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230 of local justice, the Royal, or Palatine, Court, over which the king presided in person, was the only tribunal where redress could be sought against a powerful adversary, or whither appeal could be made from decisions in the inferior courts. Henry knew, as his biographer tells us, that the region left unvisited by the king was most often filled with the complaints and groans of the poor, and he did his utmost, by incessant journeys through the land, to bring justice within reach of all his subjects. In many cases he punished with severity high-born disturbers of the peace. Yet the conditions were now such that the Crown was not strong enough of itself to compel obedience to the law. To make his will prevail, alike in judicial administration and in large measures of policy, he had to secure the co-operation of the magnates assembled in general or provincial diets. At these meetings, which became more frequent under him than under his predecessors, he was generally able, by his fixity of purpose and his skilful address, to win consent to his designs. Even so, however, he was largely dependent for their accomplishment upon such material aid as the good will of the nobles might afford him. There existed no standing army. The national levy could still be summoned by royal command for the defence of the realm; but the only permanent force at the disposal of the king consisted of unfree retainers (ministeriales) drawn from the crown lands or from his patrimonial estates. But they were insufficient for making expeditions abroad or for preserving order at home; and it was upon the feudal contingents furnished by the magnates that the monarch had to rely in the last resort.

Furthermore the royal revenues had for years been in steady decline. The immense crown estates, the villae on which Charles the Great had bestowed such care, had been broken up and largely dissipated by the later Carolingians, partly through the granting of fiefs to reward their supporters, partly though their lavish endowment of churches and monasteries. And in similar fashion the peculiar royal rights of coinage, tolls, and markets, with others of the same kind, all extremely profitable, had been also freely alienated to laymen and ecclesiastics. In the hands of Otto the Great this practice had been turned to account for the strengthening of the throne; but under his son and grandson it had rather served to establish the local powers in their independence. What crown lands remained to the monarch lay scattered in fragments throughout the kingdom, and were therefore less profitable and more difficult to administer. Henry was a wealthy king, but more through his possession of the great Liudolfing inheritance in Saxony and of the patrimony of his Bavarian ancestors, than through his command of such resources as were proper to the Crown.

Faced then by the growing power of the secular magnates, Henry, if he were to restore the German monarchy, had to seek some surer means than the bare authority of the Crown. But the task was one beyond the powers of a single man, and required the steady action of an ordered ad-