arate
jurisdiction.[**] An ancient French writer calls them a new and wicked
device, to procure liberty to slaves, and encourage them in shaking off
the dominion of their masters.[***] The famous charter, as it is called,
of the Conqueror to the city of London, though granted at a time when he
assumed the appearance of gentleness and lenity, is nothing but a letter
of protection, and a declaration that the citizens should not be treated
as slaves.[****] By the English feudal law, the superior lord
was prohibited from marrying his female ward to a burgess or a
villain;[*****] so near were these two ranks esteemed to each other,
and so much inferior to the nobility and gentry. Besides possessing the
advantages of birth, riches, civil powers and privileges, the nobles
and gentlemen alone were armed a circumstance which gave them a mighty
superiority, in an age when nothing but the military profession
was honorable, and when the loose execution of laws gave so much
encouragement to open violence, and rendered it so decisive in all
disputes and controversies.[*****]

[* "Liber homo" anciently signified a gentleman:
for scarce any one beside was entirely free. Spel. Gloss, in
verbo.]

[** Du Gauge's Gloss, in verb. Commune,
Communitas.]

[*** Guibertus, de vita sua, lib. iii. cap. 7.]

[**** Stat. of Merton, 1235, esp. 6.]

[***** Holingshed. vol. iii. p. 15.]

[****** Madox, Baron. Angl. p. 19.]

The great similarity among the feudal governments of Europe is well
known to every man that has any acquaintance with ancient history: and
the antiquaries of all foreign countries, where the question was never
embarrassed by party disputes, have allowed that the commons came very
late to be admitted to a share in the legislative power. In Normandy
particularly, whose constitution was most likely to be William's
model in raising his new fabric of English government, the states were
entirely composed of the clergy and nobility; and the first incorporated
boroughs or communities of that duchy were Rouen and Falaise, which
enjoyed their privileges by a grant of Philip Augustus in the year
1207.[**] All the ancient English historians, when they mention the
great council of the nation, call it an assembly of the baronage,
nobility, or great men; and none of their expressions, though several
hundred passages might be produced, can, without the utmost violence,
be tortured to a meaning