he morals than in the manners of the age. Nevertheless, one cannot
pursue the theme of custom and manners throughout the mediaeval period
without being conscious of a progress or development significant of
more than mere caprice. This, in fact, was the case. Any philosophic
treatment of English society during the Middle Ages would have to
take cognizance of manners and customs as indices of the growth of
political, constitutional, and religious principles; and in this
growth would appear the consistently developing status of woman.

While it is difficult to fix upon any one fact as comprehending the
condition of women in English society at the close of the Middle
Ages and the beginning of the new era, there is one which challenges
attention. In reaping the harvest of the narrow and bigoted times
through which she passed, woman found herself possessed of one sort of
fruitage, namely, public rights. The essential equality of the woman
and the man, which first appeared in the castle, had become a general
fact of English society. Feudalism and its vassalage of the female
sex had disappeared, and the women of the industrial classes, whatever
their economic condition, became sovereigns of themselves. The women
of the towns, largely through the instrumentality of the guilds, had
established precedents which marked the path of their progress as
"persons" before the law. Associated industry drew them out of their
homes, or at least out of the limited sphere of home life, and placed
in their hands the loom and the spindle of the world's industry. "The
candle" of the goodwife "that went not out by night" no longer burned
for the provident industry of household needs, but became a veritable
torch to illumine the paths of England's commerce and to add to that
glory of civilization which constitutes her commercial greatness.

Out of the whole body of womankind, the Church had chosen to select
a class of women who were dedicated to its service and who taught by
their acts the responsibility of the prosperous toward their needy
brethren; while this does not appear to have been a benefit to women
generally, but simply a training in charity for the classes who were
consecrated to that object, nevertheless the influence of these chosen
women upon their sex, in awakening their keener sensibilities toward
poverty and distress, aided in placing upon the brow of woman
the queenly crown of compassion which has made her so largely a
ministerin