s of their order. The king, after
taking in vain this humiliating step, was obliged to have recourse to
arms, and to enlist such auxiliaries as are the usual resource of
tyrants, and have seldom been employed by so wise and just a monarch.
[FN [x] Epist. Petri Bles. epist. 136. in Biblioth. Patr. tom. xxiv.
p. 1048. His words are, VESTRAE JURISDICTIONIS EST REGNUM ANGLIAE, ET
QUANTUM AD FEUDATORII JURIS OBLIGATIONEM, VOBIS DUNTAXAT OBNOXIUS
TENEOR. The same strange paper is in Rymer, vol. i. p. 35, and
Trivet, vol. i. p. 62.]

The loose government which prevailed in all the states of Europe, the
many private wars carried on among the neighbouring nobles, and the
impossibility of enforcing any general execution of the laws, had
encouraged a tribe of banditti to disturb every where the public
peace, to infest the highways, to pillage the open country, and to
brave all the efforts of the civil magistrate, and even the
excommunications of the church, which were fulminated against them
[y]. Troops of them were sometimes enlisted in the service of one
prince or baron, sometimes in that of another: they often acted in an
independent manner, under leaders of their own: the peaceable and
industrious inhabitants, reduced to poverty by their ravages, were
frequently obliged, for subsistence, to betake themselves to a like
disorderly course of life; and a continual intestine war, pernicious
to industry, as well as to the execution of justice, was thus carried
on in the bowels of every kingdom [z]. Those desperate ruffians
received the name sometimes of Brabancons, sometimes of Routiers or
Cottereaux; but for what reason is not agreed by historians; and they
formed a kind of society or government among themselves, which set at
defiance the rest of mankind. The greatest monarchs were not ashamed,
on occasion, to have recourse to their assistance; and as their habits
of war and depredation had given them experience, hardiness, and
courage, they generally composed the most formidable part of those
armies which decided the political quarrels of princes. Several of
them were enlisted among the forces levied by Henry's enemies [a]; but
the great treasures amassed by that prince enabled him to engage more
numerous troops of them in his service; and the situation of his
affairs rendered even such banditti the only forces on whose fidelity
he could repose any confidence. His licentious barons, disgusted with
a vigilant government, w