MEDIEVAL EUROPE.

Otago Witness, Issue 2045, 4 May 1893, Page 41

MEDIEVAL EUROPE.

I do not believe that the condition of the people in mediaeval Europe was as miserable as is pretended. Ido not believe that the distribution of the necessaries of life was as unequal as it is at present. Of liberty, no doubt, there is a great deal moru going now than there used to be. In the MHdle Ages there was little liberty for anyone. Kings and peers, knights and vassals, vi : l-nns and serfs, were held together under strict bonds of obligation. But the one thing certain is that between the lords su.il lh( ir feudatories there were links of genuine luyalty which drew high and low together as they have not

been drawn sinoe the so-called ohains have been broken. If the tenant gave service, the lord gave protection. If the tenant lived hard, the lord had little lnxury. Earls and countesses breakfasted at 5 in the morning on salt beef and herring, a slice of bread, and a draught of ale from a black jack. Lords and servants dined in the same hall and shared the same meal. As to dress, plain leather and woollen served for all ranks, except on splendid ceremonials. Examine the figures of the knights on the floor of the ante-chapel in the Temple Church in London. The originals of those forms were not brothers of the order or bound to poverty. They were the proudest and most powerful of the English peers. Yet their armour is without ornament save the plain device on the shield. The cloak is the lightest and simplest. The heavy sword hangs from a leather belt, fastened with an ordinary harness buckle. As those knights lie there, so they moved when they were alive, and when hard blows were going they had an ample share of them. No fact of history is more certain than that the peasants born on the great baronies looked up to those lords of theirs with real and reverent affection— very strange, if one party in the contract had nothing but hardahip and the other was an arbitrary tyrant. Custom dies hard, and thia feeling of feudal loyalty had lingered into our own times with very little to support it. Oarlyletold me once of a lawsuit pending In Scotland affecting the succession to a great estate of whioh he had known something. The case depended on a family secret known only to one old servant, who refused to reveal it.

A kirk minister was sent to tell her that she must speak on peril of her soul. " Peril oE my boul I " she said. "And would ye put the honour of an auld Scottish family in competition with the soul of a poor creature like me? "—From Froude's inaugural Oxford Lecture.