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 mon’ law courts, which were now fixed at Westminster with a separate staff of judges for each. In some cases, if you couldn't get justice anywhere else, you might go to the King himself, who would order his Chancellor to look into your case; and that was the beginning of the ‘Court of Chancery’. The Chancellor was the greatest official in the Kingdom and kept the King’s ‘Great Seal’, with which all legal documents must be sealed. One of the most useful laws which Edward made was called ‘Mortmain’, forbidding people to leave more lands to the Church, which was growing a little too powerful. Another was the ‘Statute of Winchester’, a great measure for compelling all men to help in keeping the peace; it created ‘police-constables’ (with whom, as friends or foes, most boys are still familiar) in every town and village. Another was a law allowing the free sale and division of great estates of land. In all his laws, as in all his wars, we may say that Edward, like Henry Il, took his people into his confidence, which is the secret of good government. It was expensive, as all good government must be; and, as no one likes paying taxes, there was once a sort of outbreak, both of barons and clergy, against the expense of it. Edward was very angry, but he gave way and confirmed Magna Charta, with the additional promise added that he would take no new taxes without consent of his full Parliament.

He kept his promise. ‘Pactum serva’ (Keep troth) was his motto. Indeed the country was now able to bear heavy taxes. Early in the twelfth century an order of monks called ‘Cistercians’ had begun to devote themselves to breeding sheep on a great scale, in order to sell wool; and England at the end of the thirteenth century was the greatest wool-growing country in the world. We