of the sovereign.[**] He was ever engaged in hereditary or
personal animosities or confederacies with his neighbors, and often
gave protection to all desperate adventurers and criminals, who could be
useful in serving his violent purposes. He was able alone, in times
of tranquillity, to obstruct the execution of justice within his
territories; and by combining with a few malecontent barons of high rank
and power, he could throw the state into convulsions. And, on the whole,
though the royal authority was confined within bounds, and often within
very narrow ones, yet the check was Irregular, and frequently the source
of great disorders; nor was it derived from the liberty of the people,
but from the military power of many petty tyrants, who were equally
dangerous to the prince and oppressive to the subject.

[* Dugd. Jurid. Orig. p. 26.]

[** Madox, Hist. of the Exch. p. 520.]

The power of the church was another rampart against royal authority; but
this defence was also the cause of many mischiefs and inconveniencies.
The dignified clergy, perhaps, were not so prone to immediate violence
as the barons; but as they pretended to a total independence on the
state, and could always cover themselves with the appearances of
religion, they proved, in one respect, an obstruction to the settlement
of the kingdom, and to the regular execution of the laws. The policy
of the Conqueror was in this particular liable to some exception. He
augmented the superstitious veneration for Rome, to which that age was
so much inclined, and he broke those bands of connection which, in the
Saxon times, had preserved a union between the lay and the clerical
orders. He prohibited the bishops from sitting in the county courts; he
allowed ecclesiastical causes to be tried in spiritual courts only;[**]
and he so much exalted the power of the clergy, that of sixty thousand
two hundred and fifteen knights' fees, into which he divided England,
he placed no less than twenty-eight thousand and fifteen under the
church.[**]

The right of primogeniture was introduced with the feudal law; an
institution which is hurtful by producing and maintaining an unequal
division of private propeny; but is advantageous in another respect, by
accustoming the people to a preference in favor of the eldest son, and
thereby preventing a partition or disputed succession in the monarchy.
The Normans introduced the use of surnames, which tend to preserve the
knowl