e lady, veiled only
by her lovely hair, rode through the streets; and to the honor of the
good people of Coventry, it is said that they kept within doors and
would not look upon their benefactress to embarrass her. One person
only is said to have peeped from behind the curtain of his window,
and the story runs that he was struck blind, or, according to another
version, had his eyes put out by the wrathful people. This curious
person was the "Peeping Tom of Coventry," whose name has become
proverbial.

Society develops in strata, so that the elevation of the women of the
castles did not enable the women of the hovels to profit by conditions
out of the range of their lives. The lower classes, or villains, which
included the grades of society styled, in the Anglo-Saxon period, the
freemen and the serfs, were the social antitheses of the society of
the castles. The women of the lower class benefited not at all by the
new dignity that was acquired by the women of the castles during the
feudal regime; in fact, they suffered the imposition of new burdens
and the exactions of a feudal practice which took the form of tribute,
based on the persistent idea of the vassalage of their sex. The great
middle class, which was to play such an important part in the social
and industrial history of England, had not emerged as a separate
section of the people of the country. But what the lady of the Norman
castle obtained for her class through one phase of feudalism, the
woman of the guild aided in securing by another in the centuries which
marked the rule of the Angevin kings; and in both Norman and Angevin
times the influence of the Church was constantly on the side of the
womanhood of the country, and was probably a more potent force than
any other, for the exaltation of woman was the one policy which
proceeded on fixed principles.

The castles too often degenerated into centres of rapine and pillage;
perpetual feuds led to constant forays, and no traveller could be
assured that he would not be set upon by one of these robber barons
and his band of retainers--little better than remorseless banditti.
But there were castles of a better sort, nor were all knights recreant
to their vows. In assuming the obligations of his order, the newly
vested knight swore to defend the Church against attack by the
perfidious; venerate the priesthood; repel the injustices of the poor;
keep the country quiet; shed his blood, and if necessary lose his
lif