those that still exist.  The primary object of these circuits was financial; but the rendering of the king’s justice went on side by side with the exaction of the king’s dues, and this carrying of justice to every corner of the realm was made still more effective by the abolition of all feudal exemptions from the royal jurisdiction.  The chief danger of the new system lay in the opportunities it afforded to judicial corruption; and so great were its abuses, that in 1178 Henry was forced to restrict for a while the number of justices to five, and to reserve appeals from their court to himself in council.  The Court of Appeal which was thus created, that of the King in Council, gave birth as time went on to tribunal after tribunal.  It is from it that the judicial powers now exercised by the Privy Council are derived, as well as the equitable jurisdiction of the Chancellor.  In the next century it became the Great Council of the realm, and it is from this Great Council, in its two distinct capacities, that the Privy Council drew its legislative, and the House of Lords its judicial character.  The Court of Star Chamber and the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council are later offshoots of Henry’s Court of Appeal.  From the judicial organization of the realm, he turned to its military organization, and in 1181 an Assize of Arms restored the national fyrd or militia to the place which it had lost at the Conquest.  The substitution of scutage for military service had freed the crown from its dependence on the baronage and its feudal retainers; the Assize of Arms replaced this feudal organization by the older obligation of every freeman to serve in defence of the realm.  Every knight was now bound to appear in coat of mail and with shield and lance, every freeholder with lance and hauberk, every burgess and poorer freeman with lance and helmet, at the king’s call.  The levy of an armed nation was thus placed wholly at the disposal of the Crown for purposes of defence.

[Sidenote:  Henry’s death]

A fresh revolt of the younger Henry with his brother Geoffry in 1183 hardly broke the current of Henry’s success.  The revolt ended with the young king’s death, and in 1186 this was followed by the death of Geoffry.  Richard, now his father’s heir, remained busy in Aquitaine; and Henry was himself occupied with plans for the recovery of Jerusalem, which had been taken by Saladin in 1187.  The “Saladin tithe,” a tax levied on all goods and chattels, and memorable as the first English instance of taxation on personal property, was granted to the king at the opening of 1188 to support his intended Crusade.  But the Crusade was hindered by strife which broke out between Richard and the new French king, Philip; and while Henry strove in vain to bring about peace, a suspicion that he purposed to make his youngest son, John, his heir drove Richard to Philip’s side.  His father, broken in health and spirits, negotiated fruitlessly through the winter, but with