bors. The
spirit of democracy, which was fostered by the long resistance to the
English government, had so pervaded Virginia society, that even before
the open rupture with the mother country many of the aristocratic
privileges of the old families had been swept away. And when the war
broke out, the common cause of liberty in a sense placed every man
upon the same footing. An anecdote related by Major Anbury, one of the
British officers captured at Saratoga and brought to Virginia,
illustrates well the spirit of the times. "From my observations," he
says, "in my late journey, it appeared to me, that before the war, the
spirit of equality or levelling principle was not so prevalent in
Virginia, as in the other provinces; and that the different classes of
people in the former supported a greater distinction than those of the
latter; but since the war, that principle seems to have gained great
ground in Virginia; an instance of it I saw at Col. Randolph's at
Tuckahoe, where three country peasants, who came upon business,
entered the room where the Colonel and his company were sitting, took
themselves chairs, drew near the fire, began spitting, pulling off
their country boots all over mud, and then opened their business,
which was simply about some continental flour to be ground at the
Colonel's mill: When they were gone, some one observed what great
liberties they took; he replied it was unavoidable, the spirit of
independence was converted into equality, and every one who bore arms,
esteemed himself upon a footing with his neighbor, and concluded by
saying; 'No doubt, each of these men conceives himself, in every
respect, my equal.'"[75]

One of the most fertile sources of error in history is the tendency of
writers to confound the origin of institutions with the conditions
that brought them into life. In nothing is this more apparent than in
the various theories advanced in regard to the development of chivalry
during the Middle Ages. The fundamentals of chivalry can be traced to
the earliest period of German history. Many Teutonic writers, imbued
with a pride in their ancestors, have pointed out the respect for
women, the fondness for arms, the regard for the oppressed and
unfortunate, of the people of the Elbe and the Rhine. Chivalry, they
say, was but the expansion, the growth of characteristics natural and
individual with their forefathers.[76] This is erroneous. The early
Germanic customs may have contained the ger