vice of his fief) in person; but it was
expressly stipulated that ecclesiastics, women, and children could
perform this service by proxy, generally through a seneschal or baillie.

Though warlike churchmen not infrequently led their vassals in person,
witness the Bishop of Beauvais at the battle of Bouvines, "who shed no
blood, though he brake many bones with his club," women appeared but
rarely in the earlier time as Amazons, and then half in sport, as in the
case of Queen Eleanor in the second Crusade.

But, however they chose to perform their duty in the _host_ summoned by
the sovereign's _ban general_, women were recognized as members of the
feudal nobility. At the very top we find them, among the immediate great
vassals of the crown, the _pairs de France_. We find, for example,
Mathilde, or Mahault, Countess of Artois, sitting as a peer in the
assembly which rendered judgment against the claims of her nephew,
Robert, to the countship of Artois, in 1309; and the same countess
receives a special summons to attend the court of peers in 1315; and in
the next year, at the coronation of Philip V., she is among the peers
who hold the crown over the king's head. This function was also
performed by another Countess of Artois at the consecration of Charles
V., in 1364.

In less exalted stations, too, women held fiefs, and there may
frequently have been personal reasons for the suzerain's preferring
female vassals. For first by custom, and then by written law (see the
_Assises de Jerusalem_ and the _Etablissements de Saint Louis_), the
suzerain exercised a right of guardianship over his female vassals,
maids or widows, as long as they were unmarried. In England very serious
abuses followed from this right of wardship, as it was called, and the
unfortunate French girls and children who were subjected to it were no
better off than the English. We are not especially concerned here with
the case of minor heirs under _garde-noble_, or ward, except where these
heirs were girls. The girl so situated must not marry without the
consent of the lord who held the _garde-noble_ of her person and of her
domain. If she did so she was liable to fines and even to forfeiture of
her fief; and this power was one which the feudal lords did not hesitate
to exercise. We find Saint Louis objecting to the marriage of Jeanne,
heiress of the county of Ponthieu, to the King of England, and to the
marriage of the Countess of Flanders, widow of Count Fe