barons by writ, as the sixty-four abbots and thirty-six priors
that were so called, were but pro temp ore, Dicotome, being the
twelfth king from the Conquest, began to make barons by
letters-patent, with the addition of honorary pensions for the
maintenance of their dignities to them and their heirs; so that
they were hands in the King's purse and had no shoulders for his
throne. Of these, when the house of peers came once to be full,
as will be seen hereafter, there was nothing more empty. But for
the present, the throne having other supports, they did not hurt
that so much as they did the King; for the old barons, taking
Dicotome's prodigality to such creatures so ill that they deposed
him, got the trick of it, and never gave over setting up and
pulling down their kings according to their various interests,
and that faction of the White and Red, into which they have been
thenceforth divided, till Panurgus, the eighteenth king from the
Conquest, was more by their favor than his right advanced to the
crown. This King, through his natural subtlety, reflecting at
once upon the greatness of their power, and the inconstancy of
their favor, began to find another flaw in this kind of
government, which is also noted by Machiavel namely, that a
throne supported by a nobility is not so hard to be ascended as
kept warm. Wherefore his secret jealousy, lest the dissension of
the nobility, as it brought him in might throw him out, made him
travel in ways undiscovered by them, to ends as little foreseen
by himself, while to establish his own safety, he, by mixing
water with their wine, first began to open those sluices that
have since overwhelmed not the King only, but the throne. For
whereas a nobility strikes not at the throne, without which they
cannot subsist, but at some king that they do not like, popular
power strikes through the King at the throne, as that which is