But its eccentricities were not at this special period romantic: and its lawlessness was rather abuse of law than wholesale neglect of it.

A rascally attorney or a stony-hearted creditor might inflict great hardship under the laws affecting money: and a brutal or tyrannical squire might do the same under those affecting the tenure or the enjoyment of house or land.

"Persons of quality" might go very far.

But even a person of quality, if he took to riding about the country in complete steel, assaulting the lieges, and setting up a sort of cadi-justice of his own in opposition to the king's, would probably have been brought pretty rapidly, if not to the recovery of his senses, to the loss of his liberty.

Nor, with rare exceptions, are the subordinate or incidental humours of the first class.