o him, while the king still kept theirs in his
own custody. There are said to have been eleven hundred and fifteen
castles at that time in England [c].
[FN [z] M. Paris, p. 220. [a] Chron. Dunst. vol. i. p. 137. [b] M.
Paris, p. 221. Chron. Dunst. vol. i. p. 138. [c] Coke's Comment. on
Magna Charta, chap. 17.]

It must be acknowledged that the influence of the prelates and the
clergy was often of great service to the public. Though the religion
of that age can merit no better name than that of superstition, it
served to unite together a body of men who had great sway over the
people, and who kept the community from falling to pieces, by the
factions and independent power of the nobles; and what was of great
importance, it threw a mighty authority into the hands of men, who, by
their profession, were averse to arms and violence; who tempered by
their mediation the general disposition towards military enterprises;
and who still maintained, even amidst the shock of arms, those secret
links, without which it is impossible for human society to subsist.

Notwithstanding these intestine commotions in England, and the
precarious authority of the crown, Henry was obliged to carry on war
in France; and he employed to that purpose the fifteenth which had
been granted him by Parliament. Lewis VIII., who had succeeded his
father Philip, instead of complying with Henry's claim, who demanded
the restitution of Normandy, and the other provinces wrested from
England, made an irruption into Poictou, took Rochelle [d], after a
long siege, and seemed determined to expel the English from the few
provinces which still remained to them. Henry sent over his uncle,
the Earl of Salisbury, together with his brother, Prince Richard, to
whom he had granted the earldom of Cornwall, which had escheated to
the crown. Salisbury stopped the progress of Lewis's arms, and
retained the Poictevin and Gascon vassals in their allegiance: but no
military action of any moment was performed on either side. The Earl
of Cornwall, after two years' stay in Guienne, returned to England.
[FN [d] Rymer, vol. i. p. 269. Trivet, p. 179.]

[MN 1227.] This prince was nowise turbulent or factious in his
disposition: his ruling passion was to amass money, in which he
succeeded so well as to become the richest subject in Christendom: yet
his attention to gain threw him sometimes into acts of violence; and
gave disturbance to the government. There was a manor