"Feudal system" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... administered, and in which, at a later period, under Bigot, it was purchasable. Our illustrious ancestors, for that matter, were not the kind of men to weep over such trifles, imbued as they were from infancy with the feudal system and all its irksome duties, without forgetting the forced labour (corvees) and those admirable "Royal secret warrants," (lettres de cachet). What did the institutions of a free people, or the text of Magna Charta signify ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... was defeated by two causes, alike unforeseen and perplexing. The Northern nations, when they overran the Roman Empire, were in search of homes; and they subdued only to colonize. The feudal system bound the noble to the lands which he possessed; and a theory of ownership of estates, as consisting merely in the receipt of rents from other occupants, was alike unheard of in fact, and repugnant to the principles of feudal society. ...
— History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. Vol. II. • James Anthony Froude
... Lotharingia to national feeling, at a time when this feeling scarcely existed in Western Europe. No doubt, the resistance offered by the Belgian nobles to their foreign sovereigns might be simply represented as the direct effect of the feudal system and of the jealous pride which every vassal entertained towards his suzerain. But, if local ambitions became supreme in Europe in the tenth century, we may at least point out that, owing to the mixed ...
— Belgium - From the Roman Invasion to the Present Day • Emile Cammaerts
... 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, ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns
... harvest, whole crops rotted in the fields. Many a manor had lost a third of its inhabitants, and it was difficult, under the fixed services of land tenure, to see what remedy could be applied. In despair the feudal system was set aside, and lord competed with lord to obtain landless labourers, or to entice within their jurisdiction those whose own masters ill-treated them in any way. The villeins themselves sought to procure enfranchisement, ...
— Mediaeval Socialism • Bede Jarrett
... theocratico-imperial conception of Christian society as expounded by the canonists and lawyers of an earlier period was forced into the background by the appearance of nationalism and individualism, which by this time had become factors to be reckoned with by the ecclesiastical and civil rulers; the Feudal System, which had received a mortal blow by the intermingling of the classes and the masses in the era of the Crusades, was threatened, from above, by the movement towards centralisation and absolutism, and from below, ...
— History of the Catholic Church from the Renaissance to the French • Rev. James MacCaffrey
... 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
... and the feudal system of holding land are so different from anything with which we are now familiar that it is difficult for us to understand them. Yet unless we do understand them, a great part of the history of Europe during the past thousand years will ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson
... of principle, united many persons and families with either of these great parties which seemed most likely to subserve their private ambitions. The feudal system was nearly extinct in form, but its spirit was still alive. The nobles who had long held sway in some of the provinces of France desired to hold them as distinct and separate governments, and to transmit them as an inheritance to their children. ...
— Voyages of Samuel de Champlain, Vol. 1 • Samuel de Champlain
... "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 ...
— A True Hero - A Story of the Days of William Penn • W.H.G. Kingston
... one of the strongest rulers China ever had, assumed the title of Universal Emperor. He beat back the enemies of China beyond the frontier, began the building of the great wall, and broke down the power of the feudal rulers. It was found, however, that the feudal system still lived in the affections of the people, and as it was the religious books which mainly kept the past in veneration, the emperor ordered their destruction and enforced the edict with great rigour. The House of Han, however, which replaced that of Tsin ...
— History of Religion - A Sketch of Primitive Religious Beliefs and Practices, and of the Origin and Character of the Great Systems • Allan Menzies
... a half of Venetian rule present little more than an unvarying succession of revolts, oppression, and bloodshed. In pursuance of their usual system of colonial administration, which strangely contrasted with their domestic policy, they had introduced into the island a sort of modified feudal system, in order to rivet their ascendancy over this remote possession, by the interposition of a class of resident proprietors, whose interest it would be to maintain the dominion of the parent state: but the cavaliers, as the Venetian tenants ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various
... general, but less ponderable, a nature is the remnant of the feudal spirit and feudal manners which lingers in the attitude of the German governing and official classes towards the rest of the population. The most objectionable features of the feudal system have passed away, the cruel and exclusive rights and privileges which only men in ignorant personal servitude to an all-powerful master could permanently endure; but traces of the system still exist ...
— William of Germany • Stanley Shaw
... though reason forbids us to believe them, a few moments reflection on the cause of their origin will teach us to revere. Under the feudal system which prevailed, the rights of humanity were too often violated, and redress very hard to be procured; thus an awful deference to one of the leading attributes of Omnipotence begat on the mind, untutored by philosophy, the first germ of these supernatural effects; ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, Vol. II (of 3) • Walter Scott
... 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 ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IV (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland II • Various
... them, meant only wearing fine clothes, and living on good fare at their expense. And I am sorry to say, the people are quite right in this opinion also. If you inquire into the vital fact of the matter, this you will find to be the constant structure of European society for the thousand years of the feudal system; it was divided into peasants who lived by working; priests who lived by begging; and knights who lived by pillaging; and as the luminous public mind becomes gradually cognizant of these facts, it will assuredly not suffer things to be altogether ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... sight of contrasts, the theorems of public economy most conducive to happiness. And it is evident, that notwithstanding these follies wasted the population of Europe, squandered its treasures, and infected us with new vices and diseases, still the crusades diminished the bondage of the feudal system, by augmenting the power of the King, and the strength of the Commons; while they also occasioned a very increased activity in commerce: thus taming the ferocity of men's spirits, increasing agriculture in value from the safety ...
— The Pirates Own Book • Charles Ellms
... by a fall equally appalling, and it has not yet regained its proper position in the political system of that country. In Germany the royal power was less imposing, its prerogatives being divided between the Emperor and a number of small but almost independent vassals, remnants of that feudal system of the Middle Ages which in France and England had been absorbed by the rise of national monarchies. These small principalities explain the weakness of Germany in her relation with foreign powers, and the instability of her ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller
... grave. All the antiquarian in him deplored the sudden rupture of a fine old Oxford tradition. All the chivalrous American in him resented the slight on that fair victim of the feudal system, Miss O'Mora. And, at the same time, all the Abimelech V. in him rejoiced at having honoured by word and act the ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm
... 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 ...
— Progress and History • Various
... outlived the feudal system. Long after the landlords were no longer the rulers of the country districts, the towns still retained ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XII. - Modern History • Arthur Mee
... Middle Ages presented in the Feudal System a different type of society. A vast hierarchy in Church and State, with the pope and emperor at the top, ran down through many gradations to the serf at the bottom. It was an improvement on the little Greek state in that it embraced many more in a single order and bound them together with ...
— Some Christian Convictions - A Practical Restatement in Terms of Present-Day Thinking • Henry Sloane Coffin
... community at large. While the governmental machinery was thus modelled in a large measure on that of the provincial administration of France, the territory of the province was subject to a modified form of the old feudal system which was so long a dominant condition of the nations of Europe, and has, down to the present time left its impress on their legal and civil institutions, not even excepting Great Britain itself. Long before Jacques Cartier sailed up the River St. Lawrence this system had gradually ...
— Lord Elgin • John George Bourinot
... apostle of the Gentiles" a rascal? Rascal formerly meant a servant: one devoted to the interest of another; but now it is nearly synonymous with villain. Villain once had none of the odium which is now associated with the term; but it signified one who, under the feudal system, rented or held lands of another. Thus, Henry the VIII. says to a vassal or tenant, "As you are an accomplished villain, I order that you receive L700 out of the public treasury." The word villain, then, has given up its original idea, and become the representative ...
— English Grammar in Familiar Lectures • Samuel Kirkham
... 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 and other young men of a ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... of clanship was Confronted by the stern, young, ferocious feudal system, which was then beginning to prevail all over Europe. The question was, Would Ireland consent to become European as Europe was then organizing herself? The struggle, as we shall see, between the Irish and the English in the twelfth century and later on, was ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... on 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
... civilized world for four hundred years: it controls 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 is a revelation from God of ...
— Sidney Lanier • Edwin Mims
... arisen from very different causes, and have scarce any natural connection with one another. The one has arisen from a mere accident, in which neither prudence nor policy either had or could have any share; the other, from the fall of the feudal system, and from the establishment of a government which afforded to industry the only encouragement which it requires, some tolerable security that it shall enjoy the fruits of its own labour. Poland, where the feudal ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith
... events as well as all men contribute to its progress. Would it, then, be wise to imagine that a social impulse which dates from so far back can be checked by the efforts of a generation? Is it credible that the democracy which has annihilated the feudal system and vanquished kings will respect the citizen and the capitalist? Will it stop now that it has grown so strong and its adversaries so weak? None can say which way we are going, for all terms of comparison are wanting: the equality of conditions is more complete in the Christian ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... 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 were kept for community use. Even in the heart ...
— Society - Its Origin and Development • Henry Kalloch Rowe
... common cause with the Saxons. In 785, A.D., they were, however, completely subjugated, and never rose again until the epoch of their entire separation from the Frank empire. Charlemagne left them their name of free Frisians, and the property in their own land. The feudal system never took root in their soil. "The Frisians," says their statute book; "shall be free, as long as the wind blows out of the clouds and the world stands." They agreed, however, to obey the chiefs whom the Frank monarch should ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley |
