to place themselves each at the head of such forces as might enable him to
make a figure in the national convulsions which appeared to be impending.
    The situation of the inferior gentry, or Franklins, as they were called,
who, by the law and spirit of the English constitution, were entitled to hold
themselves independent of feudal tyranny, became now unusually precarious. If,
as was most generally the case, they placed themselves under the protection of
any of the petty kings in their vicinity, accepted of feudal offices in his
household, or bound themselves, by mutual treaties of alliance and protection,
to support him in his enterprises, they might indeed purchase temporary repose;
but it must be with the sacrifice of that independence which was so dear to
every English bosom, and at the certain hazard of being involved as a party in
whatever rash expedition the ambition of their protector might lead him to
undertake. On the other hand, such and so multiplied were the means of vexation
and oppression possessed by the great Barons, that they never wanted the
pretext, and seldom the will, to harass and pursue, even to the very edge of
destruction, any of their less powerful neighbours, who attempted to separate
themselves from their authority, and to trust for their protection, during the
dangers of the times, to their own inoffensive conduct, and to the laws of the
land.
    A circumstance which greatly tended to enhance the tyranny of the nobility,
and the sufferings of the inferior classes, arose from the consequences of the
Conquest by Duke William of Normandy. Four generations had not sufficed to blend
the hostile blood of the Normans and Anglo-Saxons, or to unite, by common
language and mutual interests, two hostile races, one of which still felt the
elation of triumph, while the other groaned under all the consequences of
defeat. The power had been completely placed in the hands of the Norman
nobility, by the event of the battle of Hastings, and it had been used, as our
histories assure us, with no moderate hand. The whole race of Saxon princes and
nobles had been extirpated or disinherited, with few or no exceptions; nor were
the numbers great who possessed land in the country of their fathers, even as
proprietors of the second, or of yet inferior classes. The royal policy had long
been to weaken, by every means, legal or illegal, the strength of a part of the
population which was justly considered as nourishing the most inveterate
antipathy to their victor. All the monarchs of the Norman race had shown the
most marked predilection for their Norman subjects; the laws