re the common people themselves ignorant of all
science, but their brains were filled with superstitious fears, and
the belief that knowledge had been first introduced to the world
through woman's obedience to the devil. Thus the persecution which for
ages raged against witches, was in reality an attack upon science at
the hands of the Church.

The entire subordination of the common law to ecclesiasticism, dates
in England to the reign of Stephen, who ascended the throne in 1135.
Its new growth of power must be ascribed to avarice, as it then began
to take cognizance of crimes, establishing an equivalent in money for
every species of wrong-doing. The Church not only remitted penalties
for crimes already perpetrated, but sold indulgences for the
commission of new ones. Its touch upon property soon extended to all
the relations of life. Marriages within the seventh degree were
forbidden by the Church as incestuous, but those who could buy
indulgence were enabled to get a dispensation. No crime so great that
it could not be condoned for money.

Canon law gained its greatest power in the family relation in its
control over wills, the guardianship of orphans, marriage and divorce.
Under ecclesiastical law, marriage was held as a sacrament, was
performed at the church door, the wife being required to give up her
name, her person, her property, her own sacred individuality, and to
promise obedience to her husband in all things. Certain hours of the
day were even set aside as canonical after which no marriage could be
celebrated.[199] Wherever it became the basis of legislation, the laws
of succession and inheritance, and those in regard to children,
constantly sacrificed the interests of wives and daughters to those
of husbands and sons. Ecclesiastical law ultimately secured such a
hold upon family property and became so grasping in its demands, that
the civil law interfered, not, however, in the interests of wives and
children, but in the interests of creditors. Canon law had its largest
growth through the pious fictions of woman's created inferiority.

To the credit of humanity it must be said that the laity did not
readily yield to priestly power, but made many efforts to wrest their
temporal concerns from ecclesiastical control. But in the general
paucity of education, together with the abnegation of the will,
sedulously taught by the Church, which brought all its dread power to
bear in threats of excommunication and fu