dual of the same nature
and of similar status as man. It was no longer needful to go to the
convent to find the religious or intellectual types of womankind, for
religion, benevolence, and literature were no longer identified only
with the cloister. However disastrous was the suppression of the
monasteries to the little bands of women who wore the habit of the
_religieuse_, women in general did not feel the upheaval nearly so
much as they did the other social changes, which were not so radical,
but were very much more influential in their relation to the destiny
of the sex as a whole.

Although manners were very free, and nowhere more so than among
persons of the higher orders of society, such coarseness is not the
true criterion by which to gauge the women of the day. Even if they
did not hesitate to use profanity, were adepts at coquetry of an
undisguised type, and were guilty of conduct which merited more
than the term "indiscreet," it must be borne in mind that they were
creatures of their times. While English society was noted for its
rudeness and coarseness, it was saved from much of the effeminacy
which poisoned the life of its neighbors on the continent. The
sixteenth century took a more generous, complimentary, and true view
of womankind. In the Middle Ages, she suffered from the exaggerated
praise of the knight and the troubadour on the one hand, and on the
other from the contempt and contumely of the ecclesiastic. From this
equivocal position of being at the same time an angel and a devil she
was rescued by the sanity and sincerity of the sixteenth century, and
was placed in her true position as a woman, possessed of essentially
the same characteristics as men, worthy of like honor, and making
appeal for no special consideration excepting that which her sex
evoked instinctively from men. The modern idea had begun to prevail,
and woman was no longer either worshipped or shunned, but was welcomed
as a sharer of the common burdens and joys of life. To continental
observers it was marvellous that the English woman should have
the large amount of liberty that she enjoyed; and Europeans not
understanding the English point of view were apt to construe such
liberty as boldness. Thus, one writer from abroad is found commenting
upon the sixteenth-century English woman as follows: "The women have
much more liberty than perhaps in any other place; they also know well
how to make use of it; for they go dressed out in exc