Page:Harvard Law Review Volume 12.djvu/253

233 KING'S JUSTICE IN EARLY MIDDLE AGES. 233 was imitated, in the course of the next century, by other great lords of lands. The princely bishop of Durham and the abbot of Peterborough in the northern parts, the dean and chapter of St Paul's in the region north and east of London, the abbot of Glastonbury in the south, caused the state of their domains to be recorded on a system generally similar to that of Domesday Book. By the time of Henry II. the sworn inquest must have been a pretty familiar institution of estate management all over England, or, we may almost say, of local government, for the two things, outside the towns, are hardly distinguishable in the English polity of the twelfth century. Thus the way was cleared for the great reforms in legal procedure which began under Henry II. It was kept clear also, from another direction, by the English reaction, still obscure to us in many of its details, which took place after the accession of Henry II.'s grandfather, first of the name. In William Rufus's time there had been no justice to be found at the king's hand and not much law, though it was not a period of anarchy such as had yet to be endured under the nominal rule of Stephen. The desire of a people oppressed and taxed by strangers was for restoration of their ancient customs. And that restoration was promised them by Henry I., no doubt in all good faith, when at the end of the eleventh century he came to the throne, and in the plainest terms admitted the grievance and repudiated his brother's course of exactions.^ The customs of Edward the Confessor's day, with William I.'s not very large amendments, were declared valid. quibus pater mens eam emendavit consilio baronum suorum." Such were the King's words ; he purposely spoke of laga, the Anglo-Danish customs, not of some lex which might have been a new foreign thing. His marriage with a wife who brought the ancient royal blood of Wessex into the succession was a further earnest of national revival. The movement was deep and genuine, as we know by the best of evidence, the jealousy of the Norman courtiers who scoffed at the English goodman and goodwife. On the legal side, it took shape in industrious and more or less honest endeavors to reconstruct the customs of Edward the Confessor from Anglo-Saxon documents, and interpret them for the benefit both of clerks and officials who knew little English of any kind, 1 " Quia regnum oppressum erat iniustis exactionibus." Coronation Charter of Henry I., sec. i ; Stubbs, Sel. Ch. 100. A critical text was published by Dr. Lieber- mann in 1894. Trans. R. Hist. Soc. N. s. viii. 21, 40.
 * Lagam regis Eadwardi vobis reddo cum illis emendationibus