of.1 Sir Henry Maine states indeed that wives undoubtedly "had some power of dealing with their own property without the consent of their husbands."2 Elsewhere the same learned writer, referring to the fact that temporary cohabitation of the sexes 3 was assumed by the tract on "Social Connections" to be part of the accustomed order of society, adds that, "on this assumption it minutely regulates the mutual rights of the parties, showing an especial care for the interests of the woman, even to the extent of reserving to her the value of her domestic services during her residence in the common dwelling. "14 The high position which the ancient Germans assigned to women is well known. Tacitus affirms that not only did husbands leave to their wives the management of their family affairs, but also the care of their houses and lands. He declared moreover that the Germans looked upon women as having a superior nature, and that the safest mode of binding them to their engagements was to require as hostages women of noble birth.5 Mr Kemble has described in eloquent language their ideas in relation to the female sex. He says: "The German house was a holy thing; the bond of marriage a sacred and symbolic engagement; holy above man was woman herself. Even in the depths of their forests the stern warriors had assigned to her a station which nothing but that deep feeling could have rendered possible; this was the sacred sex, believed to be in nearer communion with divinity than men. In the superstitious tradition of their mythology, it was the young and beautiful Shieldmays, the maiden Wælcyrian, who selected the champions that had deserved to become the guests of Woden. The matrons presided over the rites of religion, conducted 1 O'Reilly, op. cit., p. 215.

2The Early History of Institutions," p. 324.

3 Such connections are still recognised in Persia.
1 op. cit., p, 59.

4

5 Germania.

divinations, and encouraged the warriors on the field of battle; Valedas and Aurinias, prophetesses in the bloom of youth and beauty, led the raw levies of the North to triumph over the veteran legions of Rome. Neither rank nor wealth could atone for violated chastity; nor were in general any injuries more severely punished than those which the main strength of man enabled him to inflict on woman." 1

Mallett affirms that among the Scandinavians women were treated with as much consideration as with the Germans, and he adds that the Northmen were always attended by their wives, "even in their most distant expeditions, hearing them with respect, and after a defeat more afraid of their reproaches than of the blows of the enemy." "2 So, also, in Iceland, although marriages were matters of bargain and sale, and were seldom love matches, women appear to have been treated as almost on an equality with their husbands. Wives were certainly sometimes beaten, and they could be put away for very slight reasons, but the privilege of divorce was possessed also by the woman herself, it being considered that neither party should be compelled to live with the other against his or her will. Moreover, women were often well provided for by their marriage contracts, and as widows they had the same right of holding property as their husbands;3 while, as shown by the incidents of the feud between the households of Gunnar and Njal, it is evident that even during the lives of their husbands, they enjoyed great influence, which they too often used for evil purposes. Flosi, when abjured by Hildigunnar, the widow of Hauskuld, to avenge his death, said

1 "The Saxons in England," vol. i. p. 232.

2 "Northern Antiquities," ch. xii.

3 Dasent loc. cit., p. 119, seq. For a case of separation by a wife, seз"Njal's Saga," ch. vii.

"women's counsel is ever cruel." 1 Judging from the Saga of Njal there was in the character of the women of the north, features which would go far towards accounting for the esteem in which they were held by the Scandinavians and the allied German race, without supposing them to have been "divine" in the modern acceptation of this phrase.

It would seem that woman occupied an inferior position among the early English as compared with the Germans or Scandinavians. This fact may probably be explained by the circumstances under which the former were placed. It is not likely that the Saxon invaders of England came accompanied by their families, and probably, as supposed by Mr Thrupp,2 their wives were the women whom they took from the conquered natives, while the women brought to this country by the Northmen after their piratical voyages were captives. If this were the case, it would not be surprising if at first the condition of woman among the early English was little better than one of servitude. After they had become settled, however, they did not differ from other peoples of a similar degree of culture in the practice of wife-purchase, which is referred to in the laws of Aethelbirht as though it were the usual custom. The principal ceremony of marriage was hand-faestnung or pledging hands, which was done in the presence of the friends of the bridegroom and bride, and then the former received his wife from her father in return for the price which had previously been agreed upon. The mercantile nature of the transaction was afterwards sought to be concealed by calling the sum paid by the husband foster-lean, as though it were a return for the father's expense in providing food and education for his daughter, and it was expected to

1 "Njal's Saga," ch. cxiii.

2 "The Anglo-Saxon Home" (1862), p. 318.

be paid at the time of espousals instead of marriage.1 In like manner, the morgen-gifn, or morning gift, the amount of which was ultimately stipulated before the marriage ceremony took place, was originally "a mere voluntary gift, made on the morning after the wedding, to testify the degree of satisfaction of the husband with his wife." 2 If a man found, after marriage, that he had been deceived, he was entitled to send back his wife to her parents, and claim a return of the money he had paid for her. The original position of woman among the early English was such as might be expected from these primitive manners. Her sphere was essentially that of home. Mr Wright supposes that the inferiority and subjection of the wife to the husband was more in theory than in practice,3 but this could be true. only of a later period, when the condition of woman was undoubtedly much improved. Mr Thrupp refers to the crowning of Judith, the wife of Ethelwulf, which took place in A.D. 856, as fixing the period when the great improvement in that condition took place, as up to that time the West Saxons had refused to tolerate a crowned wife. The same writer thus sums up his enquiries into the social status of woman among the Saxons in England:

"In the ninth and tenth centuries women ceased to be bartered away by their fathers, and acquired the right to dispose of themselves in marriage; they ceased to be liable to repudiation at the will of their husbands; acquired separate property, handsome wardrobes, and distinct keys; ceased to be liable to be punished for their 1 "Womankind in Western Europe," by Thomas Wright (1869), p. 54, seq.

2 Do., p. 57.

3 Op. cit., p. 58. It is improbable that the position of a wife was much better than that of a child. In the earlier Anglo-Saxon period a father could sell or otherwise dispose of his child as he thought fit. A child could be sold into slavery for the payment of penalties incurred by his father (Thrupp, op. cit., p. 169.)

husbands' crimes; and queens acquired their right to be so called, and to be solemnly and publicly crowned. These were very important facts in the history of the social position of the sex, and mark a great advance in civilisation."1

The position occupied by women among the ancient peoples of North Western Europe and the predatory races of Western Asia is not only evidence of their social progress, but it furnishes a key to the development of their moral culture. We have seen that in a primitive condition of society, the clan, representing the family from which it has arisen, is the chief unit of organisation. It was the clan which was liable in case of the wrongdoing of any of its individual members, and on which it was incumbent to enforce compensation for any loss or injury its members might sustain. Of the family from which the clan was derived the most important unit was originally the woman. Among primitive peoples almost universally a man's children took the family name of their mother, and became members of the clan to which she belonged. Hence the curious much if not more

facts that the maternal uncle had as authority over a man's children than he himself had, and that a man's property descended not to his sons but to his nephews. The time arrived, however, when the true relation of a man to his family was recognised, and then, instead of taking the name of their mother and belonging to her clan, children would follow the clan of their father. The father, as the head of the family, would now become invested with all the authority which had before been divided between himself and the maternal uncle of his children. The nature of that authority we see in the fact that the father had in the early days. of Greece and Rome the power of life and death over his 1 Op. cit., p. 71.