justice in his “hall-moot,” the bishop and archdeacon dispensing the law in the church courts.  By his sudden journeys, his unexpected movements and rapid change of plans, he arrived at the very moment and the very place where no one looked for him; nothing was safe from his eye and ear; no false sheriff or rebellious lord could be sure when his terrible master might be at his doors.  Foreigner as the king was, there was soon no Englishman who knew the affairs of his kingdom so well.  His penetrating curiosity, his wide experience, his practised judgment, rapidly made him one of the most sagacious administrators and wisest legislators that ever guided England in a very critical moment of her history; and when he finally drew up his system of reform there was not a single point of principle in it from which he or his successors found it necessary afterwards to draw back.

CHAPTER IV

THE FIRST REFORMS

Henry began his work of reorganization by taking up the work which his grandfather had begun—­that of replacing the mere arbitrary power of the sovereign by a uniform system of administration, and bringing into order the various 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 law and custom and procedure.  Under Henry I. two courts, the Exchequer and the Curia Regis, had control of all the financial and judicial business of the kingdom.  The Exchequer filled a far more important place in the national life than the Curia Regis, for the power of the king was simply measured by the state of the treasury, when wars began to be fought by mercenaries, and justice to be administered by paid officials.  The court had to keep a careful watch over the provincial accounts, over the moneys received from the king’s domains, and the fines from the local courts.  It had to regulate changes in the mode of payment as the use of money gradually replaced the custom of payments in kind.  It had to watch alterations in the ownership and cultivation of land, to modify the settlement of Doomsday Book so as to meet new conditions, and to make new distribution of taxes.  There was no class of questions concerning property in the most remote way which might not be brought before its judges for decision.  Twice a year the officers of the royal household, the Chancellor, Treasurer, two Chamberlains, Constable, and Marshal, with a few barons chosen from their knowledge of the law, sat with the Justiciar at their head, as “Barons of the Exchequer” in the palace at Westminster, round the table covered with its “chequered” cloth from which they took their name.  In one chamber, the Exchequer of Account, the “Barons” received the reports of the sheriffs from every county, and fixed the sums to be levied.  In a second