diligence and thrift realise a good estate, or who could attract
notice by his valour in a battle or a siege. It was regarded as
no disparagement for the daughter of a Duke, nay of a royal Duke,
to espouse a distinguished commoner. Thus, Sir John Howard
married the daughter of Thomas Mowbray Duke of Norfolk. Sir
Richard Pole married the Countess of Salisbury, daughter of
George, Duke of Clarence. Good blood was indeed held in high
respect: but between good blood and the privileges of peerage
there was, most fortunately for our country, no necessary
connection. Pedigrees as long, and scutcheons as old, were to be
found out of the House of Lords as in it. There were new men who
bore the highest titles. There were untitled men well known to be
descended from knights who had broken the Saxon ranks at
Hastings, and scaled the walls of Jerusalem. There were Bohuns,
Mowbrays, DeVeres, nay, kinsmen of the House of Plantagenet, with
no higher addition than that of Esquire, and with no civil
privileges beyond those enjoyed by every farmer and shopkeeper.
There was therefore here no line like that which in some other
countries divided the patrician from the plebeian. The yeoman was
not inclined to murmur at dignities to which his own children
might rise. The grandee was not inclined to insult a class into
which his own children must descend.

After the wars of York and Lancaster, the links which connected
the nobility and commonalty became closer and more numerous than
ever. The extent of destruction which had fallen on the old
aristocracy may be inferred from a single circumstance. In the
year 1451 Henry the Sixth summoned fifty-three temporal Lords to
parliament. The temporal Lords summoned by Henry the Seventh to
the parliament of 1485 were only twenty-nine, and of these