[Sidenote: Large Number of "Privileges">[
This small upper class was distinguished from the common herd by rank, possessions, and privileges. The person of noble birth, i.e., the son of a noble, was esteemed to be inherently finer and better than other men; so much so that he would disdain to marry a person of the lower class. He was addressed in terms of respect—"my lord," "your Grace"; common men saluted him as their superior. His clothes were more gorgeous than those of the plain people; on his breast glittered the badges of honorary societies, and his coach was proudly decorated with an ancestral coat of arms. His "gentle" birth admitted him to the polite society of the court and enabled him to seek preferment in church or army.
More substantial than marks of honor were the actual possessions of nobles and clergy. Each noble bequeathed to his eldest son a castle or a mansion with more or less territory from which to collect rents or feudal dues. Bishops, abbots, and archbishops received their office by election or appointment rather than by inheritance, and, being unmarried, could not transmit their stations to children. But in countries where the wealth of the Church had not been confiscated by Protestants, the "prince of the Church" often enjoyed during his lifetime magnificent possessions. The bishop of Strassburg had an annual income approximating 500,000 francs. Castles, cathedrals, palaces, rich vestments, invaluable pictures, golden chalices, rentals from broad lands, tithes from the people,—these were the property of the clergy. It is estimated that the clergy and nobility each owned one-fifth of France, and that one-third of all the land of Europe, one- half the revenue, and two-thirds the capital, were in the hands of Christian churches.
The noble families, possessing thousands of acres, and monopolizing the higher offices of church and army, were further enriched, especially in France, by presents of money from the king, by pensions, by grants of monopolies, and by high-salaried positions which entailed little or no work. "One young man was given a salary of $3600 for an office whose sole duty consisted in signing his name twice a year."
[Sidenote: Exemption from Taxation]
With all their wealth the first two orders contributed almost nothing to lighten the financial burdens of the state. [Footnote: Exemption from taxation was often and similarly granted to bourgeois incumbents of government offices.] The Church in France claimed exemption from taxation, but made annual gifts to the king of several hundred thousand dollars, though such grants represented less than one per cent of its income. The nobles, too, considered the payment of direct taxes a disgrace to their gentle blood, and did not hesitate by trickery to evade indirect taxation, leaving the chief burdens to fall upon the lower classes, and most of all upon the peasantry.
[Sidenote: Failure of the Privileged to Perform Real Services]
[Sidenote: The Higher Nobility]
All these advantages, privileges, and immunities might be looked upon as a fitting reward which medieval Europe had given to her nobles for protecting peaceable plowmen from the marauding bands then so common, and which she had bestowed upon her clergy for preserving education, for encouraging agriculture, for fostering the arts, for tending the poor, the sick, and the traveler, and for performing the offices of religion. But long before the eighteenth century the protective functions of feudal nobles had been transferred to the royal government. No longer useful, the hereditary nobility was merely burdensome, and ornamental. Such as could afford it, spent their lives in the cities or at the royal court where they rarely did anything worth while, unless it were to invent an unusually delicate compliment or to fashion a flawless sonnet. Their morals were not of the best—it was almost fashionable to be vicious—but their manners were perfect.
Meanwhile, the landed estates of these absentee lords were in charge of flint-hearted agents, whose sole mission was to squeeze money from the peasants, to make them pay well for mill, bridge, and oven, to press to the uttermost every claim which might give the absent master a larger revenue.
[Sidenote: The Country Gentry]