danger, of the adjacent country: the
produce of the land was applied to purchase arms and horses; to maintain
a military force of slaves, of peasants, and of licentious followers;
and the chieftain might assume, within his own domain, the powers of a
civil magistrate. Several of these British chiefs might be the genuine
posterity of ancient kings; and many more would be tempted to adopt this
honorable genealogy, and to vindicate their hereditary claims, which
had been suspended by the usurpation of the Caesars. Their situation and
their hopes would dispose them to affect the dress, the language, and
the customs of their ancestors. If the _princes_ of Britain relapsed
into barbarism, while the _cities_ studiously preserved the laws and
manners of Rome, the whole island must have been gradually divided by
the distinction of two national parties; again broken into a thousand
subdivisions of war and faction, by the various provocations of interest
and resentment. The public strength, instead of being united against a
foreign enemy, was consumed in obscure and intestine quarrels; and the
personal merit which had placed a successful leader at the head of
his equals, might enable him to subdue the freedom of some neighboring
cities; and to claim a rank among the _tyrants_, who infested Britain
after the dissolution of the Roman government. III. The British
church might be composed of thirty or forty bishops, with an adequate
proportion of the inferior clergy; and the want of riches (for they seem
to have been poor ) would compel them to deserve the public esteem, by
a decent and exemplary behavior. The interest, as well as the temper
of the clergy, was favorable to the peace and union of their distracted
country: those salutary lessons might be frequently inculcated in their
popular discourses; and the episcopal synods were the only councils that
could pretend to the weight and authority of a national assembly. In
such councils, where the princes and magistrates sat promiscuously
with the bishops, the important affairs of the state, as well as of
the church, might be freely debated; differences reconciled, alliances
formed, contributions imposed, wise resolutions often concerted, and
sometimes executed; and there is reason to believe, that, in moments of
extreme danger, a _Pendragon_, or Dictator, was elected by the general
consent of the Britons. These pastoral cares, so worthy of the episcopal
character, were interrupted, howe