These feudal notions, which placed the moral obligation of allegiance very low, acting under a weighty pressure from the real strength of the crown, were favourable to constitutional liberty. The great vassals of France and Germany aimed at living independently on their fiefs, with no further concern for the rest than as useful allies having a common interest against the crown. But in England, as there was no prospect of throwing off subjection, the barons endeavoured only to lighten its burthen, fixing limits to prerogative by law, and securing their observation by parliamentary remonstrances or by dint of arms. Hence, as all rebellions in England were directed only to coerce the government, or at the utmost to change the succession of the crown, without the smallest tendency to separation, they did not impair the national strength nor destroy the character of the constitution. In all these contentions it is remarkable that the people and clergy sided with the nobles against the throne. No individuals are so popular with the monkish annalists, who speak the language of the populace, as Simon earl of Leicester, Thomas earl of Lancaster, and Thomas duke of Gloucester, all turbulent opposers of the royal authority, and probably little deserving of their panegyrics. Very few English historians of the middle ages are advocates of prerogative. This may be ascribed both to the equality of our laws and to the interest which the aristocracy found in courting popular favour, when committed against so formidable an adversary as the king. And even now, when the stream that once was hurried along gullies and dashed down precipices hardly betrays upon its broad and tranquil bosom the motion that actuates it, it must still be accounted a singular happiness of our constitution that, all ranks graduating harmoniously into one another, the interests of peers and commoners are radically interwoven; each in a certain sense distinguishable, but not balanced like opposite weights, not separated like discordant fluids, not to be secured by insolence or jealousy, but by mutual adherence and reciprocal influences. [Sidenote: Influence which the state of manners gave the nobility.]