prince into measures which were both criminal in themselves and were the cause of further crimes, from which his grandson’s conduct was happily exempted. This prince, like most of his predecessors of the Norman line, except Stephen, passed more of his time on the Continent than in this island; he was surrounded with the English gentry and nobility when abroad; the French gentry and nobility attended him when he resided in England; both nations acted in the government as if they were the same people; and, on many occasions, the legislatures seem not to have been distinguished. As the king and all the English barons were of French extraction, the manners of that people acquired the ascendant, and were regarded as the models of imitation. All foreign improvements, therefore, such as they were, in literature and politeness, in laws and arts, seem now to have been, in a good measure, transplanted into England, and that kingdom was become little inferior, in all the fashionable accomplishments, to any of its neighbors on the Continent. The more homely but more sensible manners and principles of the Saxons were exchanged for the affectations of chivalry and the subtleties of school philosophy; the feudal ideas of civil government, the Romish sentiments in religion, had taken entire possession of the people; by the former, the sense of submission toward princes was somewhat diminished in the barons; by the latter, the devoted attachment to papal authority was much augmented among the clergy. The Norman and other foreign families established in England had now struck deep root, and being entirely incorporated with the people, whom at first they oppressed and despised, they no longer thought that they needed the protection of the crown for the enjoyment 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.