62 THE ANCESTOR the truth ! The structure of medieval society is still a dark and mysterious subject. Stubbs, our greatest writer on constitu- tional history, often deplores the doubt and uncertainty in which it is involved. He considers the evolution of the villein class extremely obscure, and can only hazard one or two con- jectures upon it ; he finds it ' impossible to enquire with com- plete certainty ' into the status of the smaller freeholders ; he cannot explain what men are intended by the term vadletti. Other historians have felt the same difficulty but have been less honest in acknowledging it. Thus, to give an example, we should all like to cultivate a closer acquaintance with Chaucer's franklin and with that important political personage the forty- shilling freeholder. Why do our histories with one consent dismiss these interesting characters in a few guarded words, carefully avoiding any discussion upon their status and sur- roundings ? If the writers had been sure of their ground, would they not have treated these as types of medieval society, would they not have pictured for us the franklin's hall and chamber, his household arrangements and mode of life, and have traced how the poorer freeholder laid out every penny of those forty shillings } Until such points have been elucidated the history of the English people can never be rightly understood. But my argument goes further than this. I would urge that, until the position and relations of the vari- ous classes in medieval times have been defined and determined, our historians are building upon a foundation of sand. To illustrate the extreme importance of such studies, and the danger that they may upset the conclusions with which we are all familiar, let us assume for the sake of argument that medieval society was not subdivided, as has been generally supposed, into nobles, knights, gendemen and yeomen. Let us assume that in the twelfth, thirteenth and fourteenth centuries there were, broadly speaking, but two classes,^ the nohiles or tenants in chivalry, comprising earls, barons, knights, esquires ^ Before the Conquest we have eorls, ceorls and theows ; after the Conquest but two classes, for the ceorl has become a villein. In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries there was a great gulf between the freeholder and the villein or burgess. The son of even the meanest freeholder was in wardship to his lord (Maitland's Court Baron, p. 103), and it was disparagement to marry him to the daughter of a villein or burgess (Du Cange, under Disparagare, Obnoxatio ; Hallam's Middle Ages ; Coke's Institutes, 1628, i. 80). In Scotland also it was unlawful to marry the daughter of a freeholder * with ane burgesse man, or with ane villaine* (Skene, Z)^ Verborum Sign). The ordeal for the
