A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthurâs Court by Mark Twain
Author:Mark Twain [Twain, Mark]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
Tags: Fantasy fiction, Satire, Knights and knighthood -- Fiction, Arthurian romances -- Adaptations, Time travel -- Fiction, Americans -- Great Britain -- Fiction, Kings and rulers -- Fiction, Britons -- Fiction
Publisher: Standard Ebooks
Published: 2015-06-07T20:22:08+00:00
XXV A Competitive Examination
When the king traveled for change of air, or made a progress, or visited a distant noble whom he wished to bankrupt with the cost of his keep, part of the administration moved with him. It was a fashion of the time. The Commission charged with the examination of candidates for posts in the army came with the king to the Valley, whereas they could have transacted their business just as well at home. And although this expedition was strictly a holiday excursion for the king, he kept some of his business functions going just the same. He touched for the evil, as usual; he held court in the gate at sunrise and tried cases, for he was himself Chief Justice of the Kingâs Bench.
He shone very well in this latter office. He was a wise and humane judge, and he clearly did his honest best and fairestâaccording to his lights. That is a large reservation. His lightsâI mean his rearingâoften colored his decisions. Whenever there was a dispute between a noble or gentleman and a person of lower degree, the kingâs leanings and sympathies were for the former class always, whether he suspected it or not. It was impossible that this should be otherwise. The blunting effects of slavery upon the slaveholderâs moral perceptions are known and conceded, the world over; and a privileged class, an aristocracy, is but a band of slaveholders under another name. This has a harsh sound, and yet should not be offensive to anyâeven to the noble himselfâunless the fact itself be an offense: for the statement simply formulates a fact. The repulsive feature of slavery is the thing, not its name. One needs but to hear an aristocrat speak of the classes that are below him to recognizeâand in but indifferently modified measureâthe very air and tone of the actual slaveholder; and behind these are the slaveholderâs spirit, the slaveholderâs blunted feeling. They are the result of the same cause in both cases: the possessorâs old and inbred custom of regarding himself as a superior being. The kingâs judgments wrought frequent injustices, but it was merely the fault of his training, his natural and unalterable sympathies. He was as unfitted for a judgeship as would be the average mother for the position of milk-distributor to starving children in famine-time; her own children would fare a shade better than the rest.
One very curious case came before the king. A young girl, an orphan, who had a considerable estate, married a fine young fellow who had nothing. The girlâs property was within a seigniory held by the Church. The bishop of the diocese, an arrogant scion of the great nobility, claimed the girlâs estate on the ground that she had married privately, and thus had cheated the Church out of one of its rights as lord of the seignioryâthe one heretofore referred to as le droit du seigneur. The penalty of refusal or avoidance was confiscation. The girlâs defense was, that the
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