30 THE HISTORY OF THE ORDER OF [BOOK I.

even their hospitality very limited; an income often or twenty pounds a competent estate for agentleman, and, if we multiply by twenty-four, wehave the present value of that sum.

But in the eleventh century, of which I speak,things were beyond comparison worse, though chi-valry was then at its full, and had been growingfor above three hundred years. Still, though noblybased in honour, it could effect little, as not apply-ing to all classes and both sexes. This religiondoes, or may do; but neither liberty, nor honour,fine things as these be, for they admit ofseveral distinctions and inequalities, moral andphysical, but religion not one! Why leave outwhat, more than gallantry or chivalry, or the re-finements of society, placed woman in her properplace of a companion to man, not his slave asamong the Greeks and Romans, and the very bestof Paganism, but his tender friend and equal? Itwas indeed the Christian religion that emancipatedthe female, and raised her destiny to the height ofour own! Yet even religion might for awhileseem too feeble to control the ferocity of that age.Rather for the savage feeling it indicates, than forthe value of the thing in itself, is recorded that theConqueror meditated extirpating its language fromthe island.