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exercised the rights of peace and war. The gardens and villas, which exhibited some faint imitation of Italian elegance, would soon be converted into strong castles, the refuge, in time of danger, of the adjacent country: ^184 the produce of the land was applied to purchase arms and horses; to maintain a military force of slaves, of peasants, and of licentious followers; and the chieftain might assume, within his own domain, the powers of a civil magistrate. Several of these British chiefs might be the genuine posterity of ancient kings; and many more would be tempted to adopt this honorable genealogy, and to vindicate their hereditary claims, which had been suspended by the usurpation of the Caesars. ^185 Their situation and their hopes would dispose them to affect the dress, the language, and the customs of their ancestors. If the princes of Britain relapsed into barbarism, while the cities studiously preserved the laws and manners of Rome, the whole island must have been gradually divided by the distinction of two national parties; again broken into a thousand subdivisions of war and faction, by the various provocations of interest and resentment. The public strength, instead of being united against a foreign enemy, was consumed in obscure and intestine quarrels; and the personal merit which had placed a successful leader at the head of his equals, might enable him to subdue the freedom of some neighboring cities; and to claim a rank among the tyrants, ^186 who infested Britain after the dissolution of the Roman government. III. The British church might be composed of thirty or forty bishops, ^187 with an adequate proportion of the inferior clergy; and the want of riches (for they seem to have been poor ^188) would compel them to deserve the public esteem, by a decent and exemplary behavior.

The interest, as well as the temper of the clergy, was favorable to the peace and union of their distracted country: those salutary lessons might be frequently inculcated in their popular discourses; and the episcopal synods were the only councils that could pretend to the weight and authority of a national assembly.

In such councils, where the princes and magistrates sat promiscuously with the bishops, the important affairs of the state, as well as of the church, might be freely debated; differences reconciled, alliances formed, contributions imposed, wise resolutions often concerted, and sometimes executed; and there is reason to believe, that, in moments of extreme danger, a Pendragon, or Dictator, was elected by the general consent of the Britons. These pastoral cares, so worthy of the episcopal character, were interrupted, however, by zeal and superstition; and the British clergy incessantly labored to eradicate the Pelagian heresy, which they abhorred, as the peculiar disgrace of their native country. ^189

[Footnote 179: I owe it to myself, and to historic truth, to declare, that some circumstances in this paragraph are founded only on conjecture and analogy. The stubbornness of our language has sometimes forced me to deviate from the conditional into the indicative mood.]

[Footnote 180: Zosimus, l. vi. p. 383.]

[Footnote 181: Two cities of Britain were municipia, nine colonies, ten Latii jure donatoe, twelve stipendiarioe of eminent note. This detail is taken from Richard of Cirencester, de Situ Britanniae, p. 36; and though it may not seem probable that he wrote from the Mss. of a Roman general, he shows a genuine knowledge of antiquity, very extraordinary for a monk of the fourteenth century.

Note: The names may be found in Whitaker's Hist. of Manchester vol. ii. 330, 379. Turner, Hist. Anglo-Saxons, i. 216. - M.]

[Footnote 182: See Maffei Verona Illustrata, part i. l. v. p. 83 - 106.]

[Footnote 183: Leges restituit, libertatemque reducit, Et servos famulis non sinit esse suis.

Itinerar. Rutil. l. i. 215.]

[Footnote 184: An inscription (apud Sirmond, Not. ad Sidon. Apollinar. p. 59) describes a castle, cum muris et portis, tutioni omnium, erected by Dardanus on his own estate, near