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During my stay at the University of Michigan, I made a beginning of such a history by giving a course of lectures on the growth of civilization in the middle ages, taking up such subjects as the downfall of Rome, the barbarian invasion, the rise of the papacy, feudalism, Mohammedanism, the anti-feudal effects of the crusades, the rise of free cities, the growth of law, the growth of literature, and ending with the centralization of monarchical power in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.
Genuine Calabrians often settle in these foreign villages, in order to profit by their anti-feudal institutions. For even now the Italian cultivator is supposed to make, and actually does make, "voluntary" presents to his landlord at certain seasons; gifts which are always a source of irritation and, in bad years, a real hardship.
It had a wider importance as a step in the development of Edward's anti-feudal policy, and may be regarded as a counterpart of the inquest into franchises, and as a means of protecting the State as well as of disciplining the Church. A corporation never died, and never paid reliefs or wardships.
Two thousand Yorkist gentlemen were in the various Sanctuaries; aided and headed by the Earl of Essex, they came forth armed and clamorous, scouring the streets, and shouting, "King Edward!" with impunity. Alwyn, true to his anti-feudal principles, animated all the young freemen to support the merchant-king, the favourer of commerce, the man of his age!
Two thousand Yorkist gentlemen were in the various Sanctuaries; aided and headed by the Earl of Essex, they came forth armed and clamorous, scouring the streets, and shouting, "King Edward!" with impunity. Alwyn, true to his anti-feudal principles, animated all the young freemen to support the merchant-king, the favourer of commerce, the man of his age!
Feeling the necessity of resting his power on a democratic basis, he promulgated a constitution modelled on the charter of Louis XVIII., and known as the Acte Additionnel, which, however, satisfied no one. The royalists objected to its anti-feudal spirit, the revolutionists and moderates to its express recognition of an hereditary peerage, and its tacit recognition of a dictatorial power.
In these cases there is a form of popular self-government under elected magistrates. No society could be, in spirit and in organisation, more anti-feudal than the free town of the Middle Ages; but it can only secure a safe existence by obtaining a definite position in the feudal hierarchy.