very
distinct things; yet, like them, they are usually woven together. Each
possesses a strength of its own, but when united, have often become
extremely powerful, as in the case of Henry the Third and the clergy.
This union, at times, subsisted from a very early date.

Power is the idol of man; we not only wish to acquire it, but also to
increase and preserve it. If the magistrate has been too weak to execute
his designs, he has backed his schemes with the aid of the church; this
occurred with King Stephen and the Bishops.

Likewise, if a churchman finds his power ascendant in the human mind, he
still wishes an addition to that power, by uniting another. Thus the
Bishop of Rome, being master of the spiritual chair, stept also into
the temporal.

Sometimes the ecclesiastical and civil governors appear in malign
aspect, or in modern phrase, like a quarrel between the squire and the
rector, which is seldom detrimental to the people. This was the case
with Henry the Eighth and the church.

The curses of a priest hath sometimes brought a people into obedience to
the King, when he was not able to bring them himself. One could not
refrain from smiling, to hear a Bishop curse the people for obeying
their Sovereign, and in a few months after, curse them again if they did
not; which happened in the reign of King John. But, happy for the world,
that these retail dealers in the wrath of heaven are become extinct, and
the market is over.

Birmingham, in those remote periods of time, does not seem to have
attended so much to religious and political dispute, as to the course
music of her hammer. Peace seems to have been her characteristic--She
paid obedience to that Prince had the good fortune to possess the
throne, and regularly paid divine honours in St. Martin's, because
there was no other church. Thus, through the long ages of Saxon, Danish,
and Norman government, we hear of no noise but that of the anvil, till
the reign of Henry the Third, when her Lord joined the Barons against
the Crown, and drew after him some of his mechanics, to exercise the
very arms they had been taught to make; and where, at the battle of
Evesham, he staked his life and his fortune, and lost both.

Things quickly returning into their former channel, she stood a silent
spectator during that dreadful contest between the two roses, pursuing
the tenor of still life till the civil wars of Charles I. when she took
part with the Parliament, some of whos