They wore public badges, by which their confederacy was distinguished.

They supported each other in all quarrels, iniquities, extortions, murders, robberies, and other crimes.

Their chief was more their sovereign than the king himself; and their own band was more connected with them than their country.

Hence the perpetual turbulence, disorders, factions, and civil wars of those times: hence the small regard paid to a character, or the opinion of the public: hence the large discretionary prerogatives of the crown, and the danger which might have ensued from the too great limitation of them.

If the king had possessed no arbitrary powers, while all the nobles assumed and exercised them, there must have ensued an absolute anarchy in the state.
One great mischief attending these confederacies was, the extorting from the king pardons for the most enormous crimes.