Previous to the Reign of Henry the Seventh, the Peers defended their property and their privileges through the means of armed Retainers.  That politic Prince, by laws directed against the number of these Retainers; by bringing in use the making of leases; and by statutes framed for the purpose of ’unfettering more easily the Estates of his powerful Nobility, and laying them more open to alienation,’ prepared the way for reducing the power of an Order which had been too strong for the Crown.  The operation of these laws, in course of time, would have brought the Peers, as an Estate of the Realm, to utter insignificance, had not the practice of supplying the Peerage with new Members, through creation by patent without intervention of Parliament, been substituted for the only mode previously tolerated by the great Barons for the exercise of this royal prerogative, namely, by authority of Parliament.  Thus did the consequence of the Order, notwithstanding the diminution of its power, continue to be maintained;—­rich Commoners and Royal Favourites being introduced to supply the places of extinguished Families, or those whose wealth had fallen into decay.  This prerogative grew without immoderate exercise till the close of the Reign of Queen Elizabeth.  The first of the Stuarts employed it lavishly, not considering the changes that had taken place.  His predecessors of the House of Tudor, by breaking down the feudal strength of the Lords, and by transfer (through the Reformation) of the Spiritual supremacy to themselves as temporal Sovereigns, had come into possession of a superfluity of power which enabled the Crown to supply what was wanted in the Peers for their own support.  But through remote operation of the same causes, the Commons were rising fast into consequence, with a puritanical spirit of republicanism spreading rapidly amongst them.  Hence the augmentation of the number of Peers, made by James the First, notwithstanding the addition of property carried by it to the Upper House, did not add sufficient strength to that body to compensate for the distastefulness of the measure to the people; and, as far as the property of the New Peers was but the creature of prodigal grants from the Crown, the conjoint strength of the two Estates received no increase.  In the meanwhile surrenders were made of the power of the Crown with infatuated facility; till the Commons became so strong that the right of creating Boroughs, being openly disputed, was almost abandoned; and the speedy consequence of the whole was that the two parliamentary Estates of King and Lords fell before the intemperance of the third.  After the restoration, the disputes about the bounds of Liberty and Prerogative were revived; but Prerogative was gradually abandoned for the less obnoxious and less obvious operations of influence.  The numerous creations of Peers were complained of; but, whatever motive might have governed those creations, they were justified by the necessity of things.