Page:Select Essays in Anglo-American Legal History, Volume 1.djvu/139

 Jp. GREEN: HENRY II 125 sheriff who brought it. The burden thus fell on the country, for the sheriff would of course protect himself as far as he could by exacting the same tests on all sums paid to him. If the pound was worth but ten shillings in the market no doubt the sheriff only took it for ten shillings in his court. Practically each tax, each due, must have been at least doubled, and the sheriff himself was at the mercy of the Exchequer moneyers. There was but one way to remedy the evil, by securing the purity of the coin, and twice during his reign Henry made this his special care. In the absence of records we can only dimly trace the work of legal reform which was carried out by Henry's legal offi- cers; but it is plain that before 1164 certain great changes had already been fully established. A new and elaborate sys- tem of rules seems gradually to have been drawn up for the guidance of the justices who sat in the Curia Regis ; and a new set of legal remedies in course of time made the chances of justice in this court greater than in any other court of the realm. The Great Assize, an edict whose date is uncertain, but which was probably issued during the first years of his reign, developed and set in full working order the imperfect system of " recognition " established by the Norman kings. Henceforth the man, whose right to his freehold was dis- puted, need but apply to the Curia Regis to issue an order that all proceedings in the local courts should be stopped until the " recognition " of twelve chosen men had decided who was the rightful owner according to the common knowl- edge of the district, and the barbarous foreign custom of settling the matter by combat was done away with. Under the new system the Curia Regis eventually became the recog- nized court of appeal for the whole kingdom. So great a mass of business was drawn under its control that the king and his regular ministers could no longer suffice for the work, and new judges had to be added to the former staff; and at last the positions of the two chief courts of the kingdom were reversed, and the King's Court took the foremost place in the amount and importance of its business. The same system of trial by sworn witnesses was also grad- ually extended to the local courts. By the new-fashioned 1/