and, “thanks to our lord the king,” the land was adjudged to the suitor, he had to raise fresh money to fee the lawyers, the bishop’s staff, the officers of the King’s Court, the king’s physicians, the king and queen, besides the sums which must be given to his helpers and pleaders.  The end of the story leaves him mournfully counting up a long list of Jewish creditors, who bid fair to exhaust the profits of his new possessions.

Such were in brief outline some of the difficulties which made order and justice hard to win.  Society was helpless to protect itself:  news spread slowly, the communication of thought was difficult, common action was impossible.  Amid all the shifting and half understood problems of medieval times there was only one power to which men could look to protect them against lawlessness, and that was the power of the king.  No external restraints were set upon his action; his will was without contradiction.  The medieval world with fervent faith believed that he was the very spring and source of justice.  In an age when all about him was changing, and when there was no organized machinery for the administration of law, the king had himself to be judge, lawgiver, soldier, financier, and administrator; the great highways and rivers of the kingdom were in “his peace;” the greater towns were in his demesne; he was guardian of the poor and defender of the trader; he was finance minister in a society where economic conditions were rapidly changing; here presented a developed system of law as opposed to the 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 absolute 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 justiciar, De Lucy.  Cool, businesslike, and prompt, he set himself to meet the vast mass of arrears, the questions of jurisdiction 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 lands 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 transitional 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 Clarendon, which I love above all places, there is no pretence by which I could refuse to give it up to them!”