For the moment, indeed, the noble class was as it were thrown aside by the strong current of the national life, nor could the handful of families that held half the soil of England and the lesser baronage who followed in their train be recovered of their impotence, of their impoverishment of intellect and decay of force, even by the greatest landholder and the most typical member of their body, Warwick the Kingmaker. Sated with possessions, forced into a position of leadership mainly by the imposing list of his great relations and the surprising number of his manors—a patriot who consecrated his services to the cause of a faction and the unrestrained domination of a family group of blood relations—a general who never got beyond an already antiquated system of warfare, devoid according to public rumour of personal courage, deserted in a crisis by the one organised military force in the public service—a commander with all the ready instincts of the common pirate—a statesman made after an old ancestral pattern, who had learned his politics a couple of centuries before his time, and to the last remained absolutely blind to the great movements of his own day—an administrator who never failed at a critical moment to put in jeopardy the most important national interests—an agitator restless for revolution, but whose influence in the national counsels was practically of no account when there was a pause in mere fighting—it is thus that Warwick stands before us, a consummate representative of his demoralized class.