A merry, liberal duke was this Richard; fond of his court, and always ready to uphold Normandy's [Pg093] honor and his own when there was any fighting to be done. He had a great regard for his nobles, and we begin to find a great deal said about gentlemen; the duke would have only gentlemen for his chosen followers, and the aristocrats make themselves felt more distinctly than before. The rule of the best is a hard thing to manage, it sinks already into a rule of the lucky, the pushing, or the favored in the Rouen court. The power and reign of chivalry begins to blossom now far and wide. We begin to hear rumors too on the other side that there were wrong distinctions between man and man, and tyranny that grew hard to bear, and one Norman resents the truth that his neighbor is a better and richer man than he, and moreover has the right to make him a servant, and to make laws for him. The Norman citizens were equal in civil rights—that is to say, they were not taxed without their own consent, need pay no tolls, and might hunt and fish; all could do these things except the villeins[2] and peasants, who really composed the mass of the native population, the descendants of those who lived in Normandy before Rolf came there. Even the higher clergy did not form part of the nobility and gentry at first, and in later years there was still a difference in rank and privileges between the priests of Norwegian and Danish race and the other ecclesiastics. [2] Farm laborers; countrymen. Before Richard the Good had been long on his throne there was a great revolt and uprising of the peasantry, who evidently did not think that their new [Pg094] duke deserved his surname at all. These people conceived the idea of destroying the inequality of races, so that Normandy should hold only one nation, as it already held one name. We cannot help being surprised at the careful political organization of the peasantry, and at finding that they established a regular parliament with two representatives from every district. In all the villages and hamlets, after the day's work was over, they came together to talk over their wrongs or to listen to some speaker more eloquent than his fellows. They "made a commune," which anticipates later events in the history of France in a surprising way. Freeman says that "such a constitution could hardly have been extemporized by mere peasants," and believes that the disturbance was founded in a loyalty to the local customs and rights which were fast being trampled under foot, and that the rebels were only trying to defend their time-honored inheritance. The liberty which they were eager to grasp might have been a great good, scattered as it would have been over a great extent of country, instead of being won by separate cities. The ancient Norman constitutions of the Channel Islands, Jersey and Guernsey and the rest, antiquated as they seem, breathe to-day a spirit of freedom worthy of the air of England or Switzerland or Norway.