christendom during the fourteenth century. The authority of the son,
the licentiousness of the lord, the powerlessness of the mother, the
despair of the daughter, the indifference of society, are vividly
depicted in this pathetic ballad. It shows the young girl regarded as a
piece of merchandise, to be bought and sold at the whim of her masters
who are the men of her own household and the lord of the manor. During
the feudal period the power of the son was nearly absolute. For his own
aggrandisement he did not hesitate to rob his sisters, or sell them
into lechery.[38] Hopelessly despairing in tone, this ballad gives us a
clear picture of feudal times when chivalry was at its height, and the
church had reached its ultimate of power. Woman’s attitude today is the
echo of that despair. At this period the condition of a woman was not
even tolerable unless she was an heiress, with fiefs in possession.[39]
Even then she was deprived of her property in case of loss of chastity,
of which it was the constant aim to deprive her. Guardians, next of
kin, and if none such existed, the church threw constant temptations in
her way. Ruffians were hired, or reckless profligates induced to betray
her under plea of love and sympathy, well paid by the next heir for
their treachery.
Although Sir William Blackstone in his Commentaries said that he
discovered no traces of marquette in England, a reminiscence of that
custom is to be found in the “fine” or “permit” known in that country
as Redemption of Blood, and designated as _Merchetum Sanguinis_, by
Fleta.[40] This was a customary payment made by a tenant to his lord
for license to give his daughter in marriage. Such redemption was
considered a special mark of tenure in villeinage.[41] It was not
exacted from a free man, which is corroborative proof of its origin
in the _Jus Primae Noctis_, of the feudal lord. Of the free man this
fine was not permissible, because of the privilege of free blood.
Raepsaet, M. Hoffman, Dr. Karl Schmidt, and other authors writing
in the interest of the church and finding it impossible to deny the
existence of some power over the bride, have questioned its character,
declaring it not to be feudal, but a spiritual authority, to guard
the bride by enforcing a penitence of marital abstinence of one to
three days after the nuptials. It is not to be doubted that under the
peculiar teachings of the church in regard to the uncleanliness of
marriage, such continence was a certain period part of church law.[42]
Nevertheless this does not invalidate the fact that a widespread
contrary custom existed in feudal times and at a still later period.
The present usages of society point back to an age when right to the
peasant’s bride was enforced by the lord. A reminiscence[43] of this
period is to be found in charivari and the buying off of a party of
this character with refreshments from the house, or with money for
the purchase of cigars and liquor. Such occurrences constantly fall
within our knowledge, personally or through the press.[44] The very
fact of such persecution of the bridal pair is a symbol of that custom
under which the retainers of the feudal lord jeered and flouted the
bridegroom, throwing him into foul water,[45] and other most unseemly
practices. To others outside of the charivari party this practice still
affords amusement, few persons inclining to interfere or prohibit such
pastimes. Society no longer as sharply defined as in the feudal period,
yet has preserved in this practice a symbol of the times when even the
highborn dames in the castle equally as degraded as its lord, amused
themselves while the bride was in the company of the lord by ridiculing
and torturing the husband who in anxiety for his wife ventured too near
the castle. The present nearly universal custom of a wedding journey
must be referred in its origin to the same period, arising from an
inherited tendency in the bride and groom to escape the jeers and ill
treatment that in past ages invariably accompanied entrance into the
married state.
In some European countries redemption was demanded from all women,
not alone the daughters of villeins and serfs, but also of those of
noble birth who were freed by payment of a ransom in silver known as
the “Maiden Rents.” Lands were even held under Maiden Redemption.[46]
In Scotland this ransom became known as “Marquette”; Margaret wife
of Malcolm Canmore, generally spoken of for her goodness as Saint
Margaret,[47] exercising her royal influence in 1057 against this
degradation of her sex. Numberless seditions having arisen from this
claim upon the bride, the king more willingly established a release
upon the payment of a piece of silver, a _demi-marc_, called marquette
(whence the name), and a certain number of cows. The piece of silver
went to the king, the cows to the queen, and from that period cuissage
was known as the droit de marquette. But this nefarious custom
possessed such strength, appealing directly to man’s basest passions,
his love of power, his profligacy—the human beast within him—that it
continued in existence nearly seven hundred years after the royal edict
in Scotland against its practice.[48] This vile power extended over all
ranks of women; the king holding it over the daughters of the grand
seigneur, the suzerain over the daughters of his vassals; the seigneur
over the daughters of his serfs, even the judge or bailie enforcing
this right upon all women who passed upon his road.[49]
The Church has ever been the bulwark of this base claim. Holding
the powers of penance and of excommunication, such custom could
neither have originated nor been sustained without the sanction of
the church.[50] At this date the privileges of the lower clergy were
extraordinary. Even in England they were not amenable to the common
law; they ruled the laity with iron hand, but the laity possessed no
power over the priesthood.[51] All appointments were in priestly hands,
the union of church and state complete.
God himself seemed to have forsaken woman, and the peasantry lost all
belief in the justice of earth or heaven. The customs of feudalism
which were akin to the customs of power wherever existing throughout
christendom did more to create what the church terms “infidelity” than
all the reason of the philosophers. No human being is so degraded as
not to possess an innate sense of justice; a wrong is as keenly felt by
the most humble and ignorant as by the educated and refined, its effect
more lasting because of the impossibility of redress. The power of the
seigneur was nearly equal to that of the king himself. Manorial courts
entirely local aided the seigneur in the enforcement of his traditional
privileges[52] at the expense of the villeins. The crown possessed no
jurisdiction over these courts. The lord held the right to make laws,
render justice, lay imposts, declare war, coin money, dispose of the
goods and lives of his subjects, and other prerogatives still more
closely touching their personal rights, especially of the women living
in his dominion.[53]
To persons not conversant with the history of feudalism and the church
it will seem impossible that such foulness could ever have been part
of christian civilization. That the vices they have been taught to
consider the outgrowth of paganism, and as the worst heathendom could
have existed in Christian Europe upheld many hundred years by both
church and state will strike most people with incredulity. Such however
is the truth; we are compelled to admit well attested facts of history,
however severe a blow they strike our preconceived beliefs.
The seigneural tenure of the feudal period was a law of Christian
Europe more dishonorable than the worship of Astarte at Babylon.[54]
In order to fully comprehend the vileness of marquette, we must
remember that it did not originate in a pagan country, many thousand
years since; that it was not a heathen custom transplanted to Europe
with many others adopted by the church,[55] but that it arose in
christian countries a thousand years after the origin of that religion,
continuing in existence until within the last century.
The attempt made by some modern authors to deny that the claim of
the feudal lord to the person of his female serf upon her marriage
ever existed, on the ground that statutes sustaining such a right
have not been discovered, is extremely weak.[56] The authority of a
custom or “unwritten law” is still almost absolute. A second objection
that such customs are unchristian has been answered. The third plea
in opposition, namely that those so outraged, so oppressed, left no
record of resistance is false. Aside from the fact that education was
everywhere limited, no peasant and but few of the nobility knowing how
to read or write, and within the church learning very rare, we have
indisputable evidence of strong character in the revolt of serfs at
different periods, through which concessions were gained; the final
refusal of the serfs to marry, and in the travesty upon religion known
as the “Black Mass.”
We can not measure the serf’s power of resistance by the same standard
as our own. The degradation of man with but a few exceptions was as
great as that of woman. Civilly and educationally the peasant man was
on a par with the peasant woman. No more than she had he a voice in
making the laws; the serf was virtually a slave under the absolute
dominion of his lord. No power existed for him higher than that of
his feudal superior. It is nearly impossible to realize the hopeless
degraded condition of the peasant serf of the middle ages. It has
had no parallel in the present century, except in the slavery of the
southern states. Free action, free speech, free thought was impossible.
But our respect for humanity is increased when we know that these
vassals, although under the life and death power of their lords, did
not tamely submit to the indignities enforced upon their wives and
daughters.
It must also be remembered that the historians of that period were
generally priests by whom the fact of such usage or custom would pass
unmentioned, especially as the church taught that woman was created to
meet the special demands of man. Other important historical facts have
been as lightly touched upon, or passed over entirely. The deification
of Julius Caesar while Emperor of Rome, is scarcely referred to in the
more familiar literary sources of Roman history. And yet his worship
was almost universal in the provinces, where he was adored as a god.
The records of this worship are only to be found in scattered monuments
and inscriptions but recently brought to light, and deciphered within
the last few years. Through these it is proven that there was an
organized worship of this emperor, and an order of consecrated priests
devoted to him.[57] Higgins refers to this deification of Caesar.[58]
It is not alone proof of the low condition of morality at this period,
but also of the universal disbelief in woman’s authority over, or right
to herself, that so few writers upon feudal subjects have treated of
the libidinous powers of the lord over his female serfs. Even those
presenting the evils of feudalism in other respects, have merely
expressed a mild surprise that christian people should have admitted
that right of the lord over his feminine vassals. The various names
under which this right was known as jus primae noctis,[59] droit de
seigneur,[60] droit de jambage,[61] droit de cuissage,[62] droit
d’ afforage,[63] droit de marquette,[64] and many other terms too
indelicate for repetition, indicating this right of the lord over all
the women in his domain, is still another incontestable proof of the
universality of the custom.
The Mosaic teaching as to sacredness of “first fruits,” under Judaism,
dedicated to the Lord of Heaven, doubtless was in part the origin of
the claim of the feudal lord. The law of primogeniture, or precedence
of the first born son as the beginning of “his father’s strength” is
also a translation from Judaism into the customs of many nations, but
nowhere under the law of primogeniture at the present day does even a
first born daughter receive as high consideration as a first born son.
This is especially noticeable in royal families. It is not therefore
singular that men who took the literal sense of the bible in science,
who believed that the world had been created in six days, this work
having so greatly fatigued the Lord Almighty as to make rest of the
seventh day necessary for him, should under example of that lord, claim
the first fruits in all their possessions. No Christians of the present
day, except the Mormons, so fully base their lives upon the teachings
of the bible as the Catholics of the middle ages. If we accord divine
authority to this book, accepting the literal word as infallible and
sacred, we must admit that both Church and State were at this period in
unison with its teachings, and even during the nineteenth century have
not freed themselves from the stigma of sustaining woman’s degradation;
the theory of the feudal ages remains the same, although the practice
is somewhat different. Legal bigamy or polygamy, non-marital unions,
are common in every large city of christendom. Government license
has created a class in many European countries devoted to the most
degraded lives under government sanction, protection, and control; in
England known as “Queen’s Women,” “Government Women.” Thus the State
places itself before the world as a trafficker in women’s bodies for
the vilest purposes. The culmination of nearly two thousand years
of christian teaching is the legalization of vice for women and the
creation of a new crime. Previous to the enactment of this law the
rules of modern jurisprudence held an accused person as innocent until
proven guilty. Under this legalization of vice all women within a
certain radius of recruiting, or other army stations, are “suspects,”
looked upon as immoral, and liable to arrest, examination, and
registration upon government books as government women. It required
seventeen years of arduous work to repeal this law in England. This
legalization of prostitution in the nineteenth century by the State is
its open approval of that doctrine of the Church that woman was created
for man. It is an acknowledgment by men that vice is an inherent
quality of their natures. It is in accord with man’s repeated assertion
that only through means of a class of women pursuing immorality as a
business, is any woman safe from violence.
In a letter to the National Woman Suffrage Convention at St. Louis,
May, 1879, Mrs. Josephine E. Butler, Honorable Secretary of the
Federation and of the Ladies National Association for the Protection of
Women, wrote:
England holds a peculiar position in regard to the question.
She was the last to adopt this system of slavery, and she
adopted it in that thorough manner which characterizes the
actions of the Anglo-Saxon race. In no other country has
prostitution been registered by law. It has been understood
by the Latin race, even when morally enervated, that the
law could not without risk of losing its majesty and force
sanction illegality and violate justice. In England alone the
regulations are law.
This legalization of vice, which is the endorsement of the
“necessity” of impurity of man and the institution of the
slavery of woman, is the most open denial which modern
times have seen of the principle of the sacredness of the
individual human being. An English high-class journal dared
to demand that women who are unchaste shall henceforth be
dealt with “not as human beings, but as foul sewers,” or
some such “material nuisance” without souls, without rights,
and without responsibility. When the leaders of public
opinion in a country have arrived at such a point of combined
skepticism and despotism as to recommend such a manner of
dealing with human beings, there is no crime which that
country may not presently legalize, there is no organization
of murder, no conspiracy of abominable things that it may
not, and in due time will not—have been found to embrace in
its guilty methods. Were it possible to secure the absolute
physical health of a whole province or an entire continent
by the destruction of one, only one poor and sinful woman,
woe to that nation which should dare, by that single act of
destruction, to purchase this advantage to the many! It will
do it at its peril. God will take account of the deed not in
eternity only, but in time, it may be in the next or even in
the present generation.
Although a long and active work through seventeen years eventually
brought about the repeal of this law in England, it still continues in
the British colonies, being forced upon the people in opposition to
their own action. After the Cape Parliament of the Colony of Good Hope
had repealed the law, Sir Bartle Frere reintroduced it by means of an
edict.[65] When in London, 1882, Sir John Pope Hennessey, Governor and
Commander in Chief of British China, was waited upon by an influential
deputation of members of parliament and others to whom he made known
the practical workings of governmental regulation of prostitution
introduced by England into that colony. He did not hesitate to
characterize it as a system of slavery for the registered women and
girls. He also declared that they detested the life they are thus
compelled to enter having both a dread and an abhorrence of foreigners,
especially foreign sailors and soldiers. He said such Chinese girls are
the real slaves of Hong Kong.
Now to that statement I adhere. I give it to you on the full
authority of the Governor of the colony. I have been five
years looking at the operation of this law in Hong Kong, and
that is the result to which I have arrived that, under the
flag of England there is slavery there, but it is slavery
created and protected by these ordinances.
The relation of Christianity to this treatment of Chinese women, and
the contempt with which this religion is regarded by these heathen, is
most fully shown by Sir John’s conversation with the leading Chinese
merchant of Canton, as given by himself, upon the material progress of
the colony. To this merchant Sir Pope said: “Your people are making
a large fortune here. Why not send down your second son to enter the
house of the Chinese merchant and learn the business there?” The
merchant replied, “I can not for this reason; Hong Kong is a sink of
iniquity.” Sir Pope Hennessey answered. “This is a Christian colony;
we have been here now for forty years, we are supposed to be doing the
best we can to spread civilization and christianity.” The Chinaman
repeated: “It is a sink of iniquity in my mind. As Chinamen we think
of domestic and family life—we reverence such things—but how do I see
the poor Chinese treated in this colony?” And he related stories of the
abuses to which his countrywomen were subjected.
In repeating this conversation to Her Majesty’s government, Sir Pope
Hennessey declared the words that the merchant of Canton who called
Hong Kong a “sink of iniquity” have a wide application, because the
British colony at Hong Kong is geographically a part of a great Empire,
an empire where you have missionaries of various churches. “I have been
asked to explain the curious and distressing fact that christianity is
declining in China. I think it is declining mainly on account of the
treaties we have forced upon the Chinese; but I will frankly tell you,
it is declining also because they see these girls registered in such
houses for ‘Europeans’ and made practically slaves under our flag.”[66]
Nor are the Cape of Good Hope, and China, the sole foreign countries
in which this system of the legalized moral degradation of women has
been carried by England, nearly one hundred places in India showing the
same vice under license from the British Government, even to bearing
the same name.[67] Nor have innumerable petitions and protests from
native and foreign ladies, from zenana workers, from missionaries,
and even from all ranks of the resident English civil service for
immediate repeal of this vilest of all laws, been of the least effect.
So thoroughly imbued are English legislators with contempt for
womanhood, as not only to maintain these outrageous laws but also to
cause fear in the minds of those women who for twenty years wrought
for the repeal of these acts in Great Britain and Ireland, of their
again being introduced under more insidious and dangerous form.[68]
A memorial signed by a number of native born and English ladies was
presented to the Viceroy praying that the age of protection for young
girls be raised. While in India a man’s dog, horse, elephant, and
even the plants of his garden are under the protection of English
law, his daughter of ten years is outside this protection.[69] The
penal code punishes with imprisonment or a fine, or both, the man who
injures an animal valued at ten rupees; if the animal be worth fifty
rupees his imprisonment may be for five years, while for dishonestly
coaxing his neighbor’s dog to follow him, the punishment is three years
imprisonment, or a fine or both; while the man who induces “consent”
from a girl-child of ten years escapes all punishment.
In deference to the bitter opposition these acts created, it was
declared that legalized prostitution was abolished in British India,
June 5th, 1888. A statement was made in the House of Commons that
the contagious disease acts had been suspended in Bombay. But an
investigation of these statements by the English Social Purity Society,
proved them false, the _Sentinel_, its organ, stating, June 1890,
that upon inquiry it was found that the licensing of prostitution
systematically prevails in British India, and is always attended
with results most disastrous to health of body as well as morals of
the community. The most extraordinary course is taken towards the
accomplishment of their ends, by the advocates of legalizing vice. In
1888 having failed to secure an act of the legislature of the state
of New York, in its favor, a society to this end was formed in the
city of New York, incorporated as a “Voluntary Association”; borrowing
the name used in England at the time its women were most degraded by
the state.[70] This society grants certificates to women presenting
themselves for examination. And thus step by step under many forms more
extended than even under feudal law, is woman’s moral degradation made
the effort of christian civilization of today.
The “ten thousand licensed women of the town” of the City of Hamburg,
are required by the State to show certificates that they regularly
attended Church, and also partake of the sacrament. And even in
Protestant Berlin, the capital of Protestant Prussia, the Church upon
demand of the State furnished certificates of their having partaken of
holy communion to those women securing license to lead vicious lives;
the very symbol and body of him, whom the christian world worships as
its saviour, thus becoming the key to unlock the doors of woman’s moral
degradation.[71]
The fact of governments lending their official aid to demoralization
of woman by the registration system, shows an utter debasement of
law. This system is directly opposed to the fundamental principle of
right, that of holding of the accused innocent until proven guilty,
which until now has been recognized as a part of modern law. Under the
registration or license system, all women within the radius of its
action are under suspicion; all women are held as morally guilty until
they prove themselves innocent. Where this law is in force, all women
are under an irresponsible police surveillance, liable to accusation,
arrest, examination, imprisonment, and the entrance of their names upon
the list of the lewd women of the town. Upon this frightful infraction
of justice, we have the sentiments of the late Sheldon Amos, when
Professor of Jurisprudence in the Law College of London University. In
“The Science of Law,” he says, in reference to this very wrong: