the sheriff or
tax-farmer paid in his dues and took his receipts. The accounts were
carefully entered on the treasurer's roll, which was called from its
shape the Great Roll of the Pipe, and which may still be seen in our
Record Office; the chancellor kept a duplicate of this, known as the Roll
of the Chancery; and an officer of the king registered in a third Roll
matters of any special importance. Before the death of Henry I. the vast
amount and the complexity of business in the Exchequer Court made it
impossible that it should any longer be carried on wholly in London. The
"Barons" began to travel as itinerant judges through the country; as the
king's special officers they held courts in the provinces, where difficult
local questions were tried and decided on the spot. So important did the
work of finance become that the study of the Exchequer is in effect the
key to English history at this time. It was not from any philosophic love
of good government, but because the license of outrage would have
interrupted there turns of the revenue that Henry I. claimed the title of
the "Lion of justice." It was in great measure from a wish to sweep the
fees of the Church courts into the royal Hoard that the second Henry began
the strife with Becket in the Constitutions of Clarendon, and the increase
of revenue was the efficient cause of the great reforms of justice which
form the glory of his reign. It was the fount of English law and English
freedom.
The Curia Regis was composed of the same great officers of the household
as those who sat in the Exchequer, and of a few men chosen by the king
for their legal learning; but in this court they were not known as
"Barons" but as "Justices," and their head was the Chief Justice. The
Curia Regis dealt with legal business, with all causes in which the
king's interest was concerned, with appeals from the local courts, and
from vassals who were too strong to submit to their arbitration, with
pleas from wealthy barons who had bought the privilege of laying their
suit before the king, besides all the perplexed questions which lay far
beyond the powers of the customary courts, and in which the equitable
judgment of the king himself was required. In theory its powers were
great, but in practice little business was actually brought to it in the
time of Henry I; the distance of the court from country places, and the
expense of carrying a suit to it, would alone have proved an effectual
hindran
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