For, though much, no doubt, might be owing to the different humour and genius of the East and West, antecedent to any customs and forms of government, and independent of them; yet the consideration had of the females in the feudal constitution will, of itself, account for this difference. It made them capable of succeeding to fiefs as well as the men. And does not one see, on the instant, what respect and dependence this privilege would draw upon them?
It was of mighty consequence who should obtain the grace of a rich heiress. And though, in the strict feudal times, she was supposed to be in the power and disposal of her superior Lord, yet this rigid state of things did not last long; and, while it did last, could not abate much of the homage that would be paid to the fair feudatary.
Thus, when interest had begun the habit, the language of love and flattery would soon do the rest. And to what that language tended, you may see by the constant strain of the Romances themselves. Some distressed damsel was the spring and mover of every Knight’s adventure. She was to be rescued by his arms, or won by the fame and admiration of his prowess.
The plain meaning of all which was this: that, as in those turbulent feudal times a protector was necessary to the weakness of the sex, so the courteous and valorous knight was to approve himself fully qualified for that office. And we find, he had other motives to set him on work than the mere charms and graces, though ever so bewitching, of the person addressed.
Hence then, as I suppose, the custom was introduced: and, when introduced, you will hardly wonder it should operate much longer and further than the reason may seem to require, on which it was founded.
If you still insist that I carry this matter too far, and that, in fact, the introduction of the female succession into fiefs was too late to justify me in accounting for the rise of feudal gallantry from that circumstance; you will only teach me to frame my answer in a more accurate manner.
First then, I shall confess that the way to avoid all confusion on this subject would be, to distinguish carefully between the state of things in the early feudal times, and that in the later, when the genius of the feudal law was much changed and corrupted; and that, whoever would go to the bottom of this affair, should keep a constant eye on this reasonable distinction.
But then, secondly, I may observe that this distinction is the less necessary to be attended to in the present case, because the law of female succession, whenever it was introduced, had certainly taken place long before the Romancers wrote, from whom we derive all our ideas of the feudal gallantry. So that, if you take their word for the gallantry of those times, you may very consistently, if you please, accept my account of it. For it is but supposing that the feudal gallantry, such as they paint it, was the offspring of that privilege, such as they saw the ladies then possess, of feudal succession. And the connexion between these two things is so close and so natural, that we cannot be much mistaken in deducing the one from the other.
In conclusion of this topic, I must just observe to you, that the two poems of Homer express in the liveliest manner, and were intended to expose, the capital mischiefs and inconveniencies arising from the political state of old Greece; the Iliad, the dissensions that naturally spring up amongst a number of independent chiefs; and the Odyssey, the insolence of their greater subjects, more especially when unrestrained by the presence of their sovereign.
These were the subjects of his pen. And can any thing more exactly resemble the condition of the feudal times, when, on occasion of any great enterprise, as that of the Crusades, the designs of the confederate Christian states were perpetually frustrated, or interrupted at least, by the dissensions of their leaders; and their affairs at home as perpetually distressed and disordered by domestic licence, and the rebellious usurpations of their greater vassals?