkations of Cold Weathe tenth century, amid frightful mifgovernment and the favage invafions of the northmen, a new form of fociety, which received the name of feudalifm, becaufe each landholder held, either dire£t from the crown or from a fuperior baron, by a feudal tenure, or fee {feodum, fendum), which obliged him to military fervice. Each baron had fovereignty over all thofe who held under him, and, in turn, acknowledged the nominal fovereignty of a fuperior baron or of the crown, which the latter pradically was only fome- times able to enforce. One great principle of this fyftem was the right of private warfare ; and, as not only did the great barons obtain land in feudal tenure