tice in their proceedings; yet those barons, when discontented, came
to parliament with an armed force, constrained the king to assent
to their measures, and without any trial, or witness, or conviction,
passed, from the pretended notoriety of facts, an act of banishment
or attainder against the minister, which, on the first revolution of
fortune, was reversed by like expedients. The parliament during factious
times was nothing but the organ of present power. Though the persons of
whom it was chiefly composed seemed to enjoy great independence, they
really possessed no true liberty; and the security of each individual
among them was not so much derived from the general protection of
law, as from his own private power and that of his confederates. The
authority of the monarch, though far from absolute, was irregular, and
might often reach him: the current of a faction might overwhelm him:
a hundred considerations of benefits and injuries, friendships and
animosities, hopes and fears, were able to influence his conduct; and
amidst these motives, a regard to equity, and law, and justice was
commonly, in those rude ages, of little moment. Nor did any man
entertain thoughts of opposing present power, who did not deem himself
strong enough to dispute the field with it by force, and was not
prepared to give battle to the sovereign or the ruling party.

Before I conclude this reign, I cannot forbear making another remark,
drawn from the detail of losses given in by the elder Spenser;
particularly the great quantity of salted meat which he had in his
larder, six hundred bacons, eighty carcasses of beef, six hundred
muttons. We may observe, that the outrage of which he complained began
after the third of May, or the eleventh, new style, as we learn from the
same paper. It is easy, therefore, to conjecture what a vast store of
the same kind he must have laid up at the beginning of winter; and we
may draw a new conclusion with regard to the wretched state of ancient
husbandry, which could not provide subsistence for the cattle during
winter, even in such a temperate climate as the south of England; for
Spenser had but one manor so far north as Yorkshire. There being few or
no enclosures, except perhaps for deer, no sown grass, little hay, and
no other resource for feeding cattle, the barons, as well as the people,
were obliged to kill and salt their oxen and sheep in the beginning of
winter, before they became lean upon the common p