"Feudal" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... was then and was destined to remain a village. Yet here, upon this miniature piazza—in modern as in ancient Italy the meeting-point of civic life, the forum—we find a cathedral, a palace of the bishop, a palace of the feudal lord, and a palace of the commune, arranged upon a well-considered plan, and executed after one design in a consistent style. The religious, municipal, signorial, and ecclesiastical functions of the little town are ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... 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 whole movable estate of the father, as is still the custom of some ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various
... with much scorn. 'Upon my word, that is the vulgarest of denominations! Who doesn't call himself so nowadays! A man's a man, I take it, and what need is there to lengthen the name? Thank the powers, we don't live in feudal ages. Besides, he doesn't seem to me to be ...
— Demos • George Gissing
... the Baber Gardens, which lie a short distance from the city of Kabul. A light table stood before him, and round the table in the open air were grouped generals and finance ministers according to their degree. The Court and the long tail of feudal chiefs—men of blood, fed and cowed by blood—stood in an irregular semicircle round the table, and the wind from the Kabul orchards blew among them. All day long sweating couriers dashed in with letters from the ...
— Life's Handicap • Rudyard Kipling
... Levant to help him cure his rheumatism and dress his wounds. From the lordly manor, the plant propagated itself in all directions, while remaining faithful to the walls under whose shelter the noble dames of yore used to grow it for their unguents. To this day, feudal ruins are its favourite resorts. Crusaders and manors disappeared; the plant remained. In this case, the origin of the clary, whether historical or legendary, is of secondary importance. Even if it were of spontaneous growth in certain parts of France, the toute-bonne ...
— Bramble-bees and Others • J. Henri Fabre
... Cambridge, Langhorn, and three other places, which should have the privilege of sending one member to parliament; the only additional one proposed to be added to the representation of Wales. In Scotland the existing county franchise, which depended on a mere feudal right of superiority over lauds belonging to others, was to be annihilated; the election of members for boroughs was to be taken from the town-councils, and vested in the citizens at large; and the new English franchise was to be introduced, both in counties and in boroughs. ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... ensued of a great increase in the population, it 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, ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... country, which was that of her mother, and even her own, the land of her heart and her soul-Hungary. She knew, from her mother, about all its heroes: Klapka, Georgei, Dembiski; Bem, the conqueror of Buda; Kossuth, the dreamer of a sort of feudal liberty; and those chivalrous Zilah princes, father and son, the fallen martyr ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... Christian, and Mr. Whiting, missionary in Abeih, sent over a courageous Protestant youth named Saleh, who took the Sitt Abla by night over the rough mountain road to Abeih in safety. But even here she was not safe. The Druzes of Lebanon at that time were at the height of their feudal power. Girls and women were killed among them without the least notice on the part of the mountain government. Abla was like a prisoner in the missionary's house, not venturing to go outside the door, and in order to be at peace, ...
— The Women of the Arabs • Henry Harris Jessup
... whenever I pass beneath a portal of thirteenth century Northern Gothic, associated as they are with manifestations of exquisite feeling and power in other directions. The porches of Bourges, Amiens, Notre Dame of Paris, and Notre Dame of Dijon, may be noted as conspicuous in error: small models of feudal towers with diminutive windows and battlements, of cathedral spires with scaly pinnacles, mixed with temple pediments and nondescript edifices of every kind, are crowded together over the recess of the niche into a confused fool's cap for the ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume I (of 3) • John Ruskin
... THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY 3 Extent at the Accession of Francis I. 3 Gradual Territorial Growth 4 Subdivision in the Tenth Century 5 Destruction of the Feudal System 5 The Foremost Kingdom of Christendom 6 Assimilation of Manners and Language 8 Growth and Importance of Paris 9 Military Strength 10 The Rights of the People overlooked 11 The States General not convoked 12 Unmurmuring Endurance of the Tiers Etat 13 Absolutism of the Crown ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... rebelliously, and is preferred to a higher government and suddenly strangled on his way to it; or he successfully maintains himself, and gains an hereditary settlement, still subject, however, to the feudal tenure, which is the principle of the political structure, continuing to send his contingent of troops, when the Sultan goes to war, and remitting the ordinary taxes through his agent at Court. Such is the staple of Turkish history, whether amid the hordes ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman
... mind. Since earliest childhood I have consorted with princesses and ladies of high degree,—mentally, of course,—and my bosom companions have been knights of valour and longevity. Nothing could have suited me better than to have been born in a feudal castle a few centuries ago, from which I should have sallied forth in full armour on the slightest provocation and returned in glory when there was no one left in the neighbourhood ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon
... Secretary, in seconding the resolution, humorously alluded to the doctor's gown, hood, and cap, in which Mr. Roosevelt received his degree, as a possible example of what America sometimes regards as the gilded trappings of a feudal and ...
— African and European Addresses • Theodore Roosevelt
... the Norman convened in this city the prelates, nobles, sheriffs, and knights of his new dominions, there to receive their homage;[6] and probably, within its walls was framed the feudal law, as Domesday Book was commenced ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 290 - Volume X. No. 290. Saturday, December 29, 1827. • Various
... in advance the circle within which its thought and its action will be stimulated. Around it, other nations, some more advanced, others less developed, all with greater caution, some with better results, attempt similarly a transformation from a feudal to a modern state; the process takes place everywhere and all but simultaneously. But, under this new system as beneath the ancient, the weak is always the prey of the strong. Woe to those (nations) ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... ideas of commercial morality, which were fostered by the carelessness in money matters among the nobility and aristocracy. Much of the prevalent Japanese inability to refrain from overcharging, or delivering an inferior article to that shown to the customer, dates back to these days of feudal life. The years of contact with the foreigners have been too few to change the habits of centuries. Another thing which must always be considered is the relation of master and vassal under feudal life. That relation led to peculiar customs. Thus, if an artisan engaged ...
— The Critic in the Orient • George Hamlin Fitch
... appearance of the German nations in the Roman Empire. The Christian world presents itself as Christendom—one mass of which, the spiritual and the secular, form only different aspects. This epoch extends to Charlemagne. In the second period the Church develops for itself a theocracy and the state a feudal monarchy. Charlemagne had formed an alliance with the Holy See against the Lombards and the factions of the nobles in Rome. A union thus arose between the spiritual and the secular power, and a kingdom of heaven on earth promised to follow in the wake of this conciliation. But just at this time, ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various
... gates of this road there is something ancient and feudal in the very scent of the air. The tones of the big bell striking the hour over the wide portico die away over the lands that still belong to Stagholme, despite the vicissitudes through which ...
— From One Generation to Another • Henry Seton Merriman
... heard but lamentations from old and young, rich and poor, that this execrable Sorceress, out of Satanic wickedness, had destroyed this illustrious race, who had held their lands from no emperor, in feudal tenure, like other German princes, but in their own right, as absolute lords, since five hundred years, and though for twenty years it seemed to rest upon five goodly princes, yet by permission of the incomprehensible God, it has now ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V1 • William Mienhold
... saw the bloody print upon her forehead. Three months afterward my grandfather was born, and over his left temple was the hated mark which has clung to us ever since, and which a noted clairvoyant predicted would never disappear until the feudal parties came together, and a Murdock wedding with a Richards. The offspring of such union would be without taint or blemish, he said, and I am told, sir, your boy is fair ...
— Bad Hugh • Mary Jane Holmes
... accomplished statesman, versed in all historical law, and the voter whose politics are formed by his newspaper, than there was between the legislator who passed laws against witches, and the burgher who defended his guild from some feudal aggression? between the enlightened scholar and the dunce of to-day, than there was between the monkish alchemist and the blockhead of yesterday? Peasant, voter, and dunce of this century are no ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... slavery. The South itself, singularly barren of original literature,—its prolific new births in our own day are one of the most conspicuous fruits of emancipation,—clung fondly to the classical and feudal traditions, and hardly admitted any literary sovereign later than Scott ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam
... absolute monarchy. Only the highest class was consulted in the Great Council and the advice of these the King was not obliged to follow. Later, as a result of the memorable controversy between King John and his feudal barons, the Great Council regained the power which it had lost. Against the King were arrayed the nobility, the church as represented by its official hierarchy, and the freemen of the realm, all together constituting but a small minority ...
— The Spirit of American Government - A Study Of The Constitution: Its Origin, Influence And - Relation To Democracy • J. Allen Smith
... nature had effected. Happily, there was a public fund at disposal—the accumulation of rents and profits derived from the estates forfeited at the rebellion of 1745—which was available for the purpose. The suppression of the rebellion did good in many ways. It broke the feudal spirit, which lingered in the Highlands long after it had ceased in every other part of Britain; it led to the effectual opening up of the country by a system of good roads; and now the accumulated rents of the defeated Jacobite chiefs were about to be applied to the improvement of the Highland ...
— The Life of Thomas Telford by Smiles • Samuel Smiles
... country? Bleeding from the loss of their sons—will they think more of money and corn-stacks and vintages than of that true peace and freedom which can only be won by driving out tyranny? Nobody wants to put them back as they were before 1789. The feudal ages are gone—we have given up our rights, and there is an end of it—but we want our own kings again, and we want peace for France, and time to breathe and to let her wounds heal. We want to be rid of this ...
— Angelot - A Story of the First Empire • Eleanor Price
... sensible," commented the ambassador. He turned a page. "There's Darth. Its social system is practically feudal. It's technically backward. There's a landing grid, but space exports are skins and metal ingots and practically nothing else. There is no broadcast power. Strangers find the local customs difficult. There is no town larger than twenty thousand people, and few approach that size. Most ...
— The Pirates of Ersatz • Murray Leinster
... and in a peculiar degree, their seasons of good-will and security; and this was particularly so in the ancient feudal ages, in which, as the manners of the period had assigned war to be the chief and most worthy occupation of mankind, the intervals of peace, or rather of truce, were highly relished by those warriors to whom they were seldom granted, ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott
... demon of literature seized and refused to release him. His patrimonial estate was worth thirty thousand dollars; ignorant of business, he sold it below its true value, and, instead of placing the capital out at interest, he put it in his pocket and dissipated it in those taxes, as varied as old feudal burdens, which the poor, uncomprehended men of genius levy on their wealthy brethren. One day it went in dinners given to brethren who deliver diplomas of genius; another day it went in money lent to Grub-Street penny-a-liners who were starving; again it went to found petty ...
— Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... Dead Men;—the bridge by which you pass from the royal Tuileries, or the luxurious streets beyond the Rue de Rivoli, to the Senate of the emancipated People, and the gloomy and desolate grandeur of the Faubourg St. Germain, in whose venerable haunts the impoverished descendants of the old feudal tyrants, whom the birth of the Senate overthrew, yet congregate;—the ghosts of departed powers proud of the shadows of great names. As the English outcast paused midway on the bridge, and for the first time lifting his head from his bosom, gazed around, there broke ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... class, formed principally of merchants, officers of the army, etc.; but the great bulk of the people are well-to-do peasants who live upon the lands of the lords, from whom they hold under a species of feudal tenure. The best bred people in the country are, as I think I have said, pure whites with a somewhat southern cast of countenance; but the common herd are much darker, though they do not show any negro ...
— Allan Quatermain • by H. Rider Haggard
... between the heiress of Castelbo and Roger Bernard, count of Foix, carried the rights of the above-named Spanish counts into the house of Foix, and hence subsequently to the crown of France, when the heritage of the feudal system was absorbed by the sovereign; but the bishops of Urgel claimed certain rights, which after long disputes were satisfied by the "Act of Division'' executed in 1278. The claims of the bishopric dated ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... money, and political success. For the first he had a practical deference that was as profound as his wishes for its enjoyments; and for the last he felt precisely the sort of reverence, that one educated under a feudal system, would feel for a feudal lord. The first, after several unsuccessful efforts, he had found unattainable by means of matrimony, and he turned his thoughts towards Annette, whom he had for some months held in reserve, in the event of his failing with ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper
... which followed, Seagraves, plunged deep into thought by Rob's words, leaned his head on his hand. This working farmer had voiced the modem idea. It was an absolute overturn of all the ideas of nobility and special privilege born of the feudal past. Rob had spoken upon impulse, but that impulse appeared to Sea-graves to ...
— Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... significance. His age is marked by a steady increase in the 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 the ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... law in the place of arbitrary will, equality in that of privilege; delivered men from the distinctions of classes, the land from the barriers of provinces, trade from the shackles of corporations and fellowships, agriculture from feudal subjection and the oppression of tithes, property from the impediment of entails, and brought everything to the condition of one state, one system of ...
— History of the French Revolution from 1789 to 1814 • F. A. M. Mignet
... fairies. Shakespeare, indeed, was not the only violator of chronology, for in the same age Sidney, who wanted not the advantages of learning, has, in his Arcadia, confounded the pastoral with the feudal times, the days of innocence, quiet and security, with those of ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... and temporary interest; but Halleck's fine ode, Marco Bozzaris—though declaimed until it has become hackneyed—gives him a sure title to remembrance; and his Alnwick Castle, a monody, half serious and half playful on the contrast between feudal associations and modern life, has much of that pensive lightness which characterizes Praed's ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers
... such rare energy that there was a danger lest the accession of a boy of nine might not weaken the cause of monarchy. The barons were largely out of hand. The war was assuming the character of the civil war of Stephen's days, and John's mercenaries were aspiring to play the part of feudal potentates. It was significant that so many of John's principal supporters were possessors of extensive franchises, like the lords of the Welsh March, who might well desire to extend these feudal immunities to their English estates. ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout
... he granted no hereditary titles, and associated with but few of the emigres; he was still, in many ways, a man of the Revolution. In 1812, on the other hand, he had given his authority a sort of feudal character, and revived many points of resemblance with the Carlovingian epoch. Charlemagne had become his model, his ideal. The saviour of the Convention, the friend of the young Robespierre, was busily introducing much of ...
— The Happy Days of the Empress Marie Louise • Imbert De Saint-Amand
... procession moves forward to the playing fields on its route to Salt-Hill. Now look the venerable spires and antique towers of Eton like to some chieftain's baronial castle in the feudal times, and the proud captain represents the hero marching forth at the head of ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... struggles of the nineteenth century, and raised Prussia to the front rank of military monarchies. It was the levee en masse, composed of the youth of the nation, without distinction of rank, instead of an army made up of peasants and serfs and commanded by their feudal masters. Scharnhorst introduced a compulsory system, indeed, but it was not unequal. Every man was made to feel that he had a personal interest in defending his country, and there were no exemptions made. True, the old system of Frederic the Great was that of conscription; but from this ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume X • John Lord
... "My understanding of the Feudal law," said Wilhelm, "is that the commands of an over-lord are to be obeyed only in so far as they do not run counter to orders ...
— The Strong Arm • Robert Barr
... community of persons holding land in common, which the individuals could not alienate. They noticed one person among them whom the others acknowledged as chief. They immediately jumped to the conclusion that this chief was a great "lord," that the land was a "feudal estate," and that the persons who held it were "vassals" to the ...
— The Prehistoric World - Vanished Races • E. A. Allen
... St. Cere at sundown. This bright little town lies in the midst of fertility. It is on the banks of the Bave, and at the foot of a hill that rises abruptly from the plain, and is capped by two towers of a ruined feudal stronghold, which show against the horizon far into the Quercy, the Correze, and the Cantal. Some of the old streets have quite a mediaeval air, with their half-wood houses with stories projecting upon the floor-joists, and others of a grander origin with ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... to yourself. "Toleration is not the virtue of neophytes." As for himself, who had set out as a painter—and only later deviated into letters—he was all for the Middle Ages: "An old iron baron, feudal, ready to take refuge from the encroachments of the time, in the castle of Goetz von Berlichingen." Of Bouchardy, the extraordinary author of "Le Sonneur de Saint Paul," who "was to Hugo what Marlowe was to Shakspere"—and who was playfully accused of making wooden models of the plots of ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... In the olden feudal days in England meals were arranged in precisely the same way, as may be seen to-day in College Halls at the Universities or the London Temple. Here in the Monastery the raised dais at the end was occupied by the ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... DYNASTY (1123-255 B.C.).—The traditions now become decidedly more trustworthy, although still largely mixed with fable. Woo-Wang was brave and upright. Under him a momentous change in government took place. By him the kingdom was divided into seventy-two feudal states. Internal divisions and struggles resulted from this new political system. The Tartars availed themselves of the weakened condition of the nation, to make predatory incursions. In this period of disorder and danger, Confucius, the great teacher of ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... down and gave way to feudalism there were new ways of producing wealth. The laws of feudal societies, their customs and institutions, changed to meet the needs brought about through the new methods of making things. Under slavery, the slaves made wealth for their masters and were doled out food enough to keep them alive. The slave had no rights. Under feudalism, ...
— The Common Sense of Socialism - A Series of Letters Addressed to Jonathan Edwards, of Pittsburg • John Spargo
... moved, straight and stately, toward the Institution that he was rearing. Truly, the annual feeling of Stuffy Pete was nothing national in its character, such as the Magna Charta or jam for breakfast was in England. But it was a step. It was almost feudal. It showed, at least, that a Custom was not impossible to ...
— The Trimmed Lamp and Others • O Henry
... wireless plant dominated the entire works. A private railroad spur pierced the western side of the enclosure, for food and coal supplies, as well as for the handling of the numerous imports and exports of this wonderfully complete feudal domain. As the colony lay there basking in the sunshine of early spring, under its drifting streamers of smoke, it seemed an ideal picture of peaceful activities. Here a locomotive puffed, shunting cars; there, a steam-jet flung its plumes of snowy vapor into air; yonder, a steam hammer thundered ...
— The Air Trust • George Allan England
... acres of the Church. He came down like the feudal barons in England. Ghostly memories cling yet around these ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage
... a feudal manor within the confines of Ile-de-France, built midway upon a hill, as its name indicated. On the side toward the plain was a moat, and the castle itself commanded the view of a valley, through which ran the little stream called ...
— Zibeline, Complete • Phillipe de Massa
... which attended it. But the settled authority which he acquired to the crown enabled the sovereign to encroach on the separate jurisdictions of the barons, and produced a more general and regular execution of the laws. The counties palatine underwent the same fate as the feudal powers; and, by a statute of Henry VIII.,[*] the jurisdiction of these counties was annexed to the crown, and all writs were ordained to run in the king's name. But the change of manners was the chief cause of the secret revolution of government, and subverted ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part D. - From Elizabeth to James I. • David Hume
... gratify the eye—high blue mountains, valleys of the sweetest pastoral look and romantic old ruins. The very name of Bohemia is associated with wild and wonderful legends, of the rude barbaric ages. Even the chivalric tales of the feudal times of Germany grow tame beside these earlier and darker histories. The fallen fortresses of the Rhine, or the robber-castles of the Odenwald had not for me so exciting an interest as the shapeless ruins cumbering these lonely mountains. The civilized Saxon race was left behind; ...
— Views a-foot • J. Bayard Taylor
... Bull walked slowly in the rear of the little party. He wanted to take plenty of time and drink in the astonishing details of what to him was a palace. And about the weather-beaten old house he felt that there was a touch of mystery of a more or less feudal romance. Climbing the steps to the porch he turned; a broad sweep of hills opened above the tops of the spruces, and the blue mountains were ...
— Bull Hunter • Max Brand
... what with the fierce and savage faces of the men scattered about the courtyard, the remoteness of the adobe, and the care taken to guard against surprise, old Bartolini's hacienda was an establishment not unlike that of the feudal barons or a nest of banditti according to the ...
— The Girl of the Golden West • David Belasco
... might have said that. But Marcus Aurelius belonged to a race peculiarly insensitive to beauty. The Japanese stoics were also artists and poets. Their earliest painters were feudal lords, and it was feudal lords who fostered and acted the No dances. If Nietzsche had known Japan—I think he did not?—he would surely have found in these Daimyos and Samurai the forerunners of his Superman. A blood-red blossom ...
— Appearances - Being Notes of Travel • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... sloping meadows by the river, crowned with dense woodlands, surround us and form a beautiful setting of green for the town, which has come down from the fantastic days of the Norman Conquest without any drastic or unseemly changes, and thus has still the compactness and the romantic outline of feudal times. ...
— Yorkshire Painted And Described • Gordon Home
... brought straight from Europe, just as they later brought the paving blocks for the streets of New Orleans. When he had done—and the place was five years a-building because of Indian troubles and other disturbances—he settled down to live in feudal state. Some of his former seamen rallied around him as a guard, and he imported blacks from the islands to work ...
— Ralestone Luck • Andre Norton
... shillings a week; but I received ten dollars for the last ten days of my engagement, which brought me on a level with my Parisian friend. These were, I believe, high wages. We worked twelve hours a day. The city of Berlin had outgrown the feudal usages of Hamburg and Leipsic, and we were no longer lodged under the same roof with the Herr, nor humbly ate at his table. Alcibiade had an apartment in a rambling house with a princely staircase, but the central court of which happened, unfortunately, to be a stable. An extra bed ...
— A Tramp's Wallet - stored by an English goldsmith during his wanderings in Germany and France • William Duthie
... to the Duc de Montmaur by the Marquis d'Albufex. He lives at two or three miles from the house, in a hunting-lodge built among the ruins of the feudal stronghold which was the cradle of the ...
— The Crystal Stopper • Maurice LeBlanc
... be no more serfs and slaves; There will be no more feudal fools; The KING may stay, if ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, November 10, 1920 • Various
... illustrious in France from time immemorial. Generation after generation, many of its members had obtained renown, not only for chivalric courage, but for every virtue which can adorn humanity. Their ancestral home was a massive feudal castle on an eminence near the stately city of Leon. The armorial bearing of the family commemorates deeds of heroic enterprise five hundred years ago. They ...
— The Adventures of the Chevalier De La Salle and His Companions, in Their Explorations of the Prairies, Forests, Lakes, and Rivers, of the New World, and Their Interviews with the Savage Tribes, Two Hu • John S. C. Abbott
... marriage, Philippa stood one day at the gate of her manor. It was a beautiful June morning—just such another as that one which "had failed her hope" at the gate of Arundel Castle, thirty years before. Sir Richard had ridden away on his road to London, whence he was summoned to join his feudal lord, the Earl, and Lady Sergeaux stood looking after him in her old dreamy fashion, though half-an-hour had almost passed since she had caught sight of the last waving of his nodding plume through the trees. He had left her a legacy of discomfort, ...
— The Well in the Desert - An Old Legend of the House of Arundel • Emily Sarah Holt
... held to be legal even under the present state of things, provided they relate to husbandry, and not to any servitude or attendance upon the person of the landlord. Upon the whole, I found that the Revolution had much improved the condition of the farmers, having relieved them from feudal tenures and lay-tithes. Oh the other hand, some of the proprietors, even in the neighbourhood of Calais, had lost nearly the whole of the rents, under the interpretation of the law respecting what were to be considered as feudal impositions. The Commissioners acting ...
— Travels through the South of France and the Interior of Provinces of Provence and Languedoc in the Years 1807 and 1808 • Lt-Col. Pinkney
... travellers sailing down the river are shown on moonlit evenings the luckless armor of Amilias on the high hill-top. In the dim, uncertain light, one easily fancies it to be the ivy covered ruins of some old castle of feudal times. ...
— The Story of Siegfried • James Baldwin
... wide open, we rode between the two massive columns of granite (each surmounted by a couchant lion holding the escutcheon of the Canaples) and proceeded at an ambling pace up the avenue. Through the naked trees the chateau became discernible—a brave old castle that once had been the stronghold of a feudal race long dead. Grey it was, and attuned, that day, to the rest of the grey landscape. But at its base the ivy grew thick and green, and here and there long streaks of it crept up almost to the battlements, whilst in one place it had gone higher yet and clothed one of the quaint old turrets. ...
— The Suitors of Yvonne • Raphael Sabatini
... built from designs by Mansart, a park of fifteen hundred acres enclosed by a stone wall, nine large farms, a forest, mills, and meadows. This almost regal property belonged before the Revolution to the family of Simeuse. Ximeuse was a feudal estate in Lorraine; the name was pronounced Simeuse, and in course of time it came to ...
— An Historical Mystery • Honore de Balzac
... have abolished," he said to them, "the tribunal of the Inquisition, against which the age and Europe protested. Priests should direct the conscience, but ought not to exercise any external or corporal jurisdiction over the citizens. I have suppressed feudal rights; and every one may set up inns, ovens, mills, fisheries, and give free impulse to his industry. The selfishness, wealth, and prosperity of a few did more injury to your agriculture than the heats of the extreme summer. As there is but one God, one system of justice only should ...
— History of the French Revolution from 1789 to 1814 • F. A. M. Mignet
... with George Harvey that he could not name four states west of the Alleghenies that would go for Hughes? The truth about the thing, as I see it, is that you can't deliver the Western man and you can't deliver the true progressive, anyhow. The people of the East are in a far more feudal state than the people of the West. Here they live by sufferance, by favor; they are helpless if they lose their jobs. Out there hope is high in their hearts and they feel that there is a fair world around them, in which they have another chance. The resentment was strong ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane
... the obligation of fidelity and obedience that an individual owes to his government or sovereign, in return for the protection he receives. The feudal uses of these words have mostly passed away with the state of society that gave them birth; but their origin still colors their present meaning. A patriotic American feels an enthusiastic loyalty to the republic; he takes, on occasion, an oath of allegiance to the government, but his loyalty ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... insurmountable difficulty of procuring a regular and adequate supply of volunteers, obliged the emperors to adopt more effectual and coercive methods. The lands bestowed on the veterans, as the free reward of their valor were henceforward granted under a condition which contain the first rudiments of the feudal tenures; that their sons, who succeeded to the inheritance, should devote themselves to the profession of arms, as soon as they attained the age of manhood; and their cowardly refusal was punished by the lose of honor, of fortune, or even of life. But as the annual growth ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... day the first "gentlemen adventurers" came over with Prince Rupert. He lived alone with Isobel in a big white house on the top of a hill, shut in by stone walls and iron pickets, and looked out upon the world with the cold hauteur of a feudal lord. He was young David Deane's enemy from the moment he first heard about him, largely because he was nothing more than a struggling mining engineer, but chiefly because he was an American and had come from across the border. The stone walls ...
— Isobel • James Oliver Curwood
... pictures of life. Mrs. Stowe exhibited the system of slavery by a succession of dramatized pictures, not always artistically welded together, but always effective as an exhibition of the system. Cervantes also showed a fading feudal romantic condition by a series of amusing and pathetic adventures, grouped rather loosely about ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... to intrude themselves into the establishments owned by others, and on the most trivial grounds make demands more or less unreasonable, and order strikes and otherwise interfere with the work of manufacturers, much in the way that we have an idea that the agents of the barbarbous chieftains, feudal lords, and semi-civilized rulers collected taxes and laid burdens in earlier historical times. Necessarily these men must use their power so as to insure its permanency. If strikes are popular, strikes ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 623, December 10, 1887 • Various
... spaces for rich meadows flowery bright; The winding river freshening the sight At intervals, the trees in leafy prime; The distant village-roofs of blue and white, With intersections of quaint-fashioned beams All slanting crosswise, and the feudal gleams Of ruined turrets, barren in the light; - To watch the changing clouds, like clime in clime; Oh sweet to lie and bless the luxury ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... the dance; Art is invented! The three superior social classes, the king, the clergy, and the nobles, which were definitely established in France at the outbreak of the Revolution, were the legitimate development of the feudal system, and had, apparently, legitimately conquered their position. They had been the protectors of the people even before the Carlovingian epoch, and when the people finally arose and overturned them, it was only because they had completely forgotten their high mission ...
— Paris from the Earliest Period to the Present Day; Volume 1 • William Walton
... itself, in fact, the only intrinsically right and perfect arrangement. A utilitarian scheme was receiving an aesthetic consecration. That which was happening to democracy had happened before to the feudal and royalist systems; they too had come to be prized in themselves, for the pleasure men took in thinking of society organized in such an ancient, and thereby to their fancy, appropriate and beautiful manner. The practical value of ...
— The Sense of Beauty - Being the Outlines of Aesthetic Theory • George Santayana
... showing that some care was bestowed upon maintaining it in good repair; but for any decoration there was to be found in the courts, the place might have been a fortress, as indeed it once was. The owners, father and son, lived in their ancestral home in a sort of solemn magnificence that savoured of feudal times. Giovanni was the only son of five-and-twenty years of wedlock. His mother had been older than his father, and had now been dead some time. She had been a stern dark woman, and had lent no feminine touch of grace to the palace while she lived in it, her melancholic temper rather rejoicing ...
— Saracinesca • F. Marion Crawford
... 17th of September, 1894, a hawk alighted on the fighting-mast of the Japanese cruiser Takachiho, and suffered itself to be taken and fed. After much petting, this bird of good omen was presented to the Emperor. Falconry was a great feudal sport in Japan, and hawks were finely trained. The hawk is now likely to become, more than ever before in ...
— Kokoro - Japanese Inner Life Hints • Lafcadio Hearn
... as though he were talking of something that did not alarm him, "Oh well, the best of the feudal seigneurs mournfully believed that a sharp sword and a long lance in their own hands were the strongholds of society. The wolf-pack idea of business will go the same way." He explained in answer to Mr. Welles' vagueness as to this ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... it is at present abolishing itself with such rapidity that it is almost time lost to discuss the subject—immigration from Europe would stream in at an unprecedented rate, and in a few years, all the old Southern system become entirely a tradition of the past, like that of the feudal chivalry which the present chivalry ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. VI, June, 1862 - Devoted To Literature and National Policy • Various
... Margaret of Salem made the same sort of a voyage, and in both instances the supercargoes, one of whom happened to be a younger brother of Captain Richard Cleveland, wrote journals of the extraordinary episode. For these mariners alone was the curtain lifted which concealed the feudal Japan from the eyes of the civilized world. Alert and curious, these Yankee traders explored the narrow streets of Nagasaki, visited temples, were handsomely entertained by officers and merchants, and exchanged their wares in the marketplace. ...
— The Old Merchant Marine - A Chronicle of American Ships and Sailors, Volume 36 in - the Chronicles Of America Series • Ralph D. Paine
... For the lands he holds were ours once, and the English King has promised that they shall one day be restored, as they should have been long ago had not this usurper kept his iron clutch upon them in defiance of his feudal lord. Lady, sweet Constanza, tell me that thou wilt not call me thy foe if I come as a foe ...
— In the Days of Chivalry • Evelyn Everett-Green
... against overwhelming odds, dreading death not half so much as surrender, he reaches the home he left so prosperous and beautiful? He finds his house in ruins, his farm devastated, his slaves free, his stock killed, his barns empty, his trade destroyed, his money worthless; his social system, feudal in its magnificence, swept away; his people without law or legal status, his comrades slain, and the burdens of others heavy on his shoulders. Crushed by defeat, his very traditions are gone; without money, credit, employment, material or training; ...
— America First - Patriotic Readings • Various
... hard-earned gains, the train returned westward into 'the countries,' as they called the wilderness beyond the lakes, for another six months of toil. The officers of the little fort on the height, the chief factors of the fur company, and the United States Indian agent, formed the feudal aristocracy of the island; but the agent had the most imposing mansion, and often have I seen the old house shining with lights across its whole broadside of windows, and gay with the sound of a dozen French violins. The garden, now a wilderness, was the pride of the ...
— Castle Nowhere • Constance Fenimore Woolson
... sedentary habit, curiously enough, came up a second growth of old-world, mediaeval notions—a sort of aristocratic aftermath. It was natural, no doubt. His inborn feudal ideas had not been killed by ingratitude, exile, or his rough-and-ready existence on the edge of the wilderness, but only chilled to dormancy; they warmed now into life under the genial radiance of a civilized home. But it is not my purpose to ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic
... text-book, 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
... went to England before the late wars but will remember Ripon House. The curious student of history—a study, perhaps, too little in vogue with us—could find no better example of the palace of an old feudal lord. Dating almost from the time of the first George—and some even say it was built by the same Wren who designed that St. Paul's Cathedral whose ruins we may still see to the east of London—it frowned upon the miles of private park surrounding it, a marble memorial ...
— The King's Men - A Tale of To-morrow • Robert Grant, John Boyle O'Reilly, J. S. Dale, and John T.
... question, for the solution of which each party gives valid reasons. Most gentlemen prefer to give the right arm, since the seating of the lady is at the right side always; but many, to preserve the feudal significance of the custom that bade the good knight keep his sword arm free for defence, if need be, offer the left. Since, too, dinner gowns have usually a train to be managed as best it may, ladies also prefer the tender ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke
... scene—the grand, calm, patriarchal old man, so peaceful on his dark-haired daughter's lap in the midst of the shattered home in the old feudal stable. All were silent a while in awe, but the Dean was the first to move and speak, calling Lucas forward to ask ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte M. Yonge
... formerly so very remote and little frequented by strangers, that a visit to it was jocularly deemed equivalent to going out of the world altogether; and the remark passed into a proverb, used when a person is going to a strange place. The feudal lord of this district was formerly ...
— The Proverbs of Scotland • Alexander Hislop
... which the poems were continued, lent its own colour. The poets, by their theory, now preserved the genuine tradition of things old; cremation, cairn and urn burial; the use of the chariot in war; the use of bronze for weapons; a peculiar stage of customary law; a peculiar form of semi-feudal society; a peculiar kind of house. But again, by a change in the theory, the poets introduced later novelties; later forms of defensive armour; later modes of burial; later religious and speculative beliefs; a later style of house; an ...
— Homer and His Age • Andrew Lang
... of Burgstall, an important post, for it was situated on the borders of the Mark and the bishopric of Magdeburg; he was thereby admitted into the privileged class of the Schlossgesessenen, under the Margrave, the highest order in the feudal hierarchy. From that day the Bismarcks have held their own among the nobility of Brandenburg. Claus eventually became Hofmeister of Brandenburg, the chief officer at the Court; he had his quarrels with the Church, or rather with the spiritual lords, the bishops of Havelburg and Magdeburg, and was ...
— Bismarck and the Foundation of the German Empire • James Wycliffe Headlam
... bell of St. Lolan were long preserved at Kincardine-on-Forth, Perthshire, {136} and were included in the feudal investitures of the earldom of Perth. They are alluded to in documents of the 12th century, and the mention of the bell occurs in one as late as 1675. Both ...
— A Calendar of Scottish Saints • Michael Barrett
... of state were placed but two chairs, for the King and the Queen's father; and the four sons, Harold, Tostig, Leofwine, and Gurth, stood behind. Such was the primitive custom of ancient Teutonic kings; and the feudal Norman monarchs only enforced, though with more pomp and more rigour, the ceremonial of the forest patriarchs—youth to wait on age, and the ministers of the realm on those whom their policy had made chiefs in ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... once Labour is freed — or rather when once it frees itself — from the thraldom, of the old Feudal system, and finally from the fearful burden of modern Capitalism — when once it can lift its head and see the great constructive vision of the new society which awaits it — then surely it will perceive that ...
— NEVER AGAIN • Edward Carpenter
... old story to Mr. Randolph; but to discuss it with Daisy was a very new thing. He found her eager, patient, intelligent, and wise with an odd sort of child-wisdom which yet was not despicable for older years. Daisy's views of the feudal system, and of the wittenagemot, and of trial by jury, and of representative legislation, were intensely amusing to Mr. Randolph; he said it was going back to a primitive condition of society, to talk them over with her; though there I think he was mistaken. ...
— Melbourne House, Volume 1 • Susan Warner
... either armed with similar weapons, or carried with them the unerring rifle. The members of the commission and citizens, who were either guarding the prisoners or protecting the court, carried by their sides a revolver, a rifle, or a fowling-piece, thus presenting a scene more characteristic of feudal times than of the nineteenth century. The fair but sun-burnt complexion of the American portion of the jury, with their weapons resting against their shoulders, and pipes in their mouths, presented a striking contrast to the swarthy ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... of a cottar, whose family had been settled upon the farm of Bodyfauld from time immemorial. They were, indeed, like other cottars, a kind of feudal dependents, occupying an acre or two of the land, in return for which they performed certain stipulated labour, called cottar-wark. The greater part of the family was employed in the work of the farm, at ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... the door opened again, and was surprised when he beheld the singular person who answered to the feudal name of Tudor, and the plebeian ...
— The Waif of the "Cynthia" • Andre Laurie and Jules Verne
... you would be happier in a partially cleansed state?" said Mr. Red House. And Mrs. Red House, who is my idea of a feudal lady in a castle, said, "Oh, come along, let's go and partially clean ourselves. I'm dirtier than anybody, though I haven't explored a bit. I've often noticed that the more you admire things the more they come ...
— New Treasure Seekers - or, The Bastable Children in Search of a Fortune • E. (Edith) Nesbit
... excuse at all; the people of England suffered more in these dread nineteen years, than at any former period even of their suffering history. In the division of the nobility between the two rival claimants of the Crown, and in the growth of what is called the Feudal System (which made the peasants the born vassals and mere slaves of the Barons), every Noble had his strong Castle, where he reigned the cruel king of all the neighbouring people. Accordingly, he perpetrated whatever cruelties he chose. And never were worse cruelties ...
— A Child's History of England • Charles Dickens
... have to take into account not the simple opposition of two classes, but the hostility of many,—the farmers and the factory workers and all the castes within their ranks, the small merchants, and the feudal organization of business. Ours is a problem in which deception has become organized and strong; where truth is poisoned at its source; one in which the skill of the shrewdest brains is devoted to misleading a bewildered people. Nor can we ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann
... going on. There is a singularly beautiful, though rather barren tract of country between Liege and Spa, where, in 1819, my attention had been principally attracted by the striking features of a mountainous region, with here and there a ruin of the feudal past, and here and there a hovel of some poor hind,—the very haunt of the "Wild Boar of Ardennes" in the good old times of the House ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly
... with arguments and illustrations drawn from that topic. The sovereignty of government is an idea belonging to the other side of the Atlantic. No such thing is known in North America. Our governments are all limited. In Europe, sovereignty is of feudal origin, and imports no more than the state of the sovereign. It comprises his rights, duties, exemptions, prerogatives, and powers. But with us, all power is with the people. They alone are sovereign; and they erect what governments they please, and confer on them such powers as they ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... of Grace. Coming down to the Civil War in the time of Charles I., we find the Parliament strong in the South and East, where are still the centres of commerce and manufactures, even the iron trade, which has its smelting works in Sussex. In the North the feudal tie between landlord and tenant, and the sentiment of the past, preserve much of their force, and the great power in those parts is the Marquis of Newcastle, at once great territorial lord of the Middle Ages and elegant grand seigneur of the Renaissance, ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... dispense the goods of the world. In times of violence, every eminent person must fall in with many opportunities to approve his stoutness and worth; therefore every man's name that emerged at all from the mass in the feudal ages, rattles in our ear like a flourish of trumpets. But personal force never goes out of fashion. That is still paramount to-day, and in the moving crowd of good society the men of valor and reality are known ...
— Essays, Second Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson |
