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Money and the Degrees of Being: A Note on English Heraldry
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 August 2009
Extract
“Heraldry in this reign [Edward III] received the highest polish: in future times it was more gorgeously attired; but with its simplicity it lost its greatest merit.“ Change or progress which the world hails as warmly as it yearns for the permanent and the familiar has disordered and corrupted all hierarchies of men. Mediaeval society may be given an intellectual formulation which is a marvel of order. The peasant toils, the noble fights and the clerk prays. But the clashing reality hastily reveals how uncomprehensive the division is. Where is the merchant or the fortunate adventurer? If the nobleman must be endowed with lands and wealth as a mark of his station and to afford him the leisure for war, what is the status of the merchant who has profitably held the wolf of avarice by the tail? If wealth is a mark of position, does the possession of an adequate supply of silver marks, involving power as it does, also bring with it position? Over the centuries it always has, although society has often urbanely pretended that high degree went only to wealth grown old or has saved itself from vulgarity by insisting that gentility went only with land (which was purchasable).
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References
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