United States or Lebanon ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
The very slight, vague, and unsubstantial chapter with which he opens his work cannot be accepted as a substitute for what the subject really demanded a serious summary, however condensed and rapid, of the various forces, accidents, deliberate lines of policy, which, from the breaking up of the great fiefs down to the death of Lewis the Fourteenth, had prepared the distractions of the monarchy under Lewis's descendants.
This eve I propose to ride hence towards London, and we will converse by the way." "Go you so soon?" cried the knight, surprised. "Shall you not take means utterly to subjugate this troublesome race, parcel out the lands among your thegns, to hold as martial fiefs at need, build towers and forts on the heights, and at the river mouths? where a site, like this, for some fair castle and vawmure?
These bonds constituted the bulk of the State's liabilities during the first half-cycle of the Meiji era, and when we add the debts of the fiefs, which the Central Government took over; two small foreign loans; the cost of quelling the Satsuma rebellion, and various debts incurred on account of public works, naval construction, and minor purposes, we arrive at the broad fact that the entire national debt of Japan did not exceed 305 million yen at the close of the twenty-eighth year of her new era.
These fiefs were often made up of estates in many different shires; and, because it was impossible for the barons to cultivate all their estates themselves, they let them out to subtenants, who in their turn were bound to render services to the lord of the fief.
But, either because they did not see their way to undertaking the direct government of so large an area, or because they were themselves under the dominion of feudal ideas, they did not always avail themselves of their frequent opportunities for extinguishing the local governments of the fiefs which fell into their hands.
But at the beginning there was little notion of a royal judge who should have power to determine cases in which barons not immediately holding their fiefs of the King were implicated. The concern of each was only with the lord next above him. And the whole conception of legal rights was, therefore, considered simply as private rights.
Finding it no longer possible to dissolve the dukedoms and great fiefs, Henry, in order to strengthen the unity of the empire, introduced the novel policy of bestowing the dukedoms, as they fell vacant, on his relations and personal adherents, and of allying the rest of the dukes with himself by intermarriage, thus uniting the different powerful houses in the State into one family.
Mr. Tooting had not exaggerated the tumult and affright at the Pelican Hotel. The private telephone in Number Seven was busy all evening, while more or less prominent gentlemen were using continually the public ones in the boxes in the reading room downstairs. The Feudal system was showing what it could do, and the word had gone out to all the holders of fiefs that the vassals should be summoned.
The dukes and counts, who had usurped the rights of sovereignty, divided the provinces among their faithful barons: the barons distributed among their vassals the fiefs or benefices of their jurisdiction; and these military tenants, the peers of each other and of their lord, composed the noble or equestrian order, which disdained to conceive the peasant or burgher as of the same species with themselves.
The Dame of Rupelmonde was lady of seven fiefs beside the barony of Gavres. The girl felt the longing for life in her heart, and for love that spoke through the handsome adventurer, a young miscreant who haunted churches in search of a prize, an heiress to marry, or ready money. The Bishop bestowed his benison on the waves, and bade them be calm; it was all that he could do.
Word Of The Day