turbulent retainers. With such elements of
discord, it was impossible for good order long to be maintained. The
nobles quarrelled, and their retainers were not backward in taking up
the quarrel. The feudatory knights had disagreements among themselves,
and carried on petty war against each other. Confederated bands of
lawless men traversed the country, seizing property wherever it could be
found, outraging women, taking prisoners and ransoming them, and making
war against all who opposed their progress or were personally obnoxious
to them. Castles and estates were seized and held on some imaginary
claim. It was in vain to appeal to the laws. Justice was powerless to
correct abuses or aid the oppressed. Powerful barons gave countenance to
the marauders, that their services might be secured in the event of a
quarrel with their neighbors; nor did they hesitate to share in the
booty. Might everywhere triumphed over right, and the "law of the
strong arm" superseded the ordinances of the civil power.

The condition of the Church was no better than that of the State. Fraud,
corruption, and oppression sat in high places in both. The prelates had
their swarms of armed retainers, and ruled their flocks with the sword
as well as the crosier. The monasteries, with but few exceptions, were
the haunts of extravagance and sensuality, instead of the abodes of
self-denying virtue and learning. The portly abbot, his black robe edged
with costly fur and clasped with a silver girdle, his peaked shoes in
the height of the fashion, and wearing a handsomely ornamented dagger or
hunting-knife, rode out accompanied by a pack of trained hunting-dogs,
the golden bells on his bridle

"Gingeling in the whistling wind as clear
And eke as loud as doth the chapel bell."

The monks who were unable to indulge their taste for the chase sought
recompense in unrestrained indulgence at the table. The land was
overspread with an innumerable swarm of begging friars, who fawned on
the great, flattered the wealthy, and despoiled the poor. Another class
traversed the country, selling pardons "come from Rome all hot," and
extolling the virtues of their relics and the power of their indulgences
with the eloquence of a quack vending his nostrums. Bishops held civil
offices under the king, and priests acted as stewards in great men's
houses. Simony possessed the Church, and the ministers of religion again
sold their Master for silver.

The domestic and s