of the shire were sometimes consulted with them.  But the barons and knighthood were not fated to be drawn into a single body whose weight would have given an aristocratic impress to the constitution.  Gradually, through causes with which we are imperfectly acquainted, the knights of the shire drifted from their older connexion with the baronage into so close and intimate a union with the representatives of the towns that at the opening of the reign of Edward the Third the two orders are found grouped formally together, under the name of “The Commons.”  It is difficult to overestimate the importance of this change.  Had Parliament remained broken up into its four orders of clergy, barons, knights, and citizens, its power would have been neutralized at every great crisis by the jealousies and difficulty of co-operation among its component parts.  A permanent union of the knighthood and the baronage on the other hand would have converted Parliament into the mere representative of an aristocratic caste, and would have robbed it of the strength which it has drawn from its connexion with the great body of the commercial classes.  The new attitude of the knighthood, their social connexion as landed gentry with the baronage, their political union with the burgesses, really welded the three orders into one, and gave that unity of feeling and action to our Parliament on which its power has ever since mainly depended.

[Sidenote:  Scotch War]

The weight of the two Houses was seen in their settlement of the new government by the nomination of a Council with Earl Henry of Lancaster at its head.  The Council had at once to meet fresh difficulties in the North.  The truce so recently made ceased legally with Edward’s deposition; and the withdrawal of his royal title in further offers of peace warned Bruce of the new temper of the English rulers.  Troops gathered on either side, and the English Council sought to pave the way for an attack by dividing Scotland against itself.  Edward Balliol, a son of the former king John, was solemnly received as a vassal-king of Scotland at the English court.  Robert was disabled by leprosy from taking the field in person, but the insult roused him to hurl his marauders again over the border under Douglas and Sir Thomas Randolph.  The Scotch army has been painted for us by an eye-witness whose description is embodied in the work of Jehan le Bel.  “It consisted of four thousand men-at-arms, knights, and esquires, well mounted, besides twenty thousand men bold and hardy, armed after the manner of their country, and mounted upon little hackneys that are never tied up or dressed, but turned immediately after the day’s march to pasture on the heath or in the fields....  They bring no carriages with them on account of the mountains they have to pass in Northumberland, neither do they carry with them any provisions of bread or wine, for their habits of sobriety are such in time of war that they will live for a long time on flesh half-sodden