Parliament with all the rights and privileges of the same, saving
that from thenceforth the kings had found out a way whereby to
help themselves against the mighty by creatures of their own, and
such as had no other support but by their favor.. By which means
this government, being indeed the masterpiece of modern prudence,
has been cried up to the skies, as the only invention whereby at
once to maintain the sovereignty of a prince and the liberty of
the people. Whereas, indeed, it has been no other than a
wrestling-match, wherein the nobility, as they have been
stronger, have thrown the King, or the King, if he has been
stronger, has thrown the nobility; or the King, where he has had
a nobility, and could bring them to his party has thrown the
people, as in France and Spain; or the people, where they have
had no nobility, or could get them to be of their party, have
thrown the King, as in Holland, and of later times in Oceana.
But they came not to this strength, but by such approaches
and degrees as remain to be further opened. For whereas the
barons by writ, as the sixty-four abbots and thirty-six priors
that were so called, were but pro temp ore, Dicotome, being the
twelfth king from the Conquest, began to make barons by
letters-patent, with the addition of honorary pensions for the
maintenance of their dignities to them and their heirs; so that
they were hands in the King's purse and had no shoulders for his
throne. Of these, when the house of peers came once to be full,
as will be seen hereafter, there was nothing more empty. But for
the present, the throne having other supports, they did not hurt
that so much as they did the King; for the old barons, taking
Dicotome's prodigality to such creatures so ill that they deposed
him, got the trick of it, and never gave over setting up and
pulling down their kings according to their various interests,
and that faction of the White and Red, into which they have been
thenceforth divided, till Panurgus, the eighteenth king from the
Conquest, was more by their favor than his right advanced to the
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