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 law