The Early and Middle Ages of England

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Bell and Daldy, 1861 - 472 pages
 

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Page 397 - Among them, the purchase of charters by the municipalities may be classed in the first order. Richard once said that he would sell London itself, if he could find a purchaser. The sheriffs and their officers were removed throughout the kingdom that their places might be sold. If it be true that the great justiciary, Glanville, was imprisoned, and forced to ransom himself for three thousand pounds, the act may be regarded as one of extortion rather than of justice ; for Glanville's offences...
Page 61 - The object of the races who broke up the Roman empire was not to settle in a desert, but to live at ease as an aristocracy of soldiers, deriving rent from a peaceful population of tenants.
Page 345 - ... robbers. The bishops and learned men cursed them continually, but the effect thereof was nothing to them; for they were all accursed, and forsworn, and abandoned. To till the ground was to plough the sea: the earth bare no corn, for the land was all laid waste by such deeds; and they said openly, that Christ slept, and his saints.
Page 424 - I become your man from this day forward [of life and limb, and of earthly worship,] and unto you shall be true and faithful, and bear to you faith for the tenements that I claim to hold of you, saving the faith that I owe unto our sovereign lord the king ; and then the lord, so sitting, shall kiss him.
Page 105 - I fear not death, since I have fulfilled the greatest duty of life ; but I pray thee not to let my hair be touched by a slave, or stained with blood." His request was granted, and a freeman held up his hair for the fatal stroke ; but as the axe descended, Sigurd swayed himself forward, and the blow fell upon his captor's hands. The rough...
Page 60 - ... remarkable ; and the desperate courage with which the Britons bore up, at least in Wessex and Northumbria, against repeated defeats, is evidence of the high qualities of the race. They obtained their reward in the liberal terms which were granted them by the conqueror. For the common belief, that the Keltic population of Britain was exterminated or driven into Wales and Brittany by the Saxons, has absolutely no foundation in history.
Page 424 - I become your man from this day forward of life and limb and of earthly worship, and unto you shall be true and faithful, and bear to you faith for the tenements (MN) that I claim to hold of you, saving the faith that I owe unto our sovereign lord the king;' and then the lord so sitting shall kiss him.
Page 47 - I have suffered hunger for the Son of the Virgin. I have been fostered in the land of the Deity, I have been teacher to all intelligences, I am able to instruct the whole universe. I shall be until the day of doom on the face of the earth ; And it is not known whether my body is flesh or fish. Then I was for nine months In the womb of the hag Ceridwen ; I was originally little Gwion, And at length I am Taliesin.
Page 423 - ... are all elements in the system which overspread Europe in the middle ages. Men in those times commonly regarded it from the practical point of view, as service for reward. But it came to have a higher meaning to the state. The feudal baron was the representative of kingship on his domain; rendering justice, maintaining police, and seeing that military service was performed.
Page 172 - He has shown in his maps the territorial identity of many ancient Saxon Tithings with modern English Parishes and Townships. He says, "Ten families constituted a tithing, the self-governing unit of the state, which is now represented among us by the parish, and ten tithings were a hundred, whose court administered justice among the little communities themselves."* Pearson has shown that the Hundreds of Devonshire contain on the average...

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