The political
object of it.
Itinerant
justices.
Fiscal work.
Circuits of
judges.
It is one of the most distinct marks of Henry’s mind, that whatever pressure his most engrossing employments put upon him, he never for a moment gave up the task of developing the great legal reforms with which he began his reign. Even at the siege of Bridgenorth, in 1155, he had lent an ear to the suit of the monks of Battle; in the very thick of the Becket struggle he was busily employed in reforming the criminal law and introducing or expanding the system of presentment by grand jury. The same purpose is constantly maintained, and every great and famous exploit of his adventurous life may be matched with some measure of practical reform, some step in the progress of a policy by which his people were to be made safer and his own power consequently to be made stronger. Throughout the whole reign there may be traced a constant and progressive policy of taking power out of the hands of the great vassals of the crown, of entrusting power to the great body of the freemen of the nation, and of consolidating the royal authority by employing the people in the maintenance of law. The blow struck at the military power of feudalism by the institution of scutage, the commutation of personal service in the field for a money payment, was one of the first of his distinctive measures. The judicial power of the same body he limited, quite as much, by the mission of itinerant judges throughout the country to hear the suits of the people and to punish criminals. These visitations had been practised under Henry I.; they were restored by Henry II., at the beginning of the reign. These officers were employed not only for the trial of prisoners and determination of lawsuits, but for the assessment and collection of revenue. When the national council had decreed a tax, the itinerant judges, as Barons of the Exchequer, travelled through the land, fixing the payments to be made by the towns or by individuals. It was not a very difficult business, for as all the revenue was raised from the land and the land remained divided in much the same proportions as it was in the Domesday Book, that famous record became, as it were, the rate-book of the country; every land-owner could refer to it, to see what was the valuation of his property, and be taxed accordingly. Only the towns, therefore, which had grown in wealth and number since the time of the Conqueror’s survey, would have occasion for debating with the judges how much they would have to pay. Almost every year of Henry’s reign we find these officers making their circuits, which are the historical origin of the circuits of the Judges of Assize in the present day. Sometimes, in the earlier part of the reign, one or two go over the whole country; sometimes six circuits are made, each managed by three judges; sometimes four circuits of four, or two circuits of five or more. The chief epochs of this development are these: the year 1166, when the Assize of Clarendon was published; the year 1176, when six circuits of three justices did the work under a revised form of the Assize of Clarendon, issued at Northampton; and the year 1179, when Henry reformed the central as well as the provincial tribunals.
Training of the
people in self-government.
Of the effects of this system one, the abatement of the power of the feudal courts of justice by forcing them under royal jurisdiction, has been noticed already. A second was the training of the people generally, through the use of juries which were employed both for legal and fiscal business; they thus learned to manage their own affairs and to keep up an intelligent interest in legislation and political business. A third was, to limit the power of the sheriffs, who being the sole royal representatives in the shires, judicial, military, and fiscal, had great chances of exercising irresponsible tyranny, of which the books of the time contain many complaints. Besides the visitations of the judges Henry from time to time used still stronger measures of remedy or precaution against the oppressions of the sheriffs. In 1170 he turned them all out of office, and held a very strict inquiry into the amount of money they had received, filling up their places with servants and officers of his own court, by whose action the local government would be placed in more direct relation to the central.
Central
judicature.
Nor were these labors solely directed to the reform of provincial jurisdiction. Henry II. reformed also the supreme court of justice, which was supposed to emanate from his own person and household, and established a distinct staff of well-instructed lawyers to hear the suits that were sent up for his royal decision. These men he found it hard work to manage, and once in 1178 he swept them all away as summarily as he had done the sheriffs in 1170. Sometimes he employed clerks, sometimes knights, sometimes prelates, in the office of judge, with unequal success, but with a never-faltering purpose of securing easy justice.
Variety in
taxation.