The circumstances attending the invasions of the Danes would also serve much to increase the power of the principal nobility. Those freebooters made unexpected inroads on all quarters, and there was a necessity that each county should resist them by its own force, and under the conduct of its own nobility and its own magistrates. For the same reason that a general war, managed by the united efforts of the whole state commonly augments the power of the crown, those private wars and inroads turned to the advantage of the aldermen and nobles. Among that military and turbulent people, so averse to commerce and the arts, and so little inured to industry, justice was commonly very ill administered, and great oppression and violence seem to have prevailed. These disorders would be increased by the exorbitant power of the aristocracy; and would, in their turn, contribute to increase it. Men, not daring to rely on the guardianship of the laws, were obliged to devote themselves to the service of some chieftain, whose orders they followed even to the disturbance of the government, or the injury of their fellow-citizens, and who afforded them, in return, protection from any insult or injustice by strangers. Hence we find, by the extracts which Dr. Brady has given us from Domesday, that almost all the inhabitants, even of towns, had placed themselves under the clientship of some particular nobleman, whose patronage they purchased by annual payments, and whom they were obliged to consider as their sovereign, more than the king himself, or even the legislature.[B] [A] Roger Hoveden, giving the reason why William the Conqueror made Cospatric earl of Northumberland, says, “Nam ex materno sanguine attinebat ad eum honor illius comitatus. Erat enim ex matre Algitha, filia Uthredi comitis.” See also Sim. Dunelm. p. 205. We see in those instances the same tendency towards rendering offices hereditary which took place, during a more early period, on the continent; and which had already produced there its full effect. [B] Brady’s Treatise of Boroughs, p. 3, 4, 5, etc. The case was the same with the freemen in the country. See Pref. to his Hist. p. 8, 9, 10, etc.