**** Coke's Comment on Magna Charta, chap. 17.

It must be acknowledged that the influence of the prelates and the
clergy was often of great service to the public.

Though the religion of that age can merit no better name than that of
superstition, it served to unite together a body of men who had great
sway over the people, and who kept the community from falling to pieces,
by the factions and independent power of the nobles. And what was of
great importance, it threw a mighty authority into the hands of men, who
by their profession were averse to arms and violence, who tempered by
their mediation the general disposition towards military enterprises;
and who still maintained, even amidst the shock of arms, those secret
links, without which it is impossible for human society to subsist.

Notwithstanding these intestine commotions in England, and the
precarious authority of the crown, Henry was obliged to carry on war
in France; and he employed to that purpose the fifteenth which had been
granted him by parliament. Lewis VIII., who had succeeded to his father
Philip, instead of complying with Henry's claim, who demanded the
restitution of Normandy and the other provinces wrested from England,
made an irruption into Poictou, took Rochelle[*] after a long siege,
and seemed determined to expel the English from the few provinces
which still remained to them. Henry sent over his uncle, the earl of
Salisbury, together with his brother, Prince Richard, to whom he had
granted the earldom of Cornwall, which had escheated to the crown.
Salisbury stopped the progress of Lewis's arms, and retained the
Poictevin and Gascon vassals in their allegiance: but no military action
of any moment was performed on either side. The earl of Cornwall, after
two years' stay in Guienne, returned to England.

* Rymer, vol i. p. 269. Trivet, p. 179.

{1227.} This prince was nowise turbulent or factious in his disposition:
his ruling passion was to amass money, in which he succeeded so well as
to become the richest subject in Christendom: yet his attention to gain
threw him sometimes into acts of violence, and gave disturbance to
the government. There was a manor, which had formerly belonged to the
earldom of Cornwall but had been granted to Waleran de Ties, before
Richard had been invested with that dignity, and while the earldom
remained in the crown. Richard claimed this manor, and expelled the
proprietor by force: Waleran complained: