edge of families and pedigrees. They abolished none of the old,
absurd methods of trial by the cross or ordeal; and they added a new
absurdity--the trial by single combat--[***] which became a regular
part of jurisprudence, and was conducted with all the order, method,
devotion, and solemnity imaginable.[****] The ideas of chivalry also
seem to have been imported by the Normans: no traces of those fantastic
notions are to be found among the plain and rustic Saxons.

[* Char. Will, apud Wilkms, p. 230. Spel. Concil.
vol. ii p. 14.]

[** Spel. Gloss, in verb. Manus mortua. We are not
to imagine, as some have done, that the church possessed
lands in this proportion, but only that they and their
vassals enjoyed such a proportionable part of the landed
property.]

[*** LL. Will. cap. 68.]

[**** Spel. Gloss, in verbo Campus. The last
instance of these duels was in the 16th of Eliz. So long did
that absurdity remain.]

The feudal institutions, by raising the military tenants to a kind of
sovereign dignity, by rendering personal strength and valor requisite,
and by making every knight and baron his own protector and avenger,
begat that martial pride and sense of honor which, being cultivated
and embellished by the poets and romance writers of the age, ended in
chivalry. The virtuous knight fought not only in his own quarrel, but in
that of the innocent, of the helpless, and, above all, of the fair, whom
he supposed to be forever under the guardianship of his valiant arm.
The uncourteous knight who, from his castle, exercised robbery on
travellers, and committed violence on virgins, was the object of his
perpetual indignation; and he put him to death, without scruple, or
trial, or appeal, wherever he met with him. The great independence
of men made personal honor and fidelity the chief tie among them,
and rendered it the capital virtue of every true knight, or genuine
professor of chivalry. The solemnities of single combat, as established
by law, banished the notion of every thing unfair or unequal in
rencounters, and maintained an appearance of courtesy between the
combatants till the moment of their engagement. The credulity of the
age grafted on this stock the notion of giants, enchanters, dragons,
spells,[*] and a thousand wonders, which still multiplied during the
times of the crusades; when men, returning from so great a distance,
used the liberty of imposing e