Even when the nobility which represented
the more permanent landed interest united themselves by marriage
(which sometimes was the case) with the other description, the
wealth which saved the family from ruin was supposed to contaminate
and degrade it. Thus the enmities and heartburnings of these parties
were increased even by the usual means by which discord is made to
cease and quarrels are turned into friendship. In the meantime, the
pride of the wealthy men, not noble or newly noble, increased with its
cause. They felt with resentment an inferiority, the grounds of
which they did not acknowledge. There was no measure to which they
were not willing to lend themselves in order to be revenged of the
outrages of this rival pride and to exalt their wealth to what they
considered as its natural rank and estimation. They struck at the
nobility through the crown and the church. They attacked them
particularly on the side on which they thought them the most
vulnerable, that is, the possessions of the church, which, through the
patronage of the crown, generally devolved upon the nobility. The
bishoprics and the great commendatory abbeys were, with few
exceptions, held by that order.
In this state of real, though not always perceived, warfare
between the noble ancient landed interest and the new monied interest,
the greatest, because the most applicable, strength was in the hands
of the latter.
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