oyal Chapel were formed into a body of secretaries or royal ministers,
whose head bore the title of Chancellor. Above them stood the Justiciar,
or Lieutenant-General of the kingdom, who in the frequent absence of the
king acted as Regent of the realm, and whose staff, selected from the
barons connected with the royal household, were formed into a Supreme
Court of the realm. The King's Court, as this was called, permanently
represented the whole court of royal vassals which had hitherto been
summoned thrice in the year. As the royal council, it revised and
registered laws, and its "counsel and consent," though merely formal,
preserved the principle of the older popular legislation. As a court of
justice, it formed the highest court of appeal: it could call up any suit
from a lower tribunal on the application of a suitor, while the union of
several sheriffdoms under some of its members connected it closely with
the local courts. As a financial body, its chief work lay in the
assessment and collection of the revenue. In this capacity it took the
name of the Court of Exchequer from the chequered table, much like a
chess-board, at which it sat and on which accounts were rendered. In
their financial capacity its justices became "barons of the Exchequer."
Twice every year the sheriff of each county appeared before these barons
and rendered the sum of the fixed rent from royal domains, the Danegeld
or land tax, the fines of the local courts, the feudal aids from the
baronial estates, which formed the chief part of the royal revenue. Local
disputes respecting these payments or the assessment of the town-rents
were settled by a detachment of barons from the court who made the
circuit of the shires, and whose fiscal visitations led to the judicial
visitations, the "judges' circuits," which still form so marked a feature
in our legal system.

[Sidenote: The Angevin Marriage]

Measures such as these changed the whole temper of the Norman rule. It
remained a despotism, but from this moment it was a despotism regulated
and held in check by the forms of administrative routine. Heavy as was
the taxation under Henry the First, terrible as was the suffering
throughout his reign from famine and plague, the peace and order which
his government secured through thirty years won a rest for the land in
which conqueror and conquered blended into a single people and in which
this people slowly moved forward to a new freedom. But while England thu