heard from the pulpit of Mainwaring. The Whigs discovered
expressions as bold and severe as any that resounded from the
judgment seat of Bradshaw. One set of writers adduced numerous
instances in which Kings had extorted money without the authority
of Parliament. Another set cited cases in which the Parliament
had assumed to itself the power of inflicting punishment on
Kings. Those who saw only one half of the evidence would have
concluded that the Plantagenets were as absolute as the Sultans
of Turkey: those who saw only the other half would have concluded
that the Plantagenets had as little real power as the Doges of
Venice; and both conclusions would have been equally remote from
the truth.

The old English government was one of a class of limited
monarchies which sprang up in Western Europe during the middle
ages, and which, notwithstanding many diversities, bore to one
another a strong family likeness. That there should have been
such a likeness is not strange The countries in which those
monarchies arose had been provinces of the same great civilised
empire, and had been overrun and conquered, about the same time,
by tribes of the same rude and warlike nation. They were members
of the same great coalition against Islam. They were in communion
with the same superb and ambitious Church. Their polity naturally
took the same form. They had institutions derived partly from
imperial Rome, partly from papal Rome, partly from the old
Germany. All had Kings; and in all the kingly office became by
degrees strictly hereditary. All had nobles bearing titles which
had originally indicated military rank. The dignity of
knighthood, the rules of heraldry, were common to all. All had
richly endowed ecclesiastical establishments, municipal