Page:A History of Domestic Manners and Sentiments in England During the Middle Ages.djvu/123

 and Sentiments, 103 tortured them in order to force them to pay heavy ranfoms. The young nobles fometimes joined together to plunder a fair or market. On the other hand, men who could not claim the proteftion of ariftocratic blood for their evil deeds, eftablilhed themfelves under that of the wild forelis, and ifliied forth no lefs eagerly to plunder the country, and to perpetrate every defcription of outrage on the perfons of its inhabitants, of whatever clafs they might be, who fell into their power. The purity of woman- hood was no longer prized, where it was liable to be outraged with impunity 5 and immorality fpread widely through all claffes and ranks of fociety. The declamations of the ecclefiaftics and the fatires of the moralifts of the twelfth century may give highly-painted piftures, but they lead us to the conclulion that the manners and fentiments of the female fex during the Norman period were very corrupt. Neverthelefs, feudalifm did boaft of certain dignified and generous principles, and there were noble examples of both fexes, who fhine forth more brightly through the general prevalence of vice and of felfilhnefs and injuftice. It was in the walls of the feudal caffle, amid the familiar intercourfe which the want of amufement caufed among its inmates, that the principle, or pradice, arofe, which we in modern times call gallantry, and which, though at firfi it only led to refinement in the forms of focial manners, ended in producing refinement of fentiments. It was among the feudal arifl:ocracy, too, that originated the fentiment we term chivalry, which has varied confiderably in its meaning at difi:erent periods, and which, in its beft fenfe, exifted more in romance than in reality. After the poffellion of perfonal ftrength and courage, the quality which the feudal baron admired moft, was what was termed generofity, but which meant lavifli expenditure and extravagance 5 it was the contrafl: between the baron, who fpent his money, and the burgher or merchant, who gained it, and laid it up in his coffers. " Noblemen and gentlemen," fays the " Rule of Nuns," already quoted, " do not carry packs, nor go about trulfed with bundles, nor with purfes j it belongs to beggars to bear bag on back, and to burgefles to bear purfes." In fa6t, it was the principle of the feudal ariftocracy to extort their gains from all who laboured and trafficked, in order to fquander them on thofe who lived in idlenefs, violence, and vice.