omen were admitted into the councils of
the men; and the high position accorded them is further shown by their
prominence in the more intellectual priestly class. The proportion of
women to men must have been ten to one. Their preponderance in this
influential order assured them of the preservation of the regard in
which their sex was held. Its best security, however, lay in that
instinctive feeling of the equality of the sexes which is fundamental
in the character of the Anglo-Saxon and the Germanic family as a
whole.

We must not suppose that because the women of the Anglo-Saxons had
certain rights and were accorded a certain superstitious reverence,
as specially gifted in divination, they were therefore the objects of
chivalrous devotion and were surrounded by aesthetic associations. The
age was a rude one, and the race was made up of uncouth barbarians.
The female grace of chastity was not the result of high ideals, or
of wise deductions from the sacredness of the family relation in its
bearing upon society; it did not even have its basis in conspicuous
moral motives; but it was a natural characteristic of a people who had
lived under severe conditions which necessitated a constant struggle
for supremacy and relegated all weaknesses of the flesh to a place
of secondary importance. Had this attribute sprung from any of those
considerations which at a later time gave rise to chivalry, there
would be found in the poetry of the time the evidences of a tender
regard for woman; her praise would have been sung in poems of love;
but there is a dearth of love songs in the verses of this period. Love
of a kind there was, but it was too matter-of-fact and practical in
its nature to effloresce into sentimentality.

As marriage is the basal principle of the true family, it will be
proper to begin a consideration of the domestic relations of the
women of the Anglo-Saxons by glancing at the circumstances, the
significance, and the ceremonies of their marriages. When the
Anglo-Saxons had settled in England, the primitive and barbarous
custom of forcibly carrying off a bride had probably been superseded
by the later form of obtaining a bride by purchase. While the woman
seems to have had no choice in the selection of a husband, it is
unreasonable to suppose that she did not hold and express opinions;
nor would it be venturesome to assert that, despite her legal
limitations, her voice in the matter of her marriage was often a
deci