necessity that each county should resist them by its own force, and
under the conduct of its own nobility and its own magistrates. For
the same reason that a general war, managed by the united efforts of
the state, commonly augments the power of the crown; those private
wars and inroads turned to the advantage of the aldermen and nobles.

Among that military and turbulent people, so averse to commerce and
the arts, and so little inured to industry, justice was commonly very
ill administered, and great oppression and violence seem to have
prevailed. These disorders would be increased by the exorbitant power
of the aristocracy; and would, in their turn, contribute to increase
it. Men, not daring to rely on the guardianship of the laws, were
obliged to devote themselves to the service of some chieftain, whose
orders they followed, even to the disturbance of the government, or
the injury of their fellow-citizens, and who afforded them, in return,
protection from any insult or injustice by strangers. Hence, we find
by the extracts which Dr. Brady has given us from Domesday, that
almost all the inhabitants, even of towns, had placed themselves under
the clientship of some particular nobleman, whose patronage they
purchased by annual payments, and whom they were obliged to consider
as their sovereign, more than the king himself, or even the
legislature [k]. A client, though a freeman, was supposed so much to
belong to his patron, that his murderer was obliged by law to pay a
fine to the latter, as a compensation for his loss; in like manner as
he paid a fine to the master for the murder of his slave [l]. Men who
were of a more considerable rank, but not powerful enough each to
support himself by his own independent authority, entered into formal
confederacies with each other, and composed a kind of separate
community, which rendered itself formidable to all aggressors. Dr.
Hickes has preserved a curious Saxon bond of this kind, which he calls
a SODALITIUM, and which contains many particulars characteristical of
the manners and customs of the times [m]. All the associates are
there said to be gentlemen of Cambridgeshire, and they swear before
the holy relics to observe their confederacy, and to be faithful to
each other: they promise to bury any of the associates who dies, in
whatever place he had appointed; to contribute to his funeral charges,
and to attend at his interment; and whoever is wanting in this last
duty,