t
of their possessions, or considered their tenure as precarious. They
aspired to the same liberty and independence which they saw enjoyed
by their brethren on the continent, and desired to restrain those
exorbitant prerogatives and arbitrary practices, which the necessities
of war and the violence of conquest had at first obliged them to indulge
in their monarch. That memory also of a more equal government under the
Saxon princes, which remained with the English, diffused still further
the spirit of liberty, and made the barons both desirous of more
independence to themselves and willing to indulge it to the people.
And it was not long ere this secret revolution in the sentiments of
men produced, first violent convulsions in the state, then an evident
alteration in the maxims of government.

The history of all the preceding kings of England since the conquest,
gives evident proofs of the disorders attending the feudal institutions;
the licentiousness of the barons, their spirit of rebellion against the
prince and laws, and of animosity against each other: the conduct of the
barons in the transmarine dominions of those monarchs, afforded perhaps
still more flagrant instances of these convulsions; and the history of
France, during several ages, consists almost entirely of narrations
of this nature. The cities, during the continuance of this violent
government, could neither be very numerous nor populous; and there occur
instances which seem to evince that, though these are always the
first seat of law and liberty, their police was in general loose and
irregular, and exposed to the same disorders with those by which the
country was generally infested. It was a custom in London for great
numbers, to the amount of a hundred or more, the sons and relations of
considerable citizens, to form themselves into a licentious confederacy,
to break into rich houses and plunder them, to rob and murder the
passengers, and to commit with impunity all sorts of disorder. By these
crimes it had become so dangerous to walk the streets by night, that
the citizens durst no more venture abroad after sunset, than if they
had been exposed to the incursions of a public enemy. The brother of the
earl of Ferrars had been murdered by some of those nocturnal rioters;
and the death of so eminent a person, which was much more regarded than
that of many thousands of an inferior station, so provoked the king,
that he swore vengeance against the criminals