well by the bounty of kings, as the arts and industry of the clergy, winning upon the devotion of their new converts: and power, by the common maxim, always accompanying property, the ecclesiastics began soon to grow considerable, to form themselves into a body, and to call assemblies or synods by their own authority, or sometimes by the command of their princes, who in an ignorant age had a mighty veneration for their learning as well as piety. By such degrees the Church arrived at length, by very justifiable steps, to have her share in the commonwealth, and became a third estate in most kingdoms of Europe; but these assemblies, as we have already observed, were seldom called in England before the reign of this prince, nor even then were always composed after the same manner: neither does it appear from the writers who lived nearest to that age, that the people had any representative at all, beside the barons and other nobles, who did not sit in those assemblies by virtue of their birth or creation, but of the lands or baronies they held. So that the present constitution of the English Parliament hath, by many degrees and alterations, been modelled to the frame it is now in; which alterations I shall observe in the succeeding reigns as exactly as I can discover them by a diligent search into the histories of the several ages, without engaging in the controverted points of law about this matter, which would rather perplex the reader than inform him. 1116. But to return, Louis the Gross King of France, a valiant and active prince, in the flower of his age, succeeding to that crown that Robert was deprived of, Normandy, grew jealous of the neighbourhood and power of King Henry, and begun early to entertain designs either of subduing that duchy to himself, or at least of making a considerable party against the King in favour of William son of Robert, whom for that end he had taken into his protection. Pursuant to these intentions, he soon found an occasion for a quarrel: expostulating with Henry, that he had broken his promise by not doing homage for the Duchy of Normandy, as well as by neglecting to raze the castle of Gisors,[22] which was built on the French side of the river Epte, the common boundary between both dominions. [Footnote 22: Father Daniel says that for some years past it had been agreed that Gisors "should be sequestered in the hands of a lord called Pagan or Payen, who was to receive into it neither English or Norman, nor French troops; and in case it should fall into the hands of either of the two kings, it was stipulated, that the walls should be razed within the space of forty days" ("Hist. of France," i. 369). [W.S.J.] ]