ights of peace and war. The gardens and villas, which
exhibited some faint imitation of Italian elegance, would soon be
converted into strong castles, the refuge, in time of danger, of the
adjacent country: [184] 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. [185] 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, [186] who infested Britain after the dissolution of the Roman
government. III. The British church might be composed of thirty or forty
bishops, [187] with an adequate proportion of the inferior clergy; and
the want of riches (for they seem to have been poor [188) 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 believ