Most, if not all the great gentry of England, in these parts, and throughout the whole kingdom, at or within a few years after the conquest, were deprived of their power, stript of their possessions, and completely humbled. Great numbers of them lost their lives under the charge of treason, sedition, or other crimes. Those who escaped with their lives were reduced to poverty, and obliged to occupy such humble stations as they could not one day have thought of without disdain. {340} This memorable revolution, (as such revolutions mostly do,) chiefly affected the higher orders. It affected them, indeed, with a vengeance. The middle classes seem to have felt but little of it, at least compared with their superiors. The lower orders felt it still less, or, perhaps, not at all. They were _slaves_ before, and so they continued for several ages after, seemingly without any material change. Nor does their hard condition appear to have been at all ameliorated till after the civil wars broke out between the rival houses of York and Lancaster. The fatal effects of those wars in reducing the numbers of each party, obliged the leaders (as has been before observed) to turn their attention to the lower orders, that is to the real _slaves_, great numbers of whom were then emancipated, to fill up the thinned and reduced ranks of their respective armies. And this seems to have been the only good that attended those bloody and destructive wars. It certainly proved of great national benefit, although, like the reformation of Henry VIII, it sprung from no virtuous or honourable motive. The proverb says, It is an ill wind that blows no good; and it may be very safely said, that seldom, if ever, have any calamitous occurrences been known, but what have been productive of some real benefit. This, doubtless, is owing to the overruling hand of providence, and ought to be acknowledged as such.