Henry took these promises seriously, which resulted in peace and justice. Royal justice became a force to be reckoned with by the multiplication of justices. Henry had a great respect for legality and the forms of judicial action. He became known as the "Lion of Justice".
The center of government was a collection of tenants-in-chief whose feudal duty included attendance when summoned and certain selected household servants of the King. When it met for financial purposes, Henry called it the Exchequer and it became a separate body. It received yearly from the sheriffs of the counties taxes, fines, treasure trove, goods from wrecks, deodands, and movable property of felons, of persons executed, of fugitives, and of outlaws due to the Crown. The payments in kind, such as grain or manual services, from the royal demesnes had been turned into money payments. This income from royal estates was also received by the Exchequer and then commingled with the other funds. Each payment was indicated by notches on a stick, which was then split so that the payer and the receiver each had a half showing the notches. The Chancellor managed the domestic matters of the Crown's castles and lands. Henry brought sheriffs under his strict control, free from influence by the barons.
A woman could inherit a fief if she married. The primary way for a man to acquire land was to marry an heiress. If a man were in a lower station than she was, he had to pay for his new social status as well as have royal permission. A man could also be awarded land which had escheated to the King. If a noble woman wanted to hold land in her own right, she had to make a payment to the King. Many widows bought their freedom from guardianship or remarriage from the King. Women whose husbands were at war also ran the land of their husbands.
Barons were lords of large holdings of farmland called "manors". Many of the lesser barons left their dark castles to live in semi-fortified stone houses, which usually were of two rooms with rug hangings for drafts, as well as the sparse furniture that had been common to the castle. There were shuttered windows to allow in light, but which also let in the wind and rain when open. The roof was of thatch or narrow overlapping wood shingles. The floor was strewn with hay and there was a hearth near the center of the floor, with a louvered smoke hole in the timber roof for escape of smoke. There were barns for grain and animals. Beyond this area was a garden, orchard, and sometimes a vineyard. The area was circumscribed by a moat over which there was a drawbridge to a gatehouse.
The smaller room was the lord and lady's bedroom. It had a canopied bed, chests for clothing, and wood frames on which clothes could be hung. Life on the manor revolved around the larger room, or hall, where the public life of the household was passed. There, meals were served. The daily diet typically consisted of milk, soup, porridge, fish, vegetables, and bread. Open hospitality accompanied this communal living. There was little privacy. Manor household villeins carried the lord's sheaves of grain to the manor barn, shore his sheep, malted his grain, and chopped wood for his fire. At night some slept on the floor of the hall and others, cottars and bordars, had there own dwellings nearby.
Games with dice were sometimes played. In winter, youths ice-skated with bones fastened to their shoes. They propelled themselves by striking the ice with staves shod with iron. On summer holydays, they exercised in leaping, shooting with the bow, wrestling, throwing stones, and darting a thrown spear. The maidens danced with timbrels. Since at least 1133, children's toys included dolls, drums, hobby horses, pop guns, trumpets, and kites.
The cold, indoors as well as outdoors, necessitated that people wear ample and warm garments. Men and women of position dressed in long full cloaks reaching to their feet, sometimes having short full sleeves. The cloak generally had a hood and was fastened at the neck with a brooch. Underneath the cloak was a simple gown with sleeves tight at the wrist but full at the arm-hole, as if cut from the same piece of cloth. A girdle or belt was worn at the waist. When the men were hunting or working, they wore gown and cloak of knee length. Humble folk also wore knee-length garments, with a band about the waist.
There was woodland, common pasture land, arable land, meadow land, and wasteland on the manor. The arable land was allotted to the villeins in strips to equalize the best and worst land and their distance from the village where the villeins lived. There was three-way rotation of wheat or rye, oats or barley, and fallow land. Cows, pigs, sheep, and fowl were kept. The meadow was allocated for hay for the lord's household and each villein's. The villeins held land of their lord for various services such as agricultural labor or raising domestic animals. The villeins, who worked the farm land as their ancestor ceorls had, now were so bound to the land that they could not leave or marry or sell an ox without their lord's consent. If the manor was sold, the villein was sold as a part of the manor. The villeins worked about half of their time on their lord's fields [his demesne land], which was about a third of the farmland. This work was primarily to gather the harvest and to plough with oxen, using a yoke over their shoulders, and to sow in autumn and Lent. They threshed grain on barn floors with flails cut from holly or thorn, and removed the kernels from the shafts by hand. Work lasted from sunrise to sunset and included women and children. Life expectancy was probably below thirty-five.
The villeins of a manor elected a reeve to communicate their interests to their lord, usually through a bailiff, who directed the labor. Sometimes there was a steward in charge of several of a lord's manors, who also held the manorial court for the lord. The steward held his land of the lord by serjeanty, which was a specific service to the lord. Other serjeanty services were helping in the lord's hunting expeditions and looking after his hounds. The Woodward preserved the timber. The Messer supervised the harvesting. The Hayward removed any fences from the fields after harvest to allow grazing by cattle and sheep. The Coward, Bullard, and Calvert tended the cows, bulls, and calves; the Shepherd, the sheep; and the Swineherds the pigs. The Ponder impounded stray stock.
The majority of manors were co-extensive with a single village. The villeins lived in the village in one-room huts enclosed by a wood fence, hedge, or stone wall. In this yard was a garden of onions, leeks, mustard, peas, beans, parsley, garlic, herbs, and cabbage and apple, pear, cherry, quince, and plum trees, and bee-hives. The hut had a high-pitched roof thatched with reeds or straw and low eaves reaching almost to the ground. The walls are built of wood-framing overlaid with mud or plaster. Narrow slits in the walls serve as windows, which have shutters and are sometimes covered with coarse cloth. The floor is dirt and may be covered with straw or rushes for warmth, but usually no hearth. At one end of the hut was the family living area, where the family ate on a collapsible trestle table with stools or benches and used drinking horns and wooden bowls and spoons, along with jars and other earthenware. Their usual food was beans and peas, and some bacon, butter, cheese, and vegetables, rough bread made from a mixture of wheat, barley, and rye flour, honey, and herrings or other salt fish. They drank water, milk, buttermilk, apple cider, mead, ale made from barley malt, and bean and vegetable broth. Cooking was done over a fire with iron tripod, pots, and kettle. Most of the food was boiled. They slept on straw mattresses or sacks on the floor or on benches. The villein regarded his bed area as the safest place in the house, as did people of all ranks, and kept his treasures there, which included his farm implements, as well as hens on the beams, roaming pigs, and perhaps stalled oxen. Around the room are a couple of chests to store salt, meal, flour, a broom made of birch trigs, some woven baskets, the distaff and spindle for spinning, and a simple loom for weaving. All clothes were homemade. They were often coarse, greasy wool and leather made from their own animals. The man wore a tunic of coarse linen embroidered on the sleeves and breast, around with he wore a girdle of rope, leather, or folded cloth. Sometimes he also wore breeches reaching below the knee. The woman wore a loose short-sleeved gown, under which was a tight fitting garment with long loose sleeves. If they wore shoes, they were clumsy and patched. Some wore a hood-like cap. At the other end of the hut were the horses, cattle, pigs, and poultry. In the middle is a wood fire burning on a hearthstone. The smoke rises through a hole in the roof.