Fes

“ Thus the debt has to be painfully and punctiliously worked off, sin by sin, as in the financial world a note may be extinguished by successive payments, dollar by dollar. Everything, therefore, is made to depend upon the fulness and completeness of the confession. It becomes a work, on account of which one is forgiven. ”

“ But if the girl who is carried off be under the king's protection, then the "frith" (peace-money) shall be 2500 denars, which make 63 shillings.
7. But if a bondsman of the king, or a leet, should carry off a free woman, he shall be sentenced to death.
8. But if a free woman have followed a slave of her own will, she shall lose her freedom.
9. If a freeborn man shall have taken an alien bondswoman, he shall suffer similarly.
10. If any body take an alien spouse and join her to himself in matrimony, he shall be sentenced to 2500 denars, which make 63 shillings. ”

“ Any one learning heresy, but not yet a believer, is fined ten pounds of gold to the fisc, or, if unable to pay, to receive fifty lashes in public. In the case of those who die in heresy or are executed, their estates pass to Catholic descendants, or, in default of these, to the next of kin; if without such kindred, the property of laymen goes to the fisc, of ecclesiastics, to the Church, if claimed within a year, after which it inures to the fisc. ”

“ But if any one should die, holding at the time a knight's fee from the king—not, indeed, a crown fief, but rather one belonging to some barony which, for some reason, had lapsed into the hand of the king; such as a bishopric when the see is vacant: the heir of the dead man, if he be an adult, shall pay for a knight's fee 100 shillings; for two 10£, and so on, according to the number of knights which the heritage had owed to the lord before it had lapsed to the fisc. ”

“ If it be the son of a poor man, he shall pay three shekels of silver.
223. If it was a man's slave, the owner of the slave shall pay to the physician two shekels of silver.
[pg 511] 224. If an ox-doctor or an ass-doctor has treated an ox or an ass for a grave injury, and has saved (it) , the owner of the ox or the ass shall pay to the physician one-sixth (of a shekel) of silver (as) his hire.
225. If he has treated the ox or the ass for a grave injury, and caused (it) to die, he shall give to the owner of the ox or the ass a quarter of its price. ”

“ Till offered fifty dollars by the people of the town,
And that then he wouldn’t do it till he got the money down.
Last of all we heard the instance of Golias Purple Fife,
Who went into an awful well to save a fellow’s life,
A man who always spoke of Fife as of a blooming fool,
And who recently had done him blind in trading for a mule;
And on top of this, moreover, in addition, ’twas a fact,
He refused a quarter-dollar for this noble manly act,
And when they asked him what he’d drink, or if he’d take a bite,
He jumped in silence on his mule and rode into the night. ”

“ We decree, moreover, that those who, against the ordering of our present law, shall presume, or shall in the past have presumed, to receive the oft-mentioned citizens and subjects of other men, if they do not altogether dismiss them within a month after the present intimation has been made to them, shall, for such transgression, as often as they shall hereafter commit it, incur a fine of a hundred marks of pure gold, of which one half shall be applied without fail to our imperial fisc, and the rest to the lords of those who have been received as citizens. ”

“ Though my heresies have led me to assign supreme significance to the financial situation of the consumer, I cannot pretend to possess intimate knowledge of anybody else’s standard of consumption, and living, as I have done for the most part upon the least defensible of all forms of unearned income, I have not been driven to the nice calculations of expenditure to which most men with families to keep are driven. ”

“ Genessaret with the glittering reflections of the constellations flecking its surface, almost makes me regret that I ever saw the rude glare of the day upon it. Its history and its associations are its chiefest charm, in any eyes, and the spells they weave are feeble in the searching light of the sun. Then, we scarcely feel the fetters. Our thoughts wander constantly to the practical concerns of life, and refuse to dwell upon things that seem vague and unreal. But when the day is done, even the most unimpressible must yield to the dreamy influences of this tranquil starlight. ”

“ This degeneracy of the magistrates, whose character is the reverse of that of their predecessors, is a great a reproach and injury to the kingdom as the debasing of their coin would be and the turning of their silver into dross. Righteous princes and righteous cities are as silver for the treasury, but unrighteous ones are as dross for the dunghill. How has the gold become dim! ”

“ Now, forasmuch as the said penalty of twenty pounds monthly is a greater burden unto men of small living, than unto such as are of better ability, and do refuse to come unto Divine Service as aforesaid, who, rather than they will have two parts of their lands to be seized, will be ready always to pay the said twenty pounds, and yet retain in their own hands the residue of their livings and inheritance—being of great yearly value, which they do for the most part employ to the maintenance and superstition of the Popish religion. ”

“ One hundred pounds given to the poor shall more advance the reputation of your liberality and virtue, than a thousand pounds given to your own children, though it be with as pious an end, to train them up for the service of the church. And though this is inconsiderable as your own honour is concerned in it, yet it is considerable as the honour of religion and the good of souls are concerned in it. ”

“ D. Thou said'st, if I remember rightly, that sometimes money is brought to be paid into the exchequer which is judged unfit to be received, if, indeed, being weighed against a pound weight of the exchequer, a deficiency is found of more than six pence. Inasmuch, then, as all money of this kingdom ought to have the stamped image of the king, and all moneyers are bound to work acccording to the same weight, how can it happen that all their work is not of one weight? ”

“ The seigneur of the fief des Augrès was in the hands of William Bras de Fer; and he had to meet the king, when he arrived in Jersey, on horseback, to the girths of his saddle, in the sea; and the fief owed, as relief, the sum of seven livres. Besides the services due by the fiefs de haubert, we find that a great number of persons owed stated sums annually to the Crown for the lands held by them. The names of the persons are mentioned, together with the quantity of land, for which a fixed annual sum was due. For instance, several persons owed for a bovata of land the sum of eight sols annually. ”

“ In many of these the law has attached special obligations in the case of gifts made to the “fiduciary,” on whom is laid the onus of proving that no “undue influence” has been exercised. (See Contract; Children, Law Relating to; Infant; Trust.)
FIEF, a feudal estate in land, land held from a superior (see Feudalism) . The word is the French form, which is represented in Medieval Latin as feudum or feodum, and in English as “fee” or “feu” (see Fee) . The A. Fr. feoffer, to invest with a fief or fee, has given the English law terms “feoffee” and “feoffment” (q.v.) ”

“ Death at the sword is the festival of trumpet and bugle and banner, with glory ringing out around you and distant hearts thrilling through yours. No gnawing disease can bring such hideous end as this; for that is a fiend bred of your own flesh, and this—is it a fiend, this living lump of appetites? What dread comes with the thought of perishing in flames! but fire, let it leap and hiss never so hotly, is something too remote, too alien, to inspire us with such loathly horror as a wild beast; if it have a life, that life is too utterly beyond our comprehension. Fire is not half ourselves ”

“ The small payment to-day comes out of the same purse, and is coined out of the same specie, and is part of the same currency of the same kingdom, as what we get when we go yonder and count the endless riches to which we have fallen heirs at last. ”

“ It is my pleasure to owe you far more than I can pay ever. In dedicating this story, it may be that I am adding grossly to that debt. If so, I ask your most lenient consideration. If not, I still ask your consideration—not for the dedication of my Pagan, but for the affection with which he is dedicated. ”

“ Turning now to a little study of the value of the ordinary parochial benefices, the writer has shrunk from the laborious task of anything like a complete analysis; for a few general facts are sufficient for the present purpose. First of all, many of the benefices were so small that both pope and king [421] were ashamed to demand a tenth of their poor income; a limit of ten marks (= £6 13s. 4d.) was fixed, and all livings not over that sum were exempted. No wonder, when we reckon that the present value of a benefice of ten marks would be about £160 a year. ”

“ Neither is his fee the object of life to a true merchant. All three, if true men, have a work to be done irrespective of fee -- to be done even at any cost, or for quite the contrary of fee; the pastor's function being to teach, the physician's to heal, and the merchant's, as I have said, to provide. That is to say, he has to understand to their very root the qualities of the thing he deals in, and the means of obtaining or producing it ”

“ They look around, and see everywhere labour taxed, and idleness go free. Toil then like a Christian, and pay, pay, pay, that the king may make fountains for his garden, the nobles may stake high at cards, and the bishops and canons may salary expensive cooks. Say the little farmer has a hundred francs. Out of this he is obliged to pay twenty-five for the taille, sixteen for the accessories, fifteen for his capitation, eleven for tithe. ”

“ CHAPTER XIX In the Sacred City The sharp lesson, then the goodwill; and always even during the infliction of the lesson, fair dealing between man and man, and nothing taken without payment on the spot. This, the traditional policy of the great French Governors, was carried out in Fez. Only the lesson was not so sharp as many thought it should have been. But the policy achieved its end, and it was not long before many a Fasi, like his kinsmen of the Chaiouïa, would proudly assure you that he was a Frenchman. ”

“ Not all the churches were so fortunate as to have the ready money in the treasury, and in many cases ornaments and sacred utensils were sacrificed, while the lay lords undoubtedly recovered their payments by like personal auxilia from their men, until the second tax really rested like the first upon the land. ”

“ And the chief priests took the pieces of silver, and said, it is not lawful for to put them into the treasury, because it is the price of blood. And they took counsel, and bought with them the potter’s field to bury strangers in. ”

“ But I hope, through most merciful God, that the spiritual blessings are so many that not only will they equal but surpass the expense; so that if from so heavy expenses resulted only the salvation of even one soul, as says a doctor, our monarchs would be sufficiently remunerated. ”

“ These individuals are sent out from the religious establishments to which they belong to solicit alms for a series of years, until a certain sum of money is realized by each, which is paid over to the sisterhood,—and which, when the fixed sum is obtained, insures them a provision for life. ”

“ What sighs of relief when the stranger trots off again, sitting high on his horse and taking with him a silken purse, or a blood-band or a pair of gloves in “courtesy” from the nuns. What blessings on the black-faced sheep, when the sorely-needed silver is locked up in the treasury chest and debts begin to look less terrible, leaking roofs less incurable, pittances less few and far between.
(4) Miscellaneous payments. A last source of temporal revenue consisted in the sums paid for board and lodging by visitors, regular boarders and schoolchildren. ”

“ There is no evading the enquiries of divine justice; your sin will be sure to find you out. The debt was ten thousand talents, a vast sum, amounting by computation to one million eight hundred and seventy-five thousand pounds sterling; a king's ransom or a kingdom's subsidy, more likely than a servant's debt; see what our sins are, [1.] For the heinousness of their nature; they are talents, the greatest denomination that ever was used in the account of money or weight. Every sin is the load of a talent, a talent of lead, this is wickedness, Zec. ”

“ Your income is also ruined by another mode, namely, by the immense number of receivers, treasurers, clerks, comptrollers and other officers, who swallow enormous sums by way of fees, over and above the regular fees of office, of which the provost and his dependants have the greater share, and which they regard as their own personal property, to your great loss, and to the delay of payments to many of your faithful servants, knights, and counsellors of state. ”

“ Before we commenced our march each man received an account of his share of the booty, when it was found that all our shares of the gold were due to the officers of the crown, in payment for the slaves we had bought at the auctions. ”

“ Cautious as the priests are in showing their fast accumulating wealth, it cannot but be observed that they are again becoming what they were before the adverse decrees of twenty years or so ago,—the holders of the moneys of the people, especially of the poorer classes. ”

“ You will flourish in a household on seven thousand francs a year and a man who ran up a debt of a hundred thousand francs in Paris in two years. And then, not that you know that yet, all men are alike, my child! ”

“ But everything leads us to believe that, like all misers, your worthy father has a good round lump of gold hidden somewhere. But even placing things at their lowest, you see that the author of your being possesses over two millions, at least. As his income is about a hundred thousand livres per annum, and he does not spend twelve hundred francs, you shall enjoy a very large fortune some day; you can, therefore, feel no astonishment at my offer. ”