Page:Select Essays in Anglo-American Legal History, Volume 1.djvu/135

 ^. GREEN: HENRY II 121 primitive customs of feud and private war ; he was the only arbiter of questions that grew out of the new conflict of classes and interests ; he alone could decree laws at his abso- lute will and pleasure, and could command the power to carry out his decrees ; there was not even a professional lawyer who was not in his court and bound to his service. Henry saw and used his opportunity. Even as a youth of twenty-one he assumed absolute control in his courts with a knowledge and capacity which made him fully able to meet trained lawyers, such as his chancellor, Thomas, or his jus- ticiar, De Lucy. Cool, businesslike, and prompt, he set him- self to meet the vast mass of arrears, the questions of juris- diction and of disputed property, which had arisen even as far back as the time of Henry I., and had gone unsettled through the whole reign of Stephen, to the ruin and havoc of the land in question. He examined every charter that came before him; if any was imperfect he was ready to draw one up with his own hand; he watched every difficult point of law, noted every technical detail, laid down his own position with brief decision. In the uncertain and transi-1 tional state of the law the king's personal interference knew] scarcely any limits, and Henry used his power freely. But his unswerving justice never faltered. Gilbert de Bailleul, in some claim to property, ventured to make light of the charter of Henry I., by which it was held. The king's wrath blazed up. " By the eyes of God," he cried, " if you can prove this charter false, it would be worth a thousand pounds to me ! If," he went on, " the monks here could present such a charter to prove their possession of Claren- don, which I love above all places, there is no pretence by which I could refuse to give it up to them ! ". . . Henry began his work of reorganization by taking up the work which his grandfather had begun — that of replac- ing the mere arbitrary power of the sovereign by a uniform system of administration, and bringing into order the vari- ous conflicting authorities which had been handed down from ancient times, royal courts and manor courts, church courts, shire courts, hundred courts, forest courts, and local courts in special franchises, with all their inextricable confusion of