benefices by the crown, alone remained. The noble, or aristocratic class, was not limited by the rank of secondary barons, who had the privilege of establishing themselves in their own castles. There were other persons deemed to be possessors of noble or gentle blood. Every knightly dependent belonged to the privileged order. "The distinct class of nobility became coextensive with the feudal tenures. For the military tenant, however poor, was subject to no tribute, no prestation, but service in the field;--he was the companion of his lord in the sports and feasting of his castle--the peer of his court: he fought on horseback--he was clad in a coat of mail--while the commonalty, if summoned at all to war, came on foot, and with no armour of defence. Every possessor of a fief was a gentleman, though he owned but a few acres of land, and furnished his slender contribution towards the equipment of a knight."[1] Members of all these noble classes were eligible to hold offices of state; but none beside them had this privilege, except the clergy. These advantages being hereditary, all marriages between the noble and the plebeian class were forbidden. Thus an immense aristocracy was formed, having no sympathies with the lower classes. Such of the latter who retained the name of freemen were chiefly the inhabitants of towns; beside these, were a few scattered allodialists and rural tenants, subject to certain pecuniary payments. The inhabitants of towns, were least dependent, and suffered least from feudal oppression; freemen in the country were quite at the mercy of their powerful military neighbours. Next to these were the villeins, or cultivators of the land, who were attached to the soil, but yet were permitted to hold property of their own; and below them came the serfs, who were in a state of abject slavery. The power of the lord over them was so absolute, that, in the language of a feudal law-book,[2] "he might take all they had, alive or dead, and imprison them when he pleased, being accountable to none but God." In this degraded class, slavery existed, in a form quite as revolting as we ever find it in the worst days of the Roman republic; though, perhaps, the power of the master was less severely exercised by the feudal lord than by the ancient patrician.