the continental type,--a nobility raised above the common people like a
separate caste. For the old thegnhood, which might have grown into such
a caste, was pushed down into a secondary position, and the peerage
which arose after the Conquest was something different from a
_noblesse_. It was primarily a nobility of office rather than of rank or
privilege. The peers were those men who retained the right of summons to
the Great Council, or Witenagemote, which has survived as the House of
Lords. The peer was therefore the holder of a legislative and judicial
office, which only one of his children could inherit, from the very
nature of the case, and which none of his children could share with him.
Hence the brothers and younger children of a peer were always commoners,
and their interests were not remotely separated from those of other
commoners. Hence after the establishment of a House of Commons, their
best chance for a political career lay in representing the interests of
the people in the lower house. Hence between the upper and lower strata
of English society there has always been kept up a circulation or
interchange of ideas and interests, and the effect of this upon English
history has been prodigious. While on the continent a sovereign like
Charles the Bold could use his nobility to extinguish the liberties of
the merchant towns of Flanders, nothing of the sort was ever possible in
England. Throughout the Middle Ages, in every contest between the people
and the crown, the weight of the peerage was thrown into the scale in
favour of popular liberties. But for this peculiar position of the
peerage we might have had no Earl Simon; it is largely through it that
representative government and local liberties have been preserved to the
English race.

In France the course of events has brought about very different results.
I shall defer to my next lecture the consideration of the vicissitudes
of local self-government under the Roman Empire, because that point is