vernment.
Had he possessed the talents of gaining, and still more those of
overawing, his great barons, he might have escaped all the misfortunes
of his reign, and been allowed to carry much further his oppressions
over the people, if he really was guilty of any, without their daring
to rebel, or even to murmur against him. But when the grandees were
tempted, by his want of prudence and of vigor, to resist his authority,
and execute the most violent enterprises upon him, he was naturally led
to seek an opportunity of retaliation: justice was neglected; the lives
of the chief nobility were sacrificed; and all these enormities seem
to have proceeded less from a settled design of establishing arbitrary
power, than from the insolence of victory, and the necessities of the
king's situation. The manners indeed of the age were the chief source of
such violence: laws, which were feebly executed in peaceable times, lost
all their authority during public convulsions: both parties were alike
guilty: or, if any difference may be remarked between them, we shall
find, that the authority of the crown, being more legal, was commonly
carried, when it prevailed, to less desperate extremities, than was that
of the aristocracy.

On comparing the conduct and events of this reign with those of the
preceding, we shall find equal reason to admire Edward and to blame
Richard; but the circumstance of opposition, surely, will not lie in the
strict regard paid by the former to national privileges, and the neglect
of them by the latter. On the contrary, the prince of small abilities,
as he felt his want of power, seems to have been more moderate in this
respect than the other. Every parliament assembled during the reign of
Edward, remonstrates against the exertion of some arbitrary prerogative
or other: we hear not any complaints of that kind during the reign of
Richard, till the assembling of his last parliament, which was summoned
by his inveterate enemies, which dethroned him, which framed their
complaints during the time of the most furious convultions, and whose
testimony must therefore have, on that account, much less authority
with every equitable judge.[*] Both these princes experienced the
encroachments of the great upon their authority. Edward, reduced to
necessities, was obliged to make an express bargain with his parliament
and to sell some of his prerogatives for present supply; but as they
were acquainted with his genius and capacity,