whole
people to a state of vassalage under the king or barons, and even the
greater part of them to a state of real slavery, the necessity, also,
of intrusting great power in the hands of a prince, who was to maintain
military dominion over a vanquished nation, had engaged the Norman
barons to submit to a more severe and absolute prerogative than that
to which men of their rank, in other feudal governments, were commonly
subjected. The power of the crown, once raised to a high pitch, was not
easily reduced; and the nation, during the course of a hundred and fifty
years, was governed by an authority unknown, in the same degree, to all
the kingdoms founded by the northern conquerors. Henry I., that he might
allure the people to give an exclusion to his elder brother Robert,
had granted them a charter, favorable in many particulars to their
liberties; Stephen had renewed the grant; Henry II. had confirmed it:
but the concessions of all these princes had still remained without
effect; and the same unlimited, at least in regular authority, continued
to be exercised both by them and their successors. The only happiness
was, that arms were never yet ravished from the hands of the barons and
people: the nation, by a great confederacy, might still vindicate its
liberties: and nothing was more likely than the character, conduct, and
fortunes of the reigning prince, to produce such a general combination
against him. Equally odious and contemptible, both in public and
private life, he affronted the barons by his insolence, dishonored their
families by his gallantries, enraged them by his tyranny, and
gave discontent to all ranks of men by his endless exactions and
impositions.[*] The effect of these lawless practices had already
appeared in the general demand made by the barons of a restoration of
their privileges; and after he had reconciled himself to the pope,
by abandoning the independence of the kingdom, he appeared to all his
subjects in so mean a light, that they universally thought they might
with safety and honor insist upon their pretensions.

But nothing forwarded this confederacy so much as the concurrence of
Langton, archbishop of Canterbury; a man whose memory, though he was
obtruded on the nation by a palpable encroachment of the see of Rome,
ought always to be respected by the English. This prelate, whether he
was moved by the generosity of his nature and his affection to public
good; or had entertained an animosit