a subject, appeared a narrow basis of power for a prince who was
placed at the head of so great a community. The royal demesnes
consisted only of Paris, Orleans, Estampes, Compeigne, and a few
places scattered over the northern provinces: in the rest of the
kingdom, the prince's authority was rather nominal than real: the
vassals were accustomed, nay entitled, to make war, without his
permission, on each other: they were even entitled, if they conceived
themselves injured, to turn their arms against their sovereign: they
exercised all civil jurisdiction, without appeal, over their tenants
and inferior vassals: their common jealousy of the crown easily united
them against any attempt on their exorbitant privileges; and as some
of them had attained the power and authority of great princes, even
the smallest baron was sure of immediate and effectual protection.
Besides six ecclesiastical peerages, which, with the other immunities
of the church, cramped extremely the general execution of justice,
there were six lay peerages, Burgundy, Normandy, Guienne, Flanders,
Toulouse, and Champaigne, which formed very extensive and puissant
sovereignties. And though the combination all those princes and
barons could, on urgent occasions, muster a mighty power; yet it was
very difficult to set that great machine in movement; it was almost
impossible to preserve harmony in its parts; a sense of common
interest alone could, for a time, unite them under their sovereign
against a common enemy; but if the king attempted to turn the force of
the community against any mutinous vassal, the same sense of common
interest made the others oppose themselves to the success of his
pretensions. Lewis the Gross, the last sovereign, marched at one time
to his frontiers against the Germans at the head of an army of two
hundred thousand men; but a petty lord of Corbeil, of Puiset, of
Couci, was able, at another period, to set that prince at defiance,
and to maintain open war against him.

The authority of the English monarch was much more extensive within
his kingdom, and the disproportion much greater between him and the
most powerful of his vassals. His demesnes and revenue were large,
compared to the greatness of his state: he was accustomed to levy
arbitrary exactions on his subjects; his courts of judicature extended
their jurisdiction into every part of the kingdom: he could crush by
his power, or by a judicial sentence, well or ill founded, any