mixture of the powers of the two bodies that the House of Lords received its judicial character as a court of appeal, and the Privy Council derived its legislative character, which it attempted to carry out in the form of ordinances. The original tribunal, the king's ordinary council, retained its undiminished powers throughout, changing at various times and throwing off new offshoots, such as the Court of Star Chamber, until it has reached our own time in the form of the Judicial Committee of Privy Council. The limited tribunal of the Curia Regis continues, with varying numbers, until the reign of John, when the Common Pleas are separated from the other business and fixed at Westminster. Soon after the date of Magna Carta it divides and arranges its business into that of three courts, retaining the same staff of judges for all, and the chief justiciar at the head. Towards the end of the reign of Henry III the three courts receive each a distinct staff, and the extinction of the old pre-eminence of the great justiciar results in the complete separation of the three for all purposes. In the Exchequer Chamber, however, they still retain a trace of their ancient unity of organisation.

The visits made to the shires by the itinerant judges and barons form a very important part of the training of the people for self-government; not only in the judicial, but in the fiscal business also. Henry II, if not the inventor, was the great improver of the system of recognitions by jury. The machinery which had been occasionally used before, and which may be traced to Karolingian usage, he applied to every description of business. By the ordinance of the grand assize, the person whose possession of land was impugned was empowered to make choice between trial by battle, and the examination of his right by a body of twelve sworn recognitors, who were selected by four sworn knights summoned for the purpose by the sheriff acting under a royal writ. In the other recognitions, as of Mortdancester and Novel disseisin, the twelve recognitors were simply summoned by the sheriff, acting in this case also under a special precept from the king. Out of these recognitions arose the system of trial by jury; the jurors are at

first witnesses of the fact; as business increases they are, under Edward I, afforced by the addition of persons better acquainted with the matter; a further step separates these afforcing jurors from the original twelve, and the former then engross the character of witnesses, the jury becoming the judges of fact after hearing evidence. The sworn knights who nominate the recognitors of the grand assize are, further, the first germ of a county representation. By the assize of Clarendon, a like principle is applied to criminal jurisdiction. Twelve lawful men of each hundred, with four lawful men from each township, are sworn to present criminals or reputed criminals of their district, in each county court; the prisoners so presented being sent at once to the ordeal. In this case, Henry simply utilised the machinery that had existed probably since the time of Edgar, but he adapted it to the principle of recognition; the twelve lawful men are witnesses, as they were under the older system, but the process is an inquest under oath, as in the case of the great assize. From this double character of judge and witness the grand jury system historically descends; the permission to traverse the verdict of the grand jury by a new inquest is of later introduction, and was adopted as a consequence of the abolition of ordeal in the reign of Henry III.

But the principle of recognition by jury is found applicable to other matters than judicature. As early as the year 1070, William the Conqueror had used it to obtain from the native population an enunciation of the laws under which they claimed to live. In the preparation of the Domesday survey it had been applied, moreover, to fiscal business. The inquest then was made by the oath of the sheriff, the barons and freeholders of the shire and the hundred, the priest, the reeve, and six villeins of each township; and it was used to ascertain the extent and liability of every estate in the kingdom. It was not, however, applied generally to the purpose of taxation until the reign of Richard I. The steps by which so important a stage towards self-taxation and representation was gained are of curious importance. An aid having been decreed by the national council, the collection of it becomes the work of the

sheriffs and of the officers of the Exchequer. The classes from which it is to be demanded are, roughly speaking, the knights, the towns, and the socage tenants; the barons, greater and lesser, the boroughs, and the lower freeholders. The military tenants are allowed to certify by their own cartel the number of knights' fees for which they are liable. The towns, through their burgage holders, make their agreement with the barons itinerant; but the lower freeholders are assessed by the sheriff and his officers, and have no check upon their exactions unless their hardships can be made known to the king. When taxation descends to personal property, the sheriff has no basis of calculation; it is in this, then, that the necessity of some machinery of assessment first introduces the jury system. Under the assize of arms in 1181, Henry II directs the liability of each man, either in rent or in chattels, to be estimated by a sworn body of knights or lawful men of the venue; and the same plan is used for the levying of the Saladin tithe, also on personal as well as real property, in 1188. When Richard I, in 1198, exacted a carucage or aid of five shillings on the hide, he applied the principle of jury assessment in the most elaborate way to the whole land of the country. How important were these developments of the idea of representation will be seen by-and-by.

These are but a few of the measures by which Henry II and his ministers provided for the security of his people,—through which he earned their confidence, and trained them, both by the enjoyment of legal security and by the responsible part laid on them in judicial and fiscal matters, for a time when their co-operation would be required in the higher departments of government, in the decreeing, not the executing only, of legislation and taxation. In these the king had the help of the financial family founded by Bishop Roger, and of the great legist Ranulf Glanvill. He lived long enough to see the success of his policy in making England rich and contented, and a race of nobles springing out of the administrative houses, which was to strengthen the law and make common cause with the people.

Richard's reign is in constitutional matters the supplement of

his father's; the administrative progress which may be traced in it is to be credited not to himself but to his ministers. Richard FitzNeal, the treasurer, continues the management of the Exchequer; Hubert Walter, the justiciar, develops the machinery which may have originated in the genius of his master, Henry II, or his uncle, Ranulf Glanvill. The pecuniary necessities of Richard, and his long absences from England, threw the whole responsibility on the ministers, and after the anarchy of his first two years, owing to the jealousy of the barons and the faction fights arising from the quarrels of John, Geoffrey, and William Longchamp, this devolved altogether on Hubert Walter. He united in his own person the whole secular and spiritual authority.

From the transactions of the earlier part of the reign we gather little that is constitutionally important. The attack on the chancellor was not a constitutional attempt to assert the responsibility of a minister, but a struggle of factions; the encouragement of the town element is not a deliberate act of policy, but the result of an occasional expedient for raising money. One or two apparently minor points, however, are of importance. We have seen that Richard's ministers were the first who applied the representative system to the assessment of real property in general for the purpose of national taxation. A step which is scarcely less important is the introduction of the system of election to county functions and offices. This is applied in the first instance to the choice of coroners, who, according to the assize of 1194, are to be chosen in every county, three knights and a clerk, to keep the pleas of the crown. The measure was doubtless intended to be a check on the power of the sheriffs, who were forbidden by the same assize to act as justices in their own counties: a proof that the baronial party still required to be restrained from attempting to strengthen their hold on the local jurisdictions. This assize prescribes also the way of selecting the grand jury: four knights are to be chosen in every shire, who in turn are to choose two out of each hundred; these two are to co-opt ten more out of their own hundred, and the twelve are to form the jury for the hundred. The plan partly resembles

that used for the nomination of recognitors for the grand assize, and was likewise a check on the power of the sheriff, to whom the nomination seems to have before belonged. It is possible that the knights electors are henceforth chosen by the suitors, and that the article of Magna Carta which orders them to be elected, for the recognitions of novel disseisin, mort-dancester, and darrein presentment, by the county court, is an explanation of earlier custom. But in the case of the coroner there is no such question; the existing immemorial usage, as well as the words of the assize, proves that the election was by the whole body of freeholders. It is the first attempt at popular election in England within the historic period, unless we regard as such the privileges granted to certain of the boroughs to elect their magistrates. This had been attained by some towns, by payment of a fine, under Henry II; in the reign of John it becomes a general privilege conferred by charter.

The steps taken in the direction of freedom and security under these administrators were doubtless of importance in themselves. They were an extension of the rule of law into regions where the rule of force had been far too general. But it must not be thought that they were a pure concession to the desire of freedom and good government. Henry II and Hubert Walter recognised the fact, which Henry I had seen before them, that a people able to count on personal and commercial safety is much more profitable to the Exchequer than one over-taxed and unconstitutionally oppressed. The reign of Richard is not only a period of reform in law, but of unparalleled exactions in money. The various plans of taxation adopted by the earlier kings are all resuscitated and amplified. The scutage of Henry II is applied to the raising of funds for the king's ransom, and increased in amount. The carucage of Richard is but the Danegeld under a new name, and of larger and more profitable assessment. The feudal dues are all exacted; the wool of the Cistercians is seized; the plate of the churches is borrowed; the moveables as well as the land are rated. These plans are maintained after the original call for them has been answered. Nor is the opposition to this systematic oppression so marked as might be expected.