arose, the youngest son becoming the heir.[4] The original
signification of the word _borough_, being to make secure, the peasant
through Borough-English made secure the right of his own son to what
inheritance he might leave, thus cutting off his property from the
possible son of his hated lord. France, Germany, Prussia, England,
Scotland, and all christian countries in which feudalism existed,
held to the enforcement of marquette. The lord deemed this right his,
as fully as he did his claim to half the crops of the land, or half
the wool shorn from the sheep. More than one reign of terror arose
in France from the enforcement of this law, and the uprisings of
the peasants over Europe during the twelfth century and the fierce
Jacquerie, or Peasants War, of the fourteenth century in France, owed
their origin among other causes to the enforcement of these claims by
the lords upon the newly married wife. The Edicts of Marley securing
the seigneural tenure in Lower Canada transplanted that claim to
America when Canada was under the control of France.[5]
During the feudal period when chivalry held highest rank in the duties
of the knight, women of the lower classes were absolutely unprotected.
Both Church and State were their most bitter enemies; the lords even
in holy orders did not lessen their claims upon the bride. Most of
the bishops and _chanonies_ were also temporal lords. The Bishop of
Amiens possessed this right against the women of his vassals and the
peasants of his fiefs, of which he was dispossessed at the commencement
of the fifteenth century, by an _arreet_, rendered at the solicitation
of husbands.[6] Although the clergy, largely drawn from the nobility,
whose portionless younger sons were thus easily provided for, sustained
the corruptions of the lords temporal yet having connected themselves
with the church, they did not fail to preserve their own power even
over the nobility.
The canons of the Cathedral of Lyons, bore title of Counts of Lyons;
sixteen quarters of nobility, eight on side of the father; eight on
side of the mother. The marchetta or cuissage was still practiced by
them in the fourteenth century at the time Lyons was reunited to the
crown of France. It was but slowly, after a great number of complaints
and arrests of judgment that the canons of Lyons consented to forego
this custom. In several cantons of Piccardy, the curés imitated the
bishops and anciently took the right of cuissage, but ultimately the
peasants of this region refused to marry, and the priests gave up
this practice which they had usurped when the bishop had become too
old to take his right.[7] The resolution not to marry, surprised and
confounded the lord “suzerains,” who perceived it would cause the
depopulation of their fiefs. During the feudal period, bearing children
was the duty pre-eminently taught women. Serf children increased
the power and possessions of the lord, they also added to the power
of the church, and the strangest sermons in regard to woman’s duty
in this respect fell from the lips of celibate monks and priests.
She was taught that sensual submission to man, and the bearing of
children, were the two reasons for her having been created, and that
the woman who failed in either had no excuse for longer encumbering
the earth. The language used from the pulpit for the enforcement of
these duties, will not bear reproduction.[8] The villeins were not
entirely submissive under such great wrongs, frequently protesting
against this right of their suzerains. At one time a number of Piedmont
villages rose in united powers. Although[9] the concessions gained were
but small, not putting an end to the lord’s claim to the bride but
merely lessening the time of his spoliation, the results were great in
establishing the principle of serf rights.
Marquette began to be abolished in France towards the end of the
sixteenth century.[10] But an authority upon this question says
that without doubt the usage still continued in certain countries,
farther asserting that even in this century it existed in the county
of Auvergne, and several vassals plead to their lords against the
continuance of this custom because of the great unhappiness it caused
them. The lower orders of the clergy were very unwilling to relinquish
this usage, vigorously protesting to their archbishops against the
deprivation of the right, declaring they could not be dispossessed.[11]
Boems states that he was present at a spiritual council of the
metropolitane of Bourges, and heard a priest claim the right upon
ground of immemorial usage.[12]
Although feudalism is generally considered the parent of this most
infamous custom, some writers attribute its origin to an evangelical
council, or to precepts directly inculcated by the church,[13] whose
very highest dignitaries did not hesitate to avail themselves of
the usage. In 1471, quite the latter part of the fifteenth century,
Pope Sixtus IV[14] sought admission to the very illustrious Piedmont
family, Della Rovere, which possessed the right of cuissage, allowing
the lord absolute control of his vassals’ newly wedded bride for three
days and nights; a cardinal of the family having secured the patent
by which this outrageous and abominable right was granted them. The
rights of the Lords spiritual in the _jus primae noctis_, at first,
perchance, confined to those temporal lords who holding this right
entered the church, at last extended to the common priesthood, and the
confessional became the great fount of debauchery. Woman herself was
powerless; the church, the state, the family, all possessed authority
over her as against herself. Although eventually redemption through the
payment of money, or property, was possible, yet a husband too poor
or penurious to save her, aided in this debasement of his wife.[15]
This inexpressible abuse and degradation of woman went under the name
of pastime, nor were the courts to be depended upon for defense.[16]
Their sympathies and decisions were with the lord. Few except manorial
courts existed. Even when freedom had been purchased for the bride, all
feudal customs rendered it imperative upon her to bear the “wedding
dish” to the castle. Accompanied by her husband, this ceremony ever
drew upon the newly married couple a profusion of jeers and ribald
jests from which they were powerless to protect themselves. While in
ancient Babylon woman secured immunity by one service and payment to
the temple, the claim of the lord to the peasant wife was not always
confined to the marriage day, and refusal of the loan of his wife at
later date brought most severe punishment upon the husband.[17]
Blessing the nuptial bed by the priest, often late at night, was also
common, and accompanied by many abuses, until advancing civilization
overpowered the darkness of the church and brought it to an end. When
too poor to purchase the freedom of his bride, the husband was in one
breath assailed by the most opprobrious names,[18] and in the next he
was congratulated upon the honor to be done him in that perchance his
oldest child would be the son of a baron.[19] So great finally became
the reproach and infamy connected with the _droit de cuissage_, as this
right was generally called in France,[20] and so recalcitrant became
the peasants over its nefarious exactions, that ultimately both lords
spiritual and lords temporal fearing for their own safety, commenced to
lessen their demands.[21] This custom had its origin at the time the
great body of the people were slaves bound either to the person or land
of some lord. At this period personal rights no more existed for the
lower classes than for the blacks of our own country during the time of
slavery. Under feudalism, the property, family ties, and even the lives
of the serfs were under control of the suzerain. It was a system of
slavery without the name; the right of the lord to all first fruits was
universally admitted;[22] the best in possession of the serf, by feudal
custom belonged to the lord. The feudal period was especially notable
for the wrongs of women. War, the pastime of nobles and kings, brought
an immense number of men into enforced idleness. Its rapine and carnage
were regarded as occupations superior to the tillage of the soil or the
arts of peace. Large numbers of men, retainers of every kind, hung
about the castle dependent upon its lord, obedient to his commands.[23]
At an age when books were few and reading an accomplishment of still
greater rarity, these men, apart from their families, or totally
unbound by marriage, were in readiness for the grossest amusement.
At an age when human life was valueless, and suffering of every kind
was disregarded, we can readily surmise the fate likely to overtake
unprotected peasant women. They were constantly ridiculed and insulted;
deeds of violence were common and passed unreproved. For a woman
of this class to be self-respecting was to become a target for the
vilest abuse. Morality was scoffed at; to drag the wives and daughters
of villeins and serfs into the mire of lechery was deemed a proper
retribution for their attempted pure lives; they possessed no rights of
person or morality against the feudal lord and his wild retainers. All
christian Europe was plunged into the grossest morality.[24] A mistress
was looked upon as a necessary part of a monarch’s state.[25] Popes,
cardinals, and priests of lesser degrees, down to the present century,
still continued the unsavory reputation of their predecessors;[26]
“nephews,” “nieces,” and “sacrilegious” children are yet supported by
the revenues of the Church, or left to poverty, starvation and crime.
It was long the custom of christian municipalities to welcome visiting
kings by deputations of naked women,[27] and as late as the eighteenth
century, a mistress whose support was drawn from the revenues of the
kingdom, was recognized as part of the pageantry of the kingdom.
The heads of the Greek and Protestant Churches, no less than of the
Catholic, appear before the world as men of scandalous lives. The
history of the popes is familiar to all students. No less is that
of the English Eighth Henry, the real father of the Reformation, in
England, and founder of the Anglican Church, whose adulteries and
murders make him a historic Blue Beard. The heads of the Greek Church
figure in a double sense as fathers of their people. The renowned Peter
the Great amused himself by numberless liaisons, filling Russia with
descendants whose inherited tendencies are those of discontent and
turmoil. When he visited the Court of Prussia, 1717, he was accompanied
by his czarina, son, daughter, and four hundred ladies in waiting,
women of low condition, each of whom carried an elegantly dressed
infant upon her arms. If asked in regard to the paternity of the child
they invariably replied “my lord has done me the honor to make me its
mother.”[28]
In no country has a temporal monarch under guise of a spiritual ruler
been more revered than in Russia. Even amidst nihilism a belief
that the czar can do no wrong is the prevailing conviction among
the Slavic peoples. This is both a great cause of, and a result of
Russian degradation. If we except the proportionately few liberal
thinkers, that conviction is as strong as it was in the time of Ivan
the Terrible. In no civilized or half-civilized nation is ignorance as
dense as among the peasantry of that vast empire embracing one-sixth
of the habitable globe. Nor to the czar alone was such disregard of
woman’s right of person confined. The system of serfdom which existed
until within the last half of the present century, was a system of
feudalism in its oppression of women, although if possible even more
gross. The sale of young peasant girls regularly took place, and the
blood of the nobility of that country runs in the veins of its most
degraded and ignorant population.[29] Although Italy the seat of the
papal power is noted for the ignorance, squalor, and superstition of
its people, we no less find such a condition of affairs existing
in Russia. Amid the starvation of its people, accompanied by
“hunger-typhus,” that form of disease which in the Irish famine of 1848
was known as “ship-fever,” the peasants will not accept aid from Count
Tolstoi, whom they have been taught to regard as Anti-Christ, fearing
that by so doing they will condemn themselves to eternal torment.[30]
While the peasantry are thus suffering wrongs of every nature, the
priesthood and churches are as thriving as before.
Having shown the results of power in the hands of a controlling class,
upon women of low degree in both the Catholic and Greek divisions
of christendom, we have but to look at our own country to find like
condition under Protestantism. The state of the slave women of the
South was that of serfs of the body under feudalism, or of the serf
peasant women of Russia. Nor is other proof of this statement required
than the hue of this race, no longer spoken of as the blacks, but as
colored people. Let the condition of woman as to her rights of person,
under the three great divisions of Christianity, be answer to all who
without examination of history, or the customs of ancient and modern
times, and with eyes closed to these most patent facts, so falsely
assert that woman has been elevated by christianity, and is now holding
a position never before in the world accorded her. But what has already
been shown of her degradation under christian teachings and laws is but
a small portion of the wrongs woman has suffered during the christian
centuries.
Under theory of the divine rights of man, society has everywhere been
permeated with disregard for woman’s rights of person. Monarchs not
posing as spiritual heads of their people have yet equally made use
of their place and power for woman’s degradation, and an indefinite
fatherhood outside of marriage. Augustus of Saxony, King of Poland, is
chiefly renowned in history as the father of three hundred illegitimate
children.[31] Of Charles II not alone King of England, but also head of
the Anglican Church, one of his subjects declared him to be the father
of many of his people in the literal as well as in the spiritual sense.
Four English dukes of the present day trace their lineage to this
monarch, who left no legitimate descendants.[32]
H.R.H. the present heir-apparent to the English throne bears an
equally unsavory record.[33] To him and his aristocratic companions
in guilt is due the support and protection of England’s notorious and
infamous purchase and sale, outrage, and exploitation of helpless young
girls. An English clergyman writing the _New York Sun_, at the time of
the disclosures made by the _Pall Mall Gazette_, declared he had in his
possession a list of the names of the royal princes, dukes, nobles, and
leading men who had been the principal patrons and supporters of the
“gilded hells” devoted to the ruin of the merest children, girls from
the ages of nine to thirteen.[34] The reputation of the male members of
the Hanoverian dynasty has ever been bad. Trace as you will the path of
either ecclesiastical or temporal rulers claiming authority by “divine
right,” and you will find the way marked with the remains of women
and children whose life has been wrecked by man under plea of created
superiority. While Italy within the last forty years has escaped from
the temporal control of the pope, its kings have no less copied the
immorality of the “Vicar of God”; the predecessor of the late king of
Italy having left thirty-three illegitimate children. An instance of
the survival of the feudal idea as to the right of the lord to the
person of his vassal women occurred in Ireland within the past few
years, graphically described in a letter upon landlords, from Mr. D.
R. Locke (Nasby), December, 1891, in which he says;
One was shot a few years ago and a great ado was made about
it. In this case as in most of the others it was not a
question of rent. My Lord had visited his estates to see how
much more money could be taken out of his tenants and his
lecherous eye happened to rest upon a very beautiful girl,
the eldest daughter of a widow with seven children. Now this
beautiful girl was betrothed to a nice sort of a boy, who,
having been in America, knew a thing or two. My Lord, through
his agent, who is always a pimp as well as a brigand, ordered
Kitty to come to the castle. Kitty knowing very well what that
meant, refused.
“Very well,” says the agent, “yer mother is in arrears for
rent, and you had better see My Lord, or I shall be compelled
to evict her.”
Kitty knew what that meant also. It meant that her gray haired
mother, her six helpless brothers and sisters would be pitched
out by the roadside to die of starvation and exposure, and so
Kitty without saying a word to her mother or any one else,
went to the castle and was kept there three days, till My Lord
was tired of her, when she was permitted to go.
She went to her lover, like an honest girl as she was, and
told him she would not marry him, but refused to give any
reason.
Finally the truth was wrenched out of her, and Mike went
and found a shot gun that had escaped the eye of the royal
constabulary, and he got powder and shot and old nails, and he
lay behind a hedge under a tree for several days. Finally one
day My Lord came riding by all so gay and that gun went off,
and ‘subsequent proceedings interested him no more.’ There was
a hole, a blessed hole, clear through him, and he never was so
good a man as before because there was less of him.
Then Mike went and told Kitty to be of good cheer and not
be cast down, that the little difference between him and My
Lord had been happily settled, and that they would be married
as soon as possible. And they were married, and I had the
pleasure of taking in my hand the very hand that fired the
blessed shot and of seeing the wife, to avenge whose cruel
wrongs the shot was fired.
Nor is this the only instance in modern Ireland. A certain lord
Leitram was noted a few years since for his attempts to dishonor the
wives and daughters of the peasantry upon his vast estate comprising
90,000 acres. His character was that of the worst feudal barons, and
like those he used his power as magistrate and noble, in addition to
that of landlord, to accomplish his purpose. After an assault upon a
beautiful and intelligent girl, by a brutal retainer of his lordship,
her character assailed, his tenantry finally declared it necessary
to resort to the last means in their power to preserve the honor of
their wives and daughters. Six men were chosen as the instruments of
their rude justice, and among them the brother of this girl upon whom
the leadership fell. They took oath to be true to the end, in life or
death, raised a sum of money, purchased arms, and seeking a convenient
opportunity shot him to death. Nor were the perpetrators ever
discovered; yet it is now known that two of them died in Australia, two
in the Boer war in South Africa, and the leader who came to the United
States, changing his name, passed away in the summer of 1892 in the
State of Pennsylvania.
Under head of “A Story of To-day,” another tale is related of woman’s
oppression in Ireland aided by the Petty Sessions Bench in 1880.
Recently, a young girl named Catherine Cafferby, of Belmullet,
in County Mayo—the pink of her father’s family—fled from the
“domestic service” of a landlord as absolute as Lord Leitrim,
the moment the poor creature discovered what that “service”
customarily involved. The great man had the audacity to
invoke the law to compel her to return, as she had not given
statutable notice of her flight. She clung to the door-post of
her father’s cabin; she told aloud the story of her terror,
and called on God and man to save her. Her tears, her shrieks,
her piteous pleadings were all in vain. The Petty Sessions
Bench ordered her back to the landlord’s “service,” or else
to pay five pounds, or two weeks in jail. This is not a story
of Bulgaria under Murad IV but of Ireland in the reign of the
present sovereign. That peasant girl went to jail to save
her chastity. If she did not spend a fortnight in the cells,
it was only because friends of outraged virtue, justice, and
humanity paid the fine when the story reached the outer world.
These iniquities have taken place in christian lands[35] and these
nefarious outrages upon women have been enforced by the christian
laws of both church and state. The degradation and unhappiness of the
husband at the infringement of the lord’s spiritual and temporal upon
his marital rights, has been depicted by many writers but history has
been quite silent upon the despair and shame of the wife.[36] No hope
appeared for woman anywhere. The Church which should have been the
great conserver of morals dragged her to the lowest depths through the
vileness of its teachings and its priestly customs. The State which
should have defended her civil rights followed the example of the
church in crushing her to the earth. Christian laws were detrimental to
woman in every relation of life.
The brilliant French author, Legouve,[37] gives from among the popular
songs of Brittany during the fourteenth century, a pathetic ballad,
“The Baron of Jauioz,” which vividly depicts the condition of the
peasant women of France at that date. In the power of the male members
of her family over her, we also find an exact parallel in the condition
of English women of the same era. The moral disease thus represented
being due to the same religious teaching, the change of country and
language but more fully serves to depict the condition of woman
everywhere in christendom at this period.
BRETON BALLAD OF THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY. THE BARON OF JAUIOZ.
I.
As I was at the river washing,
I heard the sighing of the bird of death.
“Good little Jina, you do not know it, but
you are sold to the Baron of Jauioz.”
Is this true, my mother, that I have heard?
Is it true that I was sold to old Jauioz?
“My poor little darling, I know nothing about it;
ask your father.”
“My nice good father, tell me now—is it true
that I am sold to Loys de Jauioz?”
“My beloved child, I know nothing about it;
ask your brother.”
Lannik, my brother, tell me now—is it true
that I am sold to that lord there?
“Yes you are sold to the Baron, and you must be
off at once. Your price is paid—fifty crowns of the
white silver and as much of the yellow gold.”
II.
She had not gone far from the hamlet
when she heard the ringing of the bells; whereat
she wept.
“Adieu Saint Ann! Adieu, bells of my fatherland;
Bells of my village church, adieu!”
III.
“Take a seat and rest thee till the repast is ready.”
The lord sat near the fire; his beard and hair all
white, and his eyes like living coals.
“Behold the young maiden whom I have desired
this many a day!”
“Come my child, let me show thee, crown by crown,
how rich I am; come, count with me, my beauty,
my gold and my silver.”
“I should like better to be with my mother
counting the chips on the fire.”
“Let us descend into the cellar and
taste of the wine that is sweet as honey.”
“I should like better to taste the meadow stream
Whereof my father’s horses drink.”
“Come with me from shop to shop to buy thee a
holiday cloak.”
“I should better like a linsey petticoat,
that my mother has woven for me.”
“Ah, that my tongue had been blistered when
I was such a fool as to buy thee!
Since nothing will comfort thee.”
IV.
“Dear little birds as you fly, I pray you
listen to me,
You are going to the village whither I cannot.
You are merry but I am sad.”
“Remember me to my playmates,
To the good mother who brought me to light,
And to the father who reared me; and tell my
brother
I forgive him.”
V.
Two or three months have passed and gone
when as the family are sleeping,
A sweet voice is heard at the door.
“My father, my mother, for God’s love pray for me;
your daughter lies on her bier.”