Page:A School History of England (1911).djvu/75

 four times a year. The judges gave these offenders a fair trial, in which some sort of ‘Jury’ of their neighbours had a hand; and if they were found guilty they were hanged—which surprised them a good deal. The King could not wholly put down the barons’ private courts of Justice, but he took away every shred of real power from them; his sheriffs, he said, were to go everywhere, no matter what privileges a baron might claim.

Another splendid thing which Henry did was to establish one coinage for the whole country, stamped at his royal mint; and woe it was to the man who ‘uttered’ false coins!

As regards his army of freeholders, he compelled every man to keep arms in his house to be used when the sheriff called him to battle. A rich landowner had to be armed in complete chain-mail, to provide his own horses and to serve in the cavalry, and was called a ‘knight’. But even a man who possessed the small sum of £6 13s. 4d. had to provide himself with a steel cap, a neck-piece of mail and a spear; while every free man, in town or country, had to have a leather jacket, a steel cap and a spear. And this ‘territorial army’ was not only to fight, but to keep the peace also, to chase rogues and thieves, to watch at night at the town gates; in fact, as we should now say, to ‘assist the police’.

As regards taxes, Henry did not demand huge sums from all his subjects without distinction of wealth, but he sent officials round the country, who called together the principal inhabitants of each village and town, and got them to say what their neighbours as well as themselves could afford to pay. So you see, by all these measures, King Henry interested his subjects in the