ly obeyed.
The king, therefore, with the assistance of his justiciaries, compiled a
new body of laws, in order to find a temper between both. The coin had
been miserably debased, but it was restored by the king's vigilance, and
preserved by punishments, cruel, but terrifying in their example. There
was a savageness in all the judicial proceedings of those days, that
gave even justice itself the complexion of tyranny: for whilst a number
of men were seen in all parts of the kingdom, some castrated, some
without hands, others with their feet cut off, and in various ways
cruelly mangled, the view of a perpetual punishment blotted out the
memory of the transient crime, and government was the more odious,
which, out of a cruel and mistaken mercy, to avoid punishing with death,
devised torments far more terrible than death itself.

But nothing called for redress more than the disorders in the king's own
household. It was considered as an incident annexed to their tenure,
that the socage vassals of the crown, and so of all the subordinate
barons, should receive their lord and all his followers, and supply them
in their progresses and journeys, which custom continued for some ages
after in Ireland, under the name of _coshering_. But this indefinite and
ill-contrived charge on the tenant was easily perverted to an instrument
of much oppression by the disorders of a rude and licentious court;
insomuch that the tenants, in fear for their substance, for the honor
of their women, and often for their lives, deserted their habitations
and fled into the woods on the king's approach. No circumstance could be
more dishonorable to a prince; but happily, like many other great
abuses, it gave rise to a great reform, which went much further than its
immediate purposes. This disorder, which the punishment of offenders
could only palliate, was entirely taken away by commuting personal
service for a rent in money; which regulation, passing from the king to
all the inferior lords, in a short time wrought a great change in the
state of the nation. To humble the great men, more arbitrary methods
were used. The adherence to the title of Robert was a cause, or a
pretence, of depriving many of their vast possessions, which were split
or parcelled out amongst the king's creatures, with great injustice to
particulars, but in the consequences with general and lasting benefit.
The king held his courts, according to the custom, at Christmas and
Easter, bu