the hereditary enemies of Henry.  A tumult of political alarms filled the air.  Ambassadors from both sides hurried to every court, to the Emperor, the Pope, the King of France, the Count of Flanders, the Empress Matilda at Rouen.  It was the beginning of six years of incessant diplomatic intrigue, and of almost ceaseless war.  The conflict, transferred from England to France, rapidly widened into a strife, not now for the maintenance of the king’s authority in England, but for his actual supremacy over the whole empire.  Instead of the great questions of principle which had given dignity to the earlier stages of the dispute, the quarrel sank into a bitter personal wrangle, an ignoble strife which left to later generations no great example, no fruitful precedent, no victory won for liberty or order, for Church or State.

The Constitutions of Clarendon two years before had lain down the principles which were to regulate the relations in England of Church and State.  The Assize of Clarendon laid down the principles on which the administration of justice was to be carried out.  Just as Henry had undertaken to bring Church courts and Church law under the king’s control, so now he aimed at bringing all local and rival jurisdictions whatever into the same obedience.  In form the new law was simple enough.  It consisted of twenty-two articles which were drawn up for the use of the judges who were about to make their circuits of the provinces.  The first articles described the manner in which criminals were to be “presented” before the justices or sheriff.  The accusation was to be made by “juries,” composed of twelve men of the hundred and four men of the township; the “presentment” of a criminal by a jury such as this practically implied that the man was held guilty by the public report of his own neighbourhood, and he was therefore forbidden such chance of escape as compurgation or the less dangerous forms of ordeal might have afforded, and was sent to the almost certain condemnation of the ordeal by water; if by some rare fortune he should escape from this alive he was banished from the kingdom as a man of evil reputation.  All freemen were ordered to attend the courts held by the justices.  The judges were given power to enter on all estates of the nobles, to see that the men of the manor were duly enrolled under the system of “frank-pledge,” in groups of ten men bound to answer for one another as “pledges” for all purposes of police.  Strict rules were made to prevent the possible escape of criminals.  The sheriffs were ordered to aid one another in carrying the hue and cry after them from one country to another; no “liberty” or “honour” might harbour a malefactor against the king’s officers; sheriffs were to give to the justices in writing the names of all fugitives, so that they might be sought through all England; everywhere jails, in which doubtful strangers or suspected rogues might be shut up for safe keeping in case the “hue and cry” should be raised after them,