aw his waggons and horses, or his store of honey,
eggs, loaves, beer, the fish from his pond or the fowls from his yard,
claimed by the purveyors who provided for the judges and their followers,
and paid for by such measures and such prices as seemed good to the greedy
contractors. The people at large groaned under the heavy burden of fines
and penalties and charges for the maintenance of an unaccustomed justice.
When in the visitations of 1168 the judges had to collect, besides the
ordinary dues, an "aid" for the marriage of the king's eldest daughter,
the unhappy tax-payers, recognizing in their misery no distinctions,
attributed all their sufferings to the new reform, and saw in their king
not a ruler who desired righteous judgment, but one who only thirsted
after gain. The one privilege which seemed worth fighting for or worth
buying was the privilege of assessing their own fines and managing their
own courts. Half a century later we see the prevailing terror at a visit
of the judges to Cornwall, when all the people fled for refuge to the
woods, and could hardly be compelled or persuaded to come back again.
Yet later the people won a concession that in time of war no circuits
should be held, so that the poor should not be utterly ruined.

Oppression and extortion had doubtless been well known before, when the
sheriff carried on the administration of the law side by side with the
lucrative business of "farming the shires;" but it was at least an
irregular and uncertain oppression. The sheriff might himself at any
moment share the fate of one of his own victims and a more merciful man
stand in his place; in any case bribes were not unavailing, and there
was still an appeal to the king's justice. But against the new system
there was no appeal; it was orderly, methodical, unrelenting; it was
backed by the whole force of the kingdom; it overlooked nothing; it
forgot nothing; it was comparatively incorruptible. The lesser courts,
with their old clumsy procedure, were at a hopeless disadvantage before
the professional judges, who could use all the new legal methods. If a
man suffered under these there was none to plead his cause, for in all
the country there was not a single trained lawyer save those in the
king's service. However we who look back from the safe distance of seven
hundred years may see with clearer vision the great work which was done
by Henry's Assize, in its own day it was far from being a welcome
instituti