Though it must be confessed, that their skill in government was not proportioned to the extreme delicacy of their situation, a sufficient indulgence has not been given them, and all the blame, by several historians, has been unjustly thrown on their side.

Their violations of law, particularly those of Charles, are, in some few instances, transgressions of a plain limit which was marked out to loyal authority.

But the encroachments of the commons, though in the beginning less positive and determinate, are no less discernible by good judges, and were equally capable of destroying the just balance of the constitution.

While they exercised the powers transmitted to them in a manner more independent, and less compliant, than had ever before been practised, the kings were, perhaps imprudently, but as they imagined, from necessity, tempted to assume powers which had scarcely ever been exercised, or had been exercised in a different manner by the crown.

And from the shock of these opposite pretensions, together with religious controversy, arose all the factions, convulsions, and disorders which attended that period.
"This footnote was in the first editions a part of the text.] [Footnote 6: NOTE F, p.166.