Page:Notes on the Anti-Corn Law Struggle.djvu/196

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188
Notes on the Anti-Corn Law Struggle.

lord of the soil, and of all who trod the soil. If Lord Byron could have proved that the Byrons were the same family as the Buruns, and that

"eight-and-forty manors
Were their reward for following Billy's banners,"

the Byrons, whether Norman or not Norman, were as thoroughly beaten at Marston Moor[1] as the English were at Hastings; and the men who beat them—men who, wherever they went, never found an enemy that could stand their onset, said in their Remonstrance to the Parliament for justice on the King: "If kings claim by right of conquest, God hath given us the same right against them, and there is an end to their pretensions as if the whole people were made only for them, and to serve their lusts."

The men who made that Remonstrance to the Long Parliament put down in England the divine


  1. Some idea may be formed of the slaughter in the encounter between Rupert's and Cromwell's cavalry at Marston Moor, brought on by Lord Byron's impetuosity in dashing over the ditch that separated him from Cromwell's cuirassiers, from the fact that four of Lord Byron's brothers fell. There must have been sis brothers at least, for Sir John Byron, created Lord Byron, in 1643 was succeeded in 1652 by his brother, Richard Byron.