Note o — Chapter VIII

Hody and Lord Lyttelton maintain these "barons of the second rank" to have been the sub-vassals of the crown; tenants of the great barons to whom the name was sometimes improperly applied. This was very consistent with their opinion, that the commons were a part of parliament at that time. But Hume, assuming at once the truth of their interpretation in this instance, and the falsehood of their system, treats it as a deviation from the established rule, and a proof of the unsettled state of the constitution.