the nobility, wherein the people might also assemble, but could
have no more than a mere name. And the clergy, holding a third of
the whole nation, as is plain by the Parliament-roll, it is an
absurdity (seeing the clergy of France came first through their
riches to be a state of that kingdom) to acknowledge the people
to have been a state of this realm, and not to allow it to the
clergy, who were so much more weighty in the balance, which is
that of all other whence a state or order in a government is
denominated. Wherefore this monarchy consisted of the King, and
of the three ordines regni, or estates, the lords spiritual and
temporal, and the commons; it consisted of these, I say, as to
the balance, though, during the reign of some of these kings, not
as to the administration.

For the ambition of Turbo, and some of those that more
immediately succeeded him, to be absolute princes, strove against
the nature of their foundation, and, inasmuch as he had divided
almost the whole realm among his Neustrians, with some
encouragement for a while. But the Neustrians, while they were
but foreign plants, having no security against the natives, but
in growing up by their princes' sides, were no sooner well rooted
in their vast dominions than they came up according to the
infallible consequence of the balance domestic, and, contracting
the national interest of the baronage, grew as fierce in the
vindication of the ancient rights and liberties of the same, as
if they had been always natives: whence, the kings being as
obstinate on the one side for their absolute power, as these on
the other for their immunities, grew certain wars, which took
their denomination from the barons.