"Commonalty" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... would lead to as easily as would any magistrate to-day who had before him a carpenter accused of persuading soldiers that killing is murder. Politicians move on the level of the common intelligence, and compete there with each other in charging the ignorance of the commonalty with emotion. A politician need be no more than something between a curate and a card-sharper. If he knows anything of the arts, of history, of economics, or of science, he had better forget it, or else use it as a forestaller would a knowledge of the time when prices should be ...
— Waiting for Daylight • Henry Major Tomlinson
... of great price. I say of great price, but it is something which costs us nothing because it is all a part of the joy which is in the world for everybody who cares for it. It is the "joy in widest commonalty spread"; it is a rich possession for us if we care for it, but in possessing it we deprive nobody else. The enjoyment of it, the possession of it, excites neither greed nor envy, and it is something which is always ...
— Recreation • Edward Grey
... Anglo-Saxon and German history—which formed such a real limitation to the power of the early Teutonic kings. "Concerning smaller matters", says Tacitus,[31] "the chiefs deliberate; concerning greater matters, the whole nation; but in such wise that even those things which are in the power of the commonalty are discussed in detail by the chiefs. They come together, unless any sudden and accidental emergency have arisen, on fixed days determined by the new or full moon; for these times they deem the most fortunate for the transaction of business. An ill consequence ...
— Theodoric the Goth - Barbarian Champion of Civilisation • Thomas Hodgkin
... whereof, it being too tedious to insist upon each particular, I shall only mention such in general as are most worthy the remark, from which by analogy we may easily judge of the remainder. And indeed to what purpose would it be singly to recount the commonalty and rabble of mankind, who beyond all question are entirely on my side? and for a token of their vassalage do wear my livery in so many older shapes, and more newly invented modes of Folly, that the lungs of a thousand ...
— In Praise of Folly - Illustrated with Many Curious Cuts • Desiderius Erasmus
... way wrote Benjamin Franklin, some six years after, in that remarkable sheet found among his papers, and called "Declaration of those Rights of the Commonalty of Great Britain, without which they cannot be free." The leading propositions were ...
— Women and the Alphabet • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... know what their tone is to the people of the North; if we do not, De Bow and Governor Hammond are schoolmasters who will teach us to our heart's content. We see how easily their social organization adapts itself to a state of warfare. They breed a superior order of men for leaders, an ignorant commonalty ready to follow them as the vassals of feudal times followed their lords; and a race of bondsmen, who, unless this war changes them from chattels to human beings, will continue to add vastly to their military ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... words confessed by statute 25 Edw. I. c. 7. wherein the king promises to take no customs from merchants, without the common assent of the realm, "saving to us and our heirs, the customs on wools, skins, and leather, formerly granted to us by the commonalty aforesaid." These were formerly called the hereditary customs of the crown; and were due on the exportation only of the said three commodities, and of none other: which were stiled the staple commodities of the kingdom, because they were obliged to be brought ...
— Commentaries on the Laws of England - Book the First • William Blackstone
... them on a parochial towel, after which ritual he will walk in and stand en queue until it comes to be his turn to feast his eye upon some triumph of modern or some miracle of old typography. He will then return to a bookless home proud and satisfied, tasting of the joy that is in widest commonalty spread. Alas! he will do nothing of the kind, not, at least, if he is one of those in whom the old Adam of the bookstalls still breathes. A public library must always be an abomination. To enjoy a book, you must ...
— In the Name of the Bodleian and Other Essays • Augustine Birrell
... contempt. The courts of justice would always listen to a noble as against a peasant; bribes were notoriously accepted by the judges; and the merest caprice of the aristocracy had the force of law, by virtue of this system of universal corruption. Of the taxes wrung from the commonalty, by the secular magnates on the one hand, and the clergy on the other, not half ever found its way into the royal or episcopal treasury; the rest was squandered in profligate self-indulgence. And the men who thus impoverished their fellow-subjects ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White
... the accounts from the different parishes audited; retailers and innkeepers licensed and regulated, &c. In short, this Court exercises in many respects the same powers in the several Counties, in regard to their internal police, as those that are exercised by the Mayor, Aldermen, and Commonalty of ...
— First History of New Brunswick • Peter Fisher
... the old Eastern tale of "The Fish and the Ring," invented some thousands of years since. It has survived to our own day, and is still related and believed by the commonalty to the east of London. In the church at Stepney is a tomb to the memory of Lady Rebecca Berry, who died 1696, in whose coat-of-arms a fish and an annulet appear. She has hence been supposed the heroine of a once ...
— Rambles of an Archaeologist Among Old Books and in Old Places • Frederick William Fairholt
... thought the invasion likely or not. All the clergy in the kingdom were ordered to "manifest unto their congregations the furious purpose of the Spanish King." There was abundant tinder ready for this match: for the commonalty were wider awake to the danger than either Queen or Council. The danger is equal now, and more insidious—from Rome, though not from Spain—but alas! ...
— Clare Avery - A Story of the Spanish Armada • Emily Sarah Holt
... proud of her rank and title, once compared the three classes of people, nobility, gentry, and commonalty, to china, delf, and crockery. A few minutes elapsed, when one of the company expressed a wish to see the lady's little girl, who, it was mentioned, was in the nursery. "John," said she to the footman, "tell the maid to bring the little dear." The footman, wishing ...
— The Jest Book - The Choicest Anecdotes and Sayings • Mark Lemon
... English had been performing in Scotland for the last eight years. The country was ravaged to the very walls of Durham and Carlisle, and only those districts which bought off the invaders were spared. The title which had been bestowed upon Wallace by a comparatively small number was now ratified by the commonalty of the whole of Scotland; and associated with him was the young Sir Andrew Moray of Bothwell, whose father had been the only Scotch noble who had fought at Stirling, and it is notable that in some of the documents of the time Wallace ...
— In Freedom's Cause • G. A. Henty
... days, both the laws of the land, the judges, and the commonalty, gave credence to the wicked gambols of wizards and witches. Many a poor iniquitous old woman, from some mysterious hints of her power to tell fortunes, or to gratify the revengeful feelings of her neighbours, was ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... begotten children—an heir at least. It would be a fine thing to restore the stock to a prospect of honour. He wondered that in the past he had never realised his plain duty in this light and taken the risk. As it was, the old name could only be preserved in a commonalty's gratitude. ...
— Nicky-Nan, Reservist • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... Gaul there are two orders of those men who are of any rank and dignity: for the commonalty is held almost in the condition of slaves, and dares to undertake nothing of itself and is admitted to no deliberation. The greater part, when they are pressed either by debt, or the large amount of their tributes, or the oppression ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... historical notice of Temple Bar is in 1327, the first year of Edward III.; and in the thirty-fourth year of the same reign we find, at an inquisition before the mayor, twelve witnesses deposing that the commonalty of the City had, time out of mind, had free ingress and egress from the City to Thames and from Thames to the City, through the great gate of the Templars situate within Temple Bar. This referred to some dispute ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... from all the sewers of London, and it was plain to him that all the commonalty cried shame upon their King. He screamed and twisted there in his chair at the last, and when he was come out into the darkness he fell upon his companion, and beat him so ...
— The Fifth Queen Crowned • Ford Madox Ford
... in 1534, Sir R. Gresham, who was agent for Henry the Eighth at Antwerp, and had been struck with the advantages attending the Bourse, or Exchange, of that city, prevailed upon his Royal Master to send a letter to the Mayor and Commonalty of London, recommending them to erect a similar building on their manor of Leadenhall. The Court of Common Council, however, were of opinion that such a removal of the seat of business would be impracticable, and the scheme was therefore ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 395, Saturday, October 24, 1829. • Various
... priesthood of ancient Rome, and thence to the head of the Roman Catholic Church. The [Greek: tiara] of the Greeks, and tiara of the Latins, expresses the cloth cap or fez of the Parthians, Persians, Armenians, &c., {145} which was a low scull-cap amongst the commonalty, but a stiff and elevated covering for the kings and personages of distinction (Xen. Anab. ii. 5, 23.). This imposing tiara is frequently represented on ancient monuments, where it varies in some details, though always preserving the characteristic peculiarity of a tall upright head-dress. ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 69, February 22, 1851 • Various
... of Pharaoh and his barons rested entirely upon these two classes, the priests and the soldiers; the remainder, the commonalty and the peasantry, were, in their hands, merely an inert mass, to be taxed and subjected to forced labour at will. The slaves were probably regarded as of little importance; the bulk of the people consisted of free ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 2 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... every parish shall possess among its other teachers its one university-bred schoolmaster, popularly chosen, and well paid, and suited to assist in transplanting to the higher places of society those select and vigorous scions that from time to time spring up from the stock of the commonalty. The waking dream of running down the ignorance and misery of a sinking country by an array of starveling teachers in the train of any one denomination—itself, mayhap, sufficiently attenuated by the demands of purely ecclesiastical ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller
... old men with their little all tied in handkerchiefs and stockings to take up the tribute required by Bismarck to rid the soil of the detested German. They did it. Alone they did it—the French people—the hard-working, frugal, loyal commonalty of France—without asking the loan of a sou ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... The boroughs were commanded to surrender their charters. Few complied; and the course which the King took with those few did not encourage others to trust him. In several towns the right of voting was taken away from the commonalty, and given to a very small number of persons, who were required to bind themselves by oath to support the candidates recommended by the government. At Tewkesbury, for example, the franchise was confined to thirteen persons. Yet even this number was too large. Hatred and fear ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... that set the red shadows dancing among ceiling joists. After ward-room mess, with fare that kings might have envied—teal and partridge and venison and a steak of beaver's tail, and moose nose as an entree, with a tidbit of buffalo hump that melted in your mouth like flakes—the commonalty, as La Chesnaye designated those who sat below the salt, would draw off to the far hearth. Here the sailors gathered close, spinning yarns, cracking jokes, popping corn, and toasting wits, a-merrier far that your kitchen cuddies of older lands. At the other hearth ...
— Heralds of Empire - Being the Story of One Ramsay Stanhope, Lieutenant to Pierre Radisson in the Northern Fur Trade • Agnes C. Laut
... one or two of them more active than their fellows; but the real duty was done by the Clerk of the Court. The seats within the bar were occupied by the witnesses, and around the great table sat some of the more respectable people of Southport; and without the bar were the commonalty in great numbers; for this is said to be the first burglary that has occurred here within the memory of man, and so it has caused ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... the tax-lists under which the commonalty labored; it was "Hosanna" for Francis, and not a plowman nor tiller of the soil bethought himself that he had fully paid for the snack and sup that night. How could he, having had no one to think for him; for then Rousseau had not ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... the restraints imposed on the royal prerogative that England was advantageously distinguished from most of the neighbouring countries. A: peculiarity equally important, though less noticed, was the relation in which the nobility stood here to the commonalty. There was a strong hereditary aristocracy: but it was of all hereditary aristocracies the least insolent and exclusive. It had none of the invidious character of a caste. It was constantly receiving members from the people, and ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... 1792, additional and more expensive decorations having been introduced, the price of admission was raised to two shillings. I cannot approve of this. The company may be more select; but a number of the honest commonalty are, I fear, excluded from sharing in elegant and innocent entertainment. An attempt to abolish the one-shilling gallery at the playhouse has ...
— The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 • Boswell
... body being brought to the parish of Strood was accompanied from thence to the west door of the Cathedral Church of Rochester by the Prebendaries of the said church in their formalities, with the gentry and commonalty of the said City and places adjacent, with torches before them. Near the Cathedral they were met by the choir who sung Te Deum before them; when Divine service was ended, the Choir went before the body to the grave (which was made in the body of the Church) singing ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Rochester - A Description of its Fabric and a Brief History of the Episcopal See • G. H. Palmer
... Vermont it was the natural political expression of social forces. How else, indeed, could the general will find fit expression, except through the attrition of many minds? And who could know better the needs of the community than the commonalty? Not that men reasoned about the philosophy of their political institutions: they simply accepted them. And young Douglass grew up in an atmosphere friendly to local ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson
... for the drama of "Coriolanus" from Plutarch's "Lives," and it is significant that he selected from that list of worthies the most conspicuous adversary of the commonalty that Rome produced. He presents him to us as a hero, and, so far as he can, enlists our sympathy for him from beginning to end. When Menenius says ...
— Tolstoy on Shakespeare - A Critical Essay on Shakespeare • Leo Tolstoy
... all the political power and almost all the wealth of the nation, and, imitating the proud language of Louis XIV, could, without exaggeration, have said: "L'etat c'est nous." As for the king and the commonalty, the one had been deprived of almost all his prerogatives, and the other had become a rightless rabble of wretched peasants, impoverished burghers, and chaffering Jews. Rousseau, in his Considerations sur le gouvernement de Pologne, says ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... communia.(153) Bishop Stubbs, however, hesitates to translate communio as "commune," the latter being essentially a French term for a particular form of municipal government. He prefers to render it "commonalty," "fraternity," or "franchise," although he goes so far as to allow that the term "suggests that the communal idea was already in existence as a basis of civic organization" in Stephen's reign, an idea which became fully developed in the succeeding reign.(154) ...
— London and the Kingdom - Volume I • Reginald R. Sharpe
... acquaintances in the hamlet and a thing that gratified me a good deal was to find our new coins in circulation —lots of milrays, lots of mills, lots of cents, a good many nickels, and some silver; all this among the artisans and commonalty generally; yes, and even some gold—but that was at the bank, that is to say, the goldsmith's. I dropped in there while Marco, the son of Marco, was haggling with a shopkeeper over a quarter of a pound of ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... time; and those who sincerely love poetry, know the touch of the master's hand on the chords too well to fumble among them after him. Nay, more than this, all inferior poetry is an injury to the good, inasmuch as it takes away the freshness of rhymes, blunders upon and gives a wretched commonalty to good thoughts; and, in general, adds to the weight of human weariness in a most woful and culpable manner. There are few thoughts likely to come across ordinary men, which have not already been expressed by greater men in the best possible way; and it is a wiser, more generous, more noble ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... proper masters: "because he was obliged to serve those who gave him necessaries, during two years found no one to teach him a word in the things he learned." —Opus Tertium, cap. xx. In 1214 the Commonalty of Oxford agreed to pay 52s. yearly for the use of poor scholars, and to give 100 of them a meal of bread, ale, and pottage, with one large dish of flesh or fish, every St Nicholas day.—Wood's An. i. 185. Wood's Annals (ed. Gutch, ...
— Early English Meals and Manners • Various
... history of Bristol, and, as that is not my purpose, I shall proceed to other matters, not, however, till I have strongly recommended to every one, who is in any way connected with that city, to read the book published by John Cranidge, A.M. in the year 1818, entitled, "A Mirror for the Burgesses and Commonalty of the City of Bristol; in which is exhibited to their view, a part of the great and many interesting benefactions and endowments, of which the city has to boast, and for which the CORPORATION are responsible, as the stewards and trustees thereof: ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 3 • Henry Hunt
... fast from pipes and an apparatus which I leave for William's scientific description: terrace before Belvidere House—well-dressed groups parading on it: groups all over the gardens, mantles, scarves, and feathers floating: all the commonalty outside in fields at half-price. We soon espied Mr. and Mrs. Hamilton, and joined company, and were extremely happy, and wished for you and dear Honora. Sun shining, no wind. Presently we met the Solicitor-General: he started back, and made me such a bow as ...
— The Life And Letters Of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... detestation of vice found in all countries in a healthful state of morals, and which is often strongest among the lowest of the vulgar, especially in what respects the conduct of the great. He thought that the commonalty of Italy had lost the tact by which the good and evil of actions are discriminated; and that, whatever was good in their disposition, was constitutional, and unconnected with any principle of religion, or sense of right. In the Papal states, ...
— The Life, Studies, And Works Of Benjamin West, Esq. • John Galt
... States-General.—No one exactly knew the limits of the powers of the States-General when it met in 1789. Nobles, clergy, and the deputies who represented the commonalty, all formed the assembly at Versailles; and though the king would have kept apart these last, who were called the Tiers Etat, or third estate, they refused to withdraw from the great hall of Versailles. The ...
— History of France • Charlotte M. Yonge
... dreams. All these must go, of course; they are luxuries to which no individual has any right; we must be drilled and organised; we must do our share of the work, and take our culture in a municipal gallery, or through cheap editions of the classics. No doubt we shall get the 'joys in widest commonalty spread' of which Wordsworth speaks; and the only thing that I pray is that I may not be there ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... durst undertake to controlle their cure, every word of whose mouth, tho they understood it no more nor the stone in the wall did, they took for ane oracle, which minds me of the miserablenese and ignorantnese of the peasants of France above all other commonalty of the world; our beggars leading a better life then the most part of ...
— Publications of the Scottish History Society, Vol. 36 • Sir John Lauder
... write unselfishly; we may say he would do well always to aim at the entertainment of the noblest minds, even when he does not exhort their loftiest moods. But he certainly achieves much besides if, while he does these things, at the same time and in the same doing he entertains the great commonalty of readers. If he does this, and all the more if he has the rare genius to do all these in one, his books, we may almost say, ought to go first through the magazines. If he wants them to do so, then it will be a godsend to himself as well ...
— The Building of a Book • Various
... The commonalty occupy quarters over in the west, beginning at the point of termination of an awning, stretched, it would seem, for the accommodation of ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... co-operation of the city of London in his traitorous designs upon the crown, convened a general assembly of the citizens, and confirmed their ancient rights and privileges by a formal deed or charter. It was then, for the first time, that the commonalty of the city was regularly and officially recognized as a corporate body. The distinctive rights of a town corporation were the election of a council presided over by a mayor or bailiff, a common seal, a bell to convoke the citizens, and ...
— The Corporation of London: Its Rights and Privileges • William Ferneley Allen
... croft on which his people dwelt was near the Gordon estate of Balmoral. We had played with each other as boys, for the feudal system of the clans was communal and democratic. It was, to take one illustration, customary for the sons of chiefs to have foster-brothers adopted from the commonalty, companions in peace time, comrades ...
— The Black Colonel • James Milne
... revert to the day when, before the hammer of Robins had resounded in these rooms—before his transcendent eloquence had been heard at Strawberry—Agnes Strickland, followed by all eyes, pondered over that group of portraits: how, as she slowly withdrew, we of the commonalty scarce worthy to look, gathered around the spot again, and wondered at the perfect life, the perfect colouring, proportion, and keeping of those tiny vestiges of a ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton
... was not so often that justice exacted the extreme penalty from a young woman of rank and beauty. With "dreadful objects so familiar'' in the way of public executions, it was likely enough that pity in the commonalty was "choked with custom of fell deeds.'' Something out of the way in the nature of a dreadful object-lesson might stir the hearts of the populace and make them conscious of the ...
— She Stands Accused • Victor MacClure
... Appealing to the Commonalty of Scotland, Knox next asked that he might come and justify his doctrine, and prove Popery "abominable before God." Now, could any Government admit a man who published the tidings that any member of a State might avenge God on an idolater, the Queen being, according ...
— John Knox and the Reformation • Andrew Lang
... hither it was frequently reported among the Commonalty that he was kept close Prisoner, which report caused the people of that Town, those of Charles-city, Henrico, and New-Kent Countries, being in all about the Number of eight hundred, or a thousand, to rise and march thitherwards in order to his rescue; whereupon the Governor was forced to desire ...
— Great Epochs in American History, Vol. II - The Planting Of The First Colonies: 1562—1733 • Various
... came to St. Paul, Minnesota. We went to a very fair hotel and had a very good dinner. In the West it is very common among the commonalty to drink coffee and milk through dinner, and indeed with all meals, instead of wine or ale, but the custom is considered as vulgar by swells. Having finished dessert, I asked the Irish waiter to bring me a small cup of ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... ages, yet in England, as elsewhere, the epoch of its moral omnipotence had come to an end many generations before the disruption of its external framework. In the fourteenth century men had long ceased to look for the mediation of the Church between an overbearing Crown and a baronage and commonalty eager for the maintenance of their rights or for the assertion of their claims. On the other hand, the conflicts which still recurred between the temporal power and the Church had as little reference as ever to spiritual concerns. Undoubtedly, ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward
... comprehensive a poet's diction, should save him from falling into the hands of an exclusive coterie of poetic words. It should react upon his metrical vocabulary to its beneficial expansion, by taking him outside his aristocratic circle of language, and keeping him in touch with the great commonalty, the proletariat of speech. For it is with words as with men: constant intermarriage within the limits of a patrician clan begets effete refinement; and to reinvigorate the stock, its veins must be replenished ...
— Shelley - An Essay • Francis Thompson
... Established Church at Cockburn's Path, Berwickshire. His grandfather was a small landed proprietor, but he had to sell Spence's mains, and the name was changed to Chirnside. So (as my father used to say) he was sprung from the tail of the gentry; while my mother was descended from the head of the commonalty. The Brodies had been tenant farmers in East Lothian for six or seven generations, though they originally came from the north. My grandfather Brodie thought abrogation of the Corn Laws meant ruin for the farmers, who had taken 19 years' leases at war prices. But during the war ...
— An Autobiography • Catherine Helen Spence
... round him, the autumn sunshine lighting up all the glow and colour of the picture, the scarlet coats, the rich bay and brown of the horses, the verdant background of lawn and shrubberies. Two huge marquees had been erected for the commonalty—one for the school-children, the other for the villagers. There were long tables in the billiard-room for the farming class; and for the quality there was the horse-shoe table in the dining-room, as at Roderick's birthday dinner. But on this occasion the table was decorated ...
— Vixen, Volume I. • M. E. Braddon
... no longer control the movement. A considerable number of the commonalty of Basle and the majority of the council, were already on the side of radical Reformation. About a year after Erasmus, Johannes Oecolampadius, whose first residence at Basle had also coincided with his (at that time he had helped Erasmus with Hebrew for the edition of ...
— Erasmus and the Age of Reformation • Johan Huizinga
... Beaufort, though generous, was not free from the worldliness which had met him everywhere, amidst the society in which his youth had been spent. His uncle, the head of one of those families which yearly vanish from the commonalty into the peerage, but which once formed a distinguished peculiarity in the aristocracy of England—families of ancient birth, immense possessions, at once noble and untitled—held his estates by no other tenure than his own caprice. ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 1 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... measure. I am happy to perceive, that so much of that good sense and manly thinking in public questions, that has for ages been considered as the characteristic quality of Englishmen, is still left among us. There can be nothing more honourable than this.—By it our commonalty, though unable indeed to forestal the hero and the man of genius in his schemes, do yet, if I may be allowed the expression, tread upon his heels, and are prepared to follow him in all his views, and to glow with all ...
— Four Early Pamphlets • William Godwin
... Time, dulled the paralysing horror of his sister's death, and softened the memory of all that long torture of publicity, legal investigation, and the like, which had followed it. The natural healing 'in widest commonalty spread,' which flows from affection, nature, and the direction of the mind to high and liberating aims, came to him also as the months and years passed. His wife's death, his sister's tragedy, left indeed indelible marks; but, though scarred and ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... that whatever of god-like essence was muffled in the hulk of his composition was quickened by the truly unearthly beauty of that pale face with its mystic smile and the sweet eyes that seemed to see sights denied to the commonalty. I think Messer Simone was in love with Beatrice very much as I might have been, out of very wonder at a thing so rare and fair and unfamiliar. I was never, as I have said, in love with Folco's daughter; my tastes are simpler, more carnal; give me an Ippolita in my affectionate ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... arbitrary misgovernment as had prevailed during the last twenty years. By the "Provisions of Oxford" it was agreed that the Great Council should assemble thrice in the year, whether summoned by the king or no; and on each occasion "the Commonalty shall elect twelve honest men who shall come to the Parliaments, and at other times when occasion shall be when the King and his Council shall send for them, to treat of the wants of the king and of his kingdom. And the Commonalty shall hold as established that which these ...
— History of the English People, Volume II (of 8) - The Charter, 1216-1307; The Parliament, 1307-1400 • John Richard Green
... adversaries; on that side are the greater part of the nobles, who absent themselves from Court, all the bishops save three or four, almost all the judges and lawyers, almost all the justices of the peace, the priests who can move their flocks any way, for the whole of the commonalty is in such a state of irritation that it will easily follow any stir towards change." But united as it was in its opposition the nation was helpless. The system of despotism which Cromwell built up had been seized by a ...
— History of the English People - Volume 4 (of 8) • John Richard Green
... sollemnly had sworne, that what he spoke My Chaplaine to no Creature liuing, but To me, should vtter, with demure Confidence, This pausingly ensu'de; neither the King, nor's Heyres (Tell you the Duke) shall prosper, bid him striue To the loue o'th' Commonalty, the Duke ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... might be, no doubt, the quantity of wretched fresh and salt fish consumed by the commonalty at all seasons as well as in Lent; which our poor now would hardly be persuaded ...
— The Natural History of Selborne • Gilbert White
... for Putting Out at one royal sweep. She managed the nightly eviction with such gay expedition that it almost felt like ten minutes ago when the place, except for the pride-swollen monitors, was cleared. While these officers watched the commonalty clumping reluctantly upstairs toward the umbrella-rack, the Liberry Teacher paced sedately around the shelves, giving the books that routine straightening they must have before seven struck and the horde ...
— The Rose Garden Husband • Margaret Widdemer
... It was only by hard bribery that the English viceroys could secure their co-operation in the simplest measures of administration. "If ever there was a country unfit to govern itself," said Lord Hutchinson, "it is Ireland. A corrupt aristocracy, a ferocious commonalty, a distracted ...
— History of the English People, Volume VIII (of 8) - Modern England, 1760-1815 • John Richard Green
... granted for us and our heirs, as well to archbishops, bishops, abbots, priors, and other folk of holy Church, as also to earls, barons, and to all the commonalty of the land, that for no business from henceforth will we take such manner of aids, tasks, nor prises but by the common consent of the realm, and for the common profit thereof, saving the ancient aids and ...
— Civil Government in the United States Considered with - Some Reference to Its Origins • John Fiske
... and beats the church door with his fist).The house of God is closed this Whitsun Eve. The reverend clergy will grant no audience with the Lord to-day, and so the worshipful commonalty will have to go home and go to bed without any mass. Look here, good folk! Here you have a door—mere wood, of course, but that matters little, as it is lined with copper. Just take a look at this door! If I say ...
— Master Olof - A Drama in Five Acts • August Strindberg
... minority, subordinacy; shortcoming, deficiency; minimum; smallness &c 32; imperfection; lower quality, lower worth. [personal inferiority] commonalty &c 876. V. be inferior &c adj.; fall short of, come short of; not pass, not come up to; want. become smaller, render smaller &c (decrease) 36, (contract) 195; hide its diminished head, retire into ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... a world as exemplified in lacerated saints and a crucified Redeemer opened up to me illimitable prospects of fresh beliefs, and therefore new joys in things and new revolts against all that had come to form part and parcel of the commonalty of mankind. Till now I had not even remotely suspected that a deification of flesh and fleshly desire was possible, Shelley's teaching had been, while accepting the body, to dream of the soul as a star, and so preserve our ideal; ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... thwarts, for there was no breeze that day in the narrow firth. Then came the chief warriors in short fur jackets, splendid in glittering helms and byrnies, and each with his thrall bearing his battle-axe. Followed the fighting commonalty with axe and spear. Last came Ironbeard, stern as ever, and Biorn with his heart torn between eagerness and regret. Only the children, the women, and the old men were left in Hightown, and they stood on the shingle watching till the last galley ...
— The Path of the King • John Buchan
... national dishonour. The Spanish people found themselves without a gentry for leading their armies. England possessed, and possesses a gentry, the noblest that the world has seen, who are the natural leaders of her intrepid commonalty, alike in her fleets and in her armies. But why? How and in what sense qualified? Not only by principle and by honour—that glorious distinction which poor men can appreciate, even when less sternly summoned to its duties; not only by courage ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... "that your majesty should appease them, if possible, by fair words, and by a show of granting what they ask; for if we once attempt to put them down by force, and should not be able to go through with it, we shall only make matters a great deal worse. The commonalty of London and of all England would then join them, and the nobles and the government will be swept ...
— Richard II - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... before the mighty breath of their omnipotent passion. Their love is the great fact of their lives. Why should it yield to less powerful sentiments, to inferior satisfactions. If the laws and sentiments of the commonalty of mankind oppose, why gain the lesser, palling pleasure of a fair character among our fellows whom we care not for, and lose the one joy of existence? Such, in all three of these novels, to a greater or less extent, is the theory of action ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol III, Issue VI, June, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... the great meeting places of mankind. Here—I speak of Utopian London—will be the traditional centre of one of the great races in the commonalty of the World State—and here will be its social and intellectual exchange. There will be a mighty University here, with thousands of professors and tens of thousands of advanced students, and here ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... flourished in the midst of such tempests and convulsions. The feudal system, with which the liberty, much more the power of the commons, was totally incompatible, began gradually to decline; and both the king and the commonalty, who felt its inconveniencies, contributed to favor this new power, which was more submissive than the barons to the regular authority of the crown, and at the same time afforded protection to the inferior ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part B. - From Henry III. to Richard III. • David Hume
... of the commonalty may be named Thomas Heywood, one of the most moral play writers of his time, who has sometimes been called the prose Shakspeare, and Decker, a voluminous writer, who cooperated in several plays of more celebrated men, ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... stewardship. He voluntarily resorted to the old practice of summoning national assemblies, the so-called Danehof. At the first of these assemblies held at Nyborg, Midsummer Day 1314, the bishops and councillors solemnly promised that the commonalty should enjoy all the ancient rights and privileges conceded to them by Valdemar II., and the wise provision that the Danehof should meet annually considerably strengthened its authority. The keystone to the whole constitutional system ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various
... shop, where I had shaved, without distinction, all his customers. The chins of these good people had suffered somewhat before I had acquired sufficient dexterity to lay a razor on the consular chin; but by dint of repeated experiments on the beards of the commonalty I had achieved a degree of skill which inspired me with the greatest confidence; so, in obedience to the order of the First Consul, I brought the warm water, opened the razor boldly, and began operations. Just as I was going to place ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... life. The true heroes of it are the labourer and the artisan, the friar, the printer, and the industrial mechanic—'not many mighty, not many noble'. The true growth of the English nation is seen broad-based on the life of the commonalty, and we can study it better in the rude verse of Longland, or the parables of Bunyan, than in the formal records of battles ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... grape-jelly, of teasing their sisters, of taking their pleasure by going a-bird-nesting, and of cutting switches for themselves from the osier-beds, maugre the laws of the realm. Moreover, they list not to learn naught, wherefore the Papal Nuncio (called of the commonalty, M. le Cure) threateneth them with excommunication, since that they neglect the sacred canons of grammatical construction for the construction of other canon, deadly engines made of ...
— Father Goriot • Honore de Balzac
... wrongs were Bacon and his followers tell us in what they called the Declaration of the People. Berkeley and his favorites they denounced "for having upon specious pretences of public works raised great unjust taxes upon the commonalty for the advancement of private favorites and other sinister ends...; for having abused and rendered contemptible the magistrates of justice, by advancing to places of judicature scandalous ...
— Virginia under the Stuarts 1607-1688 • Thomas J. Wertenbaker
... flowed through them. Though they kept themselves socially aloof from the populace, they set a moral standard for them and guided them by their example. I admit Bushido had its esoteric and exoteric teachings; these were eudemonistic, looking after the welfare and happiness of the commonalty, while those were aretaic, emphasizing the practice of virtues ...
— Bushido, the Soul of Japan • Inazo Nitobe
... falls, through the discipline of repentance, to holiness and the blessedness which comes with it. The Red Cross Knight, St. George of England, whose name Georgos, the Ploughman, is dwelt upon, apparently to suggest that from the commonalty, the "tall clownish young men," were raised up the great champions of the Truth,—though sorely troubled by the wiles of Duessa, by the craft of the arch-sorcerer, by the force and pride of the great powers of the Apocalyptic ...
— Spenser - (English Men of Letters Series) • R. W. Church
... necessarily be attacked by the asserters of divine right in temporal government. If our experiment succeeds the powers of Europe must fall, or undergo an entire change. {113} England's nobility must acknowledge, sooner or later, the equality of the commonalty and gentry with themselves. Distinctions in France have already gone, except as to the assertion of the power of an emperor by ...
— Mysticism and its Results - Being an Inquiry into the Uses and Abuses of Secrecy • John Delafield
... Doge of Venice was Paolo Lucio Anafesto, elected by the tribunal of commonalty, tribunals, and clergy, at Heraclea, in 697. The period of the subjection of the ecclesiastical to the ducal and patrician powers followed. The "Council of Ten" was established in 1335, and the last Doge elected was Lodovico ...
— Italy, the Magic Land • Lilian Whiting
... consequence of that, abound with proverbs, many of which are very expressive, quick, and home to the purpose; and, indeed, this humour prevails universally over the whole nation, especially among the better sort of the commonalty, none of whom will discourse with you any considerable time but he will affirm every assertion and observation with a Scottish proverb. To that nation I owe my birth and education; and to that manner of speaking I was used from my infancy, ...
— Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character • Edward Bannerman Ramsay
... big to be of gold; she wore earrings with large white stones which were certainly not diamonds, and she belonged unmistakably to the commonalty. One would have guessed that she would talk too loud, and shout on every occasion with ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... in haven. Thither let your good sheep go, your echoes, your wag-tail dogs, your wealthy pursy manufacturers! He decried the attractions of the sublimer House, and laughed at the transparent Whiggery of his party in replenishing it from the upper shoots of the commonalty: 'Dragging it down to prop it up! swamping it to ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... when I wondered about the cost involved in recovering roofs with these tiles, a woman worker who overheard me promptly said that, reckoning tiles and labour, the cost was 60 or 70 sen per 22 tiles. In the old days tiled porticoes were forbidden to the commonalty. They were allowed only to daimyos who also used exclusively the arm rests which every visitor to an inn may now command. Besides arm rests I have frequently had kneeling cushions of the white brocade formerly used only for the ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott
... the commonalty of us Mardians. How then with those beings who every way are but too apt to be riddles. In many points the works of our great poet Vavona, now dead a thousand moons, still remain a mystery. Some call him a mystic; but wherein he seems obscure, it is, perhaps, we ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. II (of 2) • Herman Melville
... So if in the family all were masters, where were the household? where were the family government? If in a city all were aldermen, where were the citizens? where were the city government? If in a kingdom all were kings, where were the subjects, the people, the commonalty, the commonwealth, or the ...
— The Divine Right of Church Government • Sundry Ministers Of Christ Within The City Of London
... the popular character. In the case of a Government representing a dominant class, the same thing holds, though not so manifestly. For the very existence of a class monopolizing all power, is due to certain sentiments in the commonalty. Without the feeling of loyalty on the part of retainers, a feudal system could not exist. We see in the protest of the Highlanders against the abolition of heritable jurisdictions, that they preferred that kind of local rule. And if to the popular ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer
... held, until 1734, when an Act of Parliament was obtained making it a Parish Church, appointing a district to it and enabling the Master and Usher of the Free Grammar School to be Rector and Lecturer of the church. The mayor, bailiffs, and commonalty were made patrons, but in 1835, these arrangements having failed to work satisfactorily, the patronage was transferred to trustees who acted as managers of the school and in 1864 the lectureship was abolished, the rectory was severed from the ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Churches of Coventry - A Short History of the City and Its Medieval Remains • Frederic W. Woodhouse
... Cavour, because he alone understood that in human society civilisation is everything, all the rest, without it, nothing. "He knows that statutes, parliaments, newspapers, all the appurtenances of free governments, even if they are of use to individuals, are miserable shams to the commonalty if they fail to help forward social progress." He was willing to forgive him the generous error of treating a province as if it were a nation, when he compared it with the pettiness of those who treated the nation as if it were a province. He invoked ...
— Cavour • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... social resettlement—is necessary and urgent, because it awakens and trains responsibilities, and because it withdraws from the sluggish hands of the governing classes the determination of time and of method, and places it in the hands that have a better title, those of the whole commonalty, which, at present, stands helpless through sheer democracy. For only in the hands of a political people does democracy mean the rule of the people; in those of an untrained and unpolitical people it becomes merely an affair of debating societies and philistine ...
— The New Society • Walther Rathenau |
