The principle of co-operation between the government and the people for maintaining order and peace, which underlies all Henry’s reforming measures, and of which the new regulations for election of the grand jury are a further recognition, was again enunciated yet more distinctly in the following year. An edict was published requiring every man above the age of fifteen years to take an oath that he would do all that in him lay for the preservation of the king’s peace; that he would neither be a thief or robber, nor a receiver or accomplice of such persons, but would do his utmost to denounce and deliver them to the sheriff, would join to the uttermost of his power in the pursuit of malefactors when hue and cry was raised against them, and would deliver up to the sheriff all persons who should have failed to perform their share in this duty.[1741] The obligation binding upon every member of the state to lend his aid for the punishment of offences against its peace had been declared, in words which are almost echoed in this edict, as long ago as the reign of Cnut.[1742] The difficulty of enforcing it caused by the disorganized condition of society which had grown up during the civil war was probably the reason which led Henry, in framing his Assizes of Clarendon and Northampton, at once to define it more narrowly and to lay the responsibility of its execution upon a smaller body of men specially appointed for the purpose in every shire. The completeness of organization which the system introduced by these Assizes had now attained, however, gave scope for a wider application of the principle through one of those revivals of older custom in which the enduring character of our ancient national institutions and their capacity for adaptation to the most diverse conditions of national life are so often and so strikingly displayed. The edict of 1195 forms a link between the usage of Cnut’s day and that of modern times. It directed that the oath should be taken before knights assigned for the purpose in every shire; out of the office thus created there seems to have grown that of conservators of the peace; and this again developed in the fourteenth century into that of justices of the peace, which has retained an unbroken existence down to our own age.[1743]

The same year was marked by the only important ecclesiastical act of Hubert’s pontificate. Having received in the spring his commission as legate, he made use of it to hold a visitation of the northern province—now, by Geoffrey’s absence and Hugh of Puiset’s death, deprived of both its chief pastors—and a council in York minster at which fifteen canons were passed[1744] to remedy the general relaxation of Church discipline which had been growing ever since Thomas’s flight. At the close of the year Hubert was again at York, upon a different errand: the negotiation of a fresh treaty with Scotland, on the basis of a marriage between the Scot king’s eldest daughter and Richard’s nephew Otto of Saxony.[1745] The marriage never took place, but the alliance of which it was to be the pledge lasted throughout Richard’s reign; and it is a noteworthy proof at once of the growth of friendly relations between the two countries, and of the success of Hubert’s recent ordinance for the preservation of peace and order in England, that in the following year a similar edict, evidently modelled upon the English one, was issued in Scotland by William the Lion.[1746]

Neither the renewal of order in the Church, nor the securing of the external tranquillity of the realm by alliance with its neighbour-states, nor the organization of justice and police within its own borders, was however the most laborious part of Hubert’s task. One thing only was required of him by his royal master; but that was precisely the one thing which cost him the most trouble to obtain. From a country which must, as it seems, have been almost drained of its financial resources over and over again during the last ten years, he was perpetually called upon to extract supplies of money such as had never been furnished before to any English king. That he contrived to meet Richard’s ceaseless demands year after year without either plunging the nation into helpless misery or provoking it to open revolt, is the strongest proof not only of his financial genius and tact, but also of the increase in material prosperity and national contentment which had been fostered by Henry’s rule, and of the success of Hubert’s own efforts in carrying out the policy which Henry had begun. By Michaelmas 1194 it seems that the whole of the complicated accounts for the ransom, including the carucage imposed in the spring, were closed.[1747] In the same year the country had borne the additional burthen of a tallage upon the towns. This, however, added to the sums raised by sales of office during the king’s visit and to the proceeds of the judges’ visitation, failed to satisfy the wants of Richard. He therefore resorted to two other methods of raising money, both apparently of his own devising, and both harmonizing very ill with the constitutional policy of his justiciar. Save during the disorderly reign of Stephen, the practice of tournaments had been hitherto unknown in England. Both Henry I. and Henry II. were too serious and practical-minded to encourage vain shews of any kind, far less to countenance the reckless waste of energy and the useless risk of life and limb which these entertainments involved, which had moved Pope after Pope to denounce them as perilous alike to body and soul,[1748] and, in spite of a characteristic protest from Thomas Becket, to exclude those who were slain in them from the privileges of Christian burial.[1749] The Church had indeed been unable to check this obnoxious practice in Gaul; backed, however, by the authority of the Crown, she had as yet succeeded in keeping it out of England. But in 1194 a fresh prohibition, issued by Pope Celestine in the previous year,[1750] was met by Richard with a direct defiance. On August 20 he issued a license for the holding of tournaments in England, on condition that every man who took part in them should pay to the Crown a specified sum, varying according to his rank. Five places were appointed where tournaments might be held, and no one was allowed to enter the lists until he had paid for his license.[1751] The collection of this new item of revenue was evidently looked upon as an important matter, for it was intrusted to the justiciar’s brother Theobald Walter.[1752] Whatever may have been Hubert’s share in this measure, he was clearly in no way responsible for the other and yet more desperate expedient to which Richard, almost at the same time, resorted for the replenishment of his treasury. On pretext of a quarrel with his chancellor, he took away the seal from him, ordered another to be made, and declared all acts passed under the old one to be null and void, till they should have been brought to him for confirmation:[1753] in other words, till they should have been paid for a second time.

In the following spring a fit of characteristic Angevin penitence—fervent and absorbing while it lasted, but passing away all too soon—moved the king to make some amends for his extortions as well as for his other sins; he began to replace the church-plate which had been given up for his ransom;[1754] no fresh tax was imposed till late in the year, and then it was only a scutage of the usual amount—twenty shillings on the knight’s fee—for the war in Normandy.[1755] Next year, however, the king’s mood again changed. He was now resolved to carry into effect, with or without Hubert’s assent, the inquiry into the financial administration which Hubert had postponed in 1194. For this purpose he sent over to England Robert, abbot of S. Stephen’s at Caen, who, notwithstanding his monastic profession, had acquired great experience as a clerk of the Norman exchequer, and seems to have there enjoyed a high reputation for knowledge and skill in all matters of finance.[1756] The abbot, accompanied by the bishop-elect of Durham, Philip of Poitiers,[1757] reached London in Lent 1196, and demanded Hubert’s co-operation in fulfilling the royal orders. The justiciar, though displeased and hurt, had no choice but to comply, and an order was issued in the king’s name bidding all sheriffs and officers of the Crown be ready to give an account of their stewardship in London on a certain day—apparently the day of the usual Exchequer-meeting in Easter-week.[1758] Before Easter came, the abbot of Caen himself was gone to his last account; he was seized with illness while dining with Archbishop Hubert on Passion Sunday, and five days later he died.[1759] The intended inquisition never took place; but the mere proposal to conduct it thus through the medium of a stranger from over sea was a direct slight offered to the justiciar by the king;[1760] and it coincided with a disturbance which warned Hubert of a possible danger to his authority from another quarter.

Strive as he might to equalize the burthens of taxation, he could not prevent them from pressing upon the poorer classes with a severity which grew at last well-nigh intolerable. The grievance was felt most keenly in London. The substitution of the “commune” for the older shire-organization of London in 1191 was a step towards municipal unity, and thus indirectly towards local independence and self-government; but it had done nothing for the poorer class of citizens. It had placed the entire control of civic administration, including the regulation of trade and the assessment of taxes, in the hands of a governing body consisting of a mayor and aldermen, one of whom presided over each of the wards into which the whole city was divided, the head of them all being the mayor.[1761] This corporation was the representative of the merchant-gild, which had thus absorbed into itself all the powers and privileges of the earlier ruling class of territorial magnates, in addition to its own. As might be expected, the rule of this newly-established oligarchy over the mass of its unenfranchized fellow-citizens was at least as oppressive as that of the sheriffs and “barons of the city” which had preceded it; and it was less willingly borne, owing to the jealousy which always existed between the craftsmen and the merchant-gild. As the taxes grew more burthensome year by year, a suspicion began to spread that they were purposely assessed in such a manner as to spare the well-filled pockets of the assessors, and wring an unfair proportion of the required total from the hard-earned savings of the poor.[1762] Whether the injustice was intentional or not, the grievance seems to have been a real one; and it soon found a spokesman and a champion. William Fitz-Osbert—“William with the Long Beard,” as he was commonly called—was by birth a member of the ruling class in the city.[1763] He seems to have shared with a goldsmith named Geoffrey the leadership of a band of London citizens who in 1190 formed part of the crusading fleet, and did good service, not indeed, so far as we know, in Holy Land, but like their brethren forty-three years earlier, in helping to drive the Moors out of Portugal.[1764] Since his return, whether fired by genuine zeal for the cause of the oppressed, or, as some of his contemporaries thought, moved by the hope of acquiring power and influence which he found unattainable by other means,[1765] he had severed himself from his natural associates in the city to become the preacher and leader of another sort of crusade, for the deliverance of the poorer classes from the tyranny of their wealthy rulers. At every meeting of the governing body he withstood his fellow-aldermen to the face, remonstrating continually against their corrupt fiscal administration. They could not silence and dared not expel him, for they knew that his whispers were stirring up the craftsmen; and although the rumour that he had more than fifty thousand sworn followers at his back must have been an exaggeration, yet there could be no doubt of the existence of a conspiracy sufficiently formidable to excuse, if not to justify, the terror of the civic rulers.[1766] When after a visit to Normandy William began openly to boast of the king’s favour and support, the justiciar thought it time to interfere. He called the citizens together, endeavoured to allay their discontent by reasonings and remonstrances, and persuaded them to give hostages for their good behaviour.[1767] William however set his authority at defiance. Day after day, in the streets and open spaces of the city, and at last even in S. Paul’s itself,[1768] this bold preacher with the tall stately form, singular aspect and eloquent tongue gathered round him a crowd of eager listeners to whom he proclaimed himself as the “king and saviour of the poor.” One of his audience afterwards reported to a writer of the time his exposition of a text from Isaiah: “With joy shall ye draw water out of the wells of the Saviour.”[1769] “I,” said William, “am the saviour of the poor. Ye poor who have felt the heavy hand of the rich, ye shall draw from my wells the water of wholesome doctrine, and that with joy, for the time of your visitation is at hand. For I will divide the waters from the waters. The people are the waters; and I will divide the humble and faithful people from the proud and perfidious people. I will divide the elect from the reprobate, as light from darkness.”[1770]