part of government. The plan of his policy was equally
generous and prudent. He considered the great barons both as the
immediate rivals of the crown and oppressors of the people; and he
purposed, by an exact distribution of justice, and a rigid execution
of the laws, to give at once protection to the inferior orders of the
state, and to diminish the arbitrary power of the great, on which their
dangerous authority was chiefly founded. Making it a rule in his own
conduct to observe, except on extraordinary occasions, the privileges
secured to them by the Great Charter, he acquired a right to insist
upon their observance of the same charter towards their vassals and
inferiors; and he made the crown be regarded by all the gentry and
commonalty of the kingdom, as the fountain of justice, and the general
asylum against oppression.

{1275.} Besides enacting several useful statutes, in a parliament which
he summoned at Westminster, he took care to inspect the conduct of all
his magistrates and judges, to displace such as were either negligent
or corrupt, to provide them with sufficient force for the execution of
justice, to extirpate all bands and confederacies of robbers, and to
repress those more silent robberies which were committed either by the
power of the nobles or under the countenance of public authority. By
this rigid administration, the face of the kingdom was soon changed; and
order and justice took place of violence and oppression: but amidst the
excellent institutions and public-spirited plans of Edward, there still
appears somewhat both of the severity of his personal character and of
the prejudices of the times.

As the various kinds of malefactors, the murderers, robbers,
incendiaries, ravishers, and plunderers, had become so numerous and
powerful, that the ordinary ministers of justice, especially in the
western counties, were afraid to execute the laws against them, the king
found it necessary to provide an extraordinary remedy for the evil; and
he erected a new tribunal, which, however useful, would have been
deemed in times of more regular liberty, a great stretch of illegal and
arbitrary power. It consisted of commissioners, who were empowered
to inquire into disorders and crimes of all kinds, and to inflict the
proper punishments upon them. The officers charged with this unusual
commission, made their circuits throughout the counties of England most
infested with this evil, and carried terror into all t