The King's Royal Court heard issues concerning the Crown and breaches of the King's peace, which included almost all criminal matters. The most serious offenses: murder, robbery, rape, abduction, arson, treason, and breach of fealty, were now called felonies. Other offenses were: housebreaking, ambush, certain kinds of theft, premeditated assault, and harboring outlaws or excommunicants. Henry personally presided over hearings of important legal cases. He punished crime severely. Offenders were brought to justice not only by the complaint of an individual or local community action, but by official prosecutors. A prosecutor was now at trials as well as a judge. Trial is still by compurgation.
These offenses against the King placed merely personal property and sometimes land at the King's mercy. Thus the Crown increased the range of offenses subject to its jurisdiction and arrogated to itself profits from the penalties imposed.
The Royal Court also heard these offenses against the King: fighting in his dwelling, contempt of his writs or commands, encompassing the death or injury of his servants, contempt or slander of the King, and violation of his protection or his law. It heard these offenses against royal authority: complaints of default of justice or unjust judgment, pleas of shipwrecks, coinage, treasure- trove [money buried when danger approached], forest prerogatives, and control of castle building.
Henry began the use of writs to intervene in civil matters. These writs allowed people to come to the Royal Court on certain issues. He had some locally based justices, called justiciars. Also, he sent justices out on eyres [journeys],with wide responsibilities, to hear and decide all manner of Crown pleas. This brought royal authority into the localities and served to check baronial power over the common people. He created the office of chief justiciar, which carried out judicial and administrative functions.
The Royal Court also decided land disputes between barons. There was a vigorous interventionism in the land law subsequent to appeals to the King in landlord- tenant relations, brought by a lord or by an undertenant. Assizes [those who sit together] of local people who knew relevant facts were put together to assist the court.
Records of the verdicts of the Royal Court were sent with traveling justices for use as precedent in shire and hundred courts.
The King's Court of the Exchequer reviewed the accounts of sheriffs, including receipts and expenditures on the Crown's behalf as well as sums due to the Treasury, located still at Winchester. These sums included rent from royal estates, the Danegeld land tax, the fines from local courts, and aid from baronial estates. It was called the "Exchequer" because it used a chequered cloth on the table to facilitate calculation in Roman numerals of the amount due and the amount paid. It's records were the "Pipe Rolls", so named because sheets of parchment were fastened at the top, each of which dropped into a roll at the bottom and so assumed the shape of a pipe.
The shire and hundred courts assessed the personal property of individuals and their taxes due to the King. The shire court decided land disputes between people who had different barons as their respective lords.
The Crown used its superior coercive power to enforce the legal decisions of other courts.
The shire courts heard cases of theft, brawling, beating, and wounding, for which the penalties could be exposure in the pillory or stocks where the public could scorn and hit the offender. It met twice yearly. If an accused failed to appear after four successive shire courts, he was declared outlaw at the fifth and forfeited his civil rights and all his property. He could be slain by anyone at will.