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The general duties of the ancient parliaments were not legislative, but judicial, as will be shown more fully hereafter. The people were not represented in the parliaments at the time of Magna Carta, but only the archbishops, bishops, earls, barons, and knights; so that little or nothing would have been gained for liberty by Coke's idea that parliament had a legislative power.
Groups of shires had been placed under the government of earls who became dangerous rivals of the kings; and the habit of giving churchmen the right to govern, to a large extent, those who lived upon their vast estates recalls the conditions in the Frankish empire during the same period.
There were costly toys of fragile Sevres china that had been received by one of the earls from the hand of the lovely Pompadour herself in the days when the manufacturers of Sevres only worked for their king, and were liable to fall a sacrifice to their art and their loyalty by the inhalation of arsenicated vapours.
Night fell on the unbroken Scottish phalanx, but when dawn arrived only a force of Border prickers was hovering on the fringes of the field. Thirteen dead earls lay in a ring about their master; there too lay his natural son, the young Archbishop of St Andrews, and the Bishops of Caithness and the Isles. Scarce a noble or gentle house of the Lowlands but reckons an ancestor slain at Flodden.
On the fifteenth clay of February, the debates concerning the union began in the house of lords, the queen being present, and the bishop of Sarum chairman of the committee. The earls of Rochester, Anglesea, and Nottingham, argued against the union; as did the bishop of Bath and Wells.
She then passed to the differences still existing between her house and Harold's, and spoke well and wisely of the desire of the young Earls to conciliate his grace and favour. While thus speaking, Morcar and Edwin, as if accidentally, entered, and their salutations of Harold were such as became their relative positions; reserved, not distant respectful, not servile.
Arbitrators were appointed to settle the disputes between the two earls, and a proclamation was issued declaring that the rumour of dissension between them was "vain, lying, and fraudulently invented". For the next few days harmony seemed restored. Gloucester's submission lured Leicester into relaxing his precautions.
"That may do," said the other, "for a squire of half blood, but I hope you will behave better to a knight, who has had the honor of serving the king in person, and can name twelve earls and fifty baronets belonging to his ancient house."
He suffered his brother to lead him from the chamber, grinding his teeth in impotent rage. He mounted his horse, while Rivers held the stirrup, and with some six or seven knights and earls rode to the bridge, already occupied by Hastings and a small but determined guard. "Come, Hastings," said the king, with a ghastly smile, "they tell us we must fly!" "True, sire, haste, haste!
Near the south base of this hill stands Kellie Castle, a fine baronial seat of the Earls of Kellie, surrounded by old trees, and containing some princely apartments. Sir Thomas Erskine of Gogar was one of those who rescued James VI. from the attempt of the Earl of Gowrie to assassinate him at Perth in 1600, and killed the earl's brother with his own hand.
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