Page:Select Essays in Anglo-American Legal History, Volume 1.djvu/145

 /. GREEN: HENRY II 131 ■* the penalty of a ruinous fine for non-attendance or full of a newly -kindled hope of justice. Important cases were more and more withdrawn from the sheriffs and given to the justices. They entered the estates of the nobles, even the franchises, liberties, and manors which had been freed from the old courts of the shire or hundred; they reviewed their decisions and interfered with their judgments. It is true that the system established in principle was but gradually carried into effect, and the people long suffered the tyranny of lords who maintained their own prisons. Half a century later we find sturdy barons setting up their tumbrils and gallows. In the reign of Edward I. there were still thirty- five private gallows in Berkshire alone, and when one of them was by chance or age broken down, and the people refused to set it up again, the baron could still make shift with the nearest oak. But as a system of government, feudalism was doomed from the day of Henry's Assize, and only dragged out a lingering existence till the legislation of Edward I. dealt it a final blow. The duties of police were at that time performed by the whole population, and the judges' circuits brought home sharply to every man the part he was expected to play in the suppression of crime. Juries were fined if they had not " presented " a due amount of criminals ; townships were fined if they had not properly pursued malefactors ; villages were fined if a hut was burned down and the hue and cry was not raised, or if a criminal who had fled for refuge to their church escaped from it. A robber or murderer must be paid for by his " pledge," or if he had no pledge, a fine fell on his village or township; if a dead body were found and the slayer not produced, the hundred must pay for him, unless a legal form, called " proving his Englishry," could be gone through — a condition which was constantly impossible ; the township was fined if the body had been buried before the coming of the coroner ; abbot or knight or householder was heavily taxed for every crime of serf or hired servant under him, or even for the offences of any starving and worn-out pilgrim or traveller to whom he had given a three days' shelter. In the remotest regions of the country barons and