The Feudal System has been credited with limiting Personality and Privilege to males; therefore it startles some students of history to find that it was only on the extinction of the Feudal System, and the translation of service-payments into money-payments, that women lost the definite place assigned to them. Women’s rights came second in Feudal Times, because they had to be protected by men’s swords; women’s rights came nowhere in later times, when freedom towards property would have made them able to protect themselves. The encroachments naturally took place first in regard to married women. In ancient times even a married woman could be “free,” both as an inheritor and as an earner. In the very highest ranks she remained so. She was free to contract, to sign, to seal, to act as a _feme sole_. On her marriage she conferred her title on her husband, as men did theirs upon their wives. The lands were held in common. The responsibilities she could not undertake herself, he fulfilled as her representative. When she died he lost his representative character; his tenure of her lands was only “by courtesy,” and that only if he had a child by her; if not, they reverted at her death to the donor. (_See_ “Statutes of Realm,” vol. i., p. 220.) But a widow also could hold her husband’s lands under certain conditions, either by her marriage settlement, her husband’s will, the King’s gift, or “the courtesy of England.” Many examples of widows doing so are given later. Even where there were heirs, and her husband died intestate, a widow had a legal right to the third part of her husband’s property. In Kent she had a right to the half till she married again, as a man held the half of his wife’s property till he married again. (_See_ “The Customal of Kent.”) The Laws of Chivalry refined the Upper Classes, inculcating Truth, Loyalty, Chastity, Courtesy, Liberality, Reverence for Women and Generosity to the Weak. But the real foundation of Privilege in Chivalric times was practically Strength, Courage and Success among men. Beauty, Grace and Honour among women. These qualities being temporary, were not synonymous with Justice. The position of Divinity is an unstable one, depending on the attitude of the worshippers. When Chivalry faded out of men’s hearts, women felt that the outer shell of custom meant little. It only set them on the shelf. A tone of Chivalry affected the hearts of the traders and manufacturers of Chivalric Times, a tone healthier, because more founded on justice and equality. There was even then a confusion of ideas between return-value of labour abroad, and labour at home; but there was no confusion about the return-values of similar labour performed by men or by women. Women were equal in all social guilds, and trading women were equal in trading guilds.