Hitherto our sympathies have been mainly with the kings. We have
watched them struggling against the lawless nobles (S173), and every
gain which they have made in power we have felt was so much won for
the cause of good government. But we are coming to a period when our
sympathies will be the other way. Henceforth the welfare of the
nation will depend largely on the resistence of these very barons to
the despotic encroachments of the Crown.[2]
[2] Ransome's "Constitutional History of England."