The ill opinion entertained of women by men during the ages of darkness and superstition found expression in laws as well as in literature. The age of chivalry! Investigators who have studied that vaunted period in the court records and law-books tell us that respect for women is a thing of which those records show no trace. In the age of chivalry the widow and the fatherless were regarded by lords, knights, and "parsons" as legitimate objects of plunder; and woe to the widow who prosecuted the murderers of her husband or the ravagers of her estate! The homage which the law paid to women consisted in burning them alive for offenses which brought upon men the painless death of hanging. We moderns read with puzzled incredulity such a story as that of Godiva, doubtful if so vast an outrage could ever have been committed in a community not entirely savage. Let the reader immerse himself for only a few months in the material of which the history of the Middle Ages must be composed, if it shall ever be truly written, and the tale of Godiva will seem credible and natural. She was her lord's chattel; and probably the people of her day who heard the story commended him for lightening the burdens of Coventry on such easy terms, and saw no great hardship in the task assigned to her.
People read with surprise of Thomas Jefferson's antipathy to the poems and novels of Sir Walter Scott. He objected to them because they gave a view of the past ages utterly at variance with the truth as revealed in the authentic records, which he had studied from his youth up.
"'My dear Baron, I am in the most pressing need of five hundred franc!' Must I put an s to franc?"
"No. In the circumstances it is better not. It will prove to the Baron that, for the moment, you really are destitute of every thing—even of orthography."—Ed. de Braumont, Paris, 1860.
"Madame, I have the honor—"
"Sir, be good enough to come round in front and speak to me."