of Sparta has many citizens both greater and of greater worth than he.”  In the battle of Crecy, the Prince of Wales, being then very young, had the vanguard committed to him:  the main stress of the battle happened to be in that place, which made the lords who were with him, finding themselves overmatched, send to King Edward to advance to their relief.  He inquired of the condition his son was in, and being answered that he was alive and on horseback:  “I should, then, do him wrong,” said the king, “now to go and deprive him of the honour of winning this battle he has so long and so bravely sustained; what hazard soever he runs, that shall be entirely his own”; and, accordingly, would neither go nor send, knowing that if he went, it would be said all had been lost without his succour, and that the honour of the victory would be wholly attributed to him.

              “Semper enim quod postremum adjectum est,
               id rem totam videtur traxisse.”

["For always that which is last added, seems to have accomplished
the whole affair.”—­Livy, xxvii. 45.]

Many at Rome thought, and would usually say, that the greatest of Scipio’s acts were in part due to Laelius, whose constant practice it was still to advance and support Scipio’s grandeur and renown, without any care of his own.  And Theopompus, king of Sparta, to him who told him the republic could not miscarry since he knew so well how to command, “Tis rather,” answered he, “because the people know so well how to obey.”  As women succeeding to peerages had, notwithstanding their sex, the privilege to attend and give their votes in the trials that appertained to the jurisdiction of peers; so the ecclesiastical peers, notwithstanding their profession, were obliged to attend our kings in their wars, not only with their friends and servants, but in their own persons.  As the Bishop of Beauvais did, who being with Philip Augustus at the battle of Bouvines, had a notable share in that action; but he did not think it fit for him to participate in the fruit and glory of that violent and bloody trade.  He with his own hand reduced several of the enemy that day to his mercy, whom he delivered to the first gentleman he met either to kill or receive them to quarter, referring the whole execution to this other hand; and he did this with regard to William, Earl of Salisbury, whom he gave up to Messire Jehan de Nesle.  With a like subtlety of conscience to that I have just named, he would kill but not wound, and for that reason ever fought with a mace.  And a certain person of my time, being reproached by the king that he had laid hands on a priest, stiffly and positively denied he had done any such thing:  the meaning of which was, he had cudgelled and kicked him.

CHAPTER XLII

Of the inequality AMOUNGST us.