widely from the capricious severity of a mere despot.  Hardly less impressive was his unvarying success.  Heavy as were the blows which destiny levelled at him, Henry bore and rose unconquered from all.  To the end of his life the proudest barons lay bound and blinded in his prison.  His hoard grew greater and greater.  Normandy, toss as she might, lay helpless at his feet to the last.  In England it was only after his death that men dared mutter what evil things they had thought of Henry the Peace-lover, or censure the pitilessness, the greed, and the lust which had blurred the wisdom and splendour of his rule.

[Sidenote:  Henry’s Administration]

His vigorous administration carried out into detail the system of government which the Conqueror had sketched.  The vast estates which had fallen to the crown through revolt and forfeiture were granted out to new men dependent on royal favour.  On the ruins of the great feudatories whom he had crushed Henry built up a class of lesser nobles, whom the older barons of the Conquest looked down on in scorn, but who were strong enough to form a counterpoise to their influence, while they furnished the Crown with a class of useful administrators whom Henry employed as his sheriffs and judges.  A new organization of justice and finance bound the kingdom more tightly together in Henry’s grasp.  The Clerks of the Royal Chapel were formed into a body of secretaries or royal ministers, whose head bore the title of Chancellor.  Above them stood the Justiciar, or Lieutenant-General of the kingdom, who in the frequent absence of the king acted as Regent of the realm, and whose staff, selected from the barons connected with the royal household, were formed into a Supreme Court of the realm.  The King’s Court, as this was called, permanently represented the whole court of royal vassals which had hitherto been summoned thrice in the year.  As the royal council, it revised and registered laws, and its “counsel and consent,” though merely formal, preserved the principle of the older popular legislation.  As a court of justice, it formed the highest court of appeal:  it could call up any suit from a lower tribunal on the application of a suitor, while the union of several sheriffdoms under some of its members connected it closely with the local courts.  As a financial body, its chief work lay in the assessment and collection of the revenue.  In this capacity it took the name of the Court of Exchequer from the chequered table, much like a chess-board, at which it sat and on which accounts were rendered.  In their financial capacity its justices became “barons of the Exchequer.”  Twice every year the sheriff of each county appeared before these barons and rendered the sum of the fixed rent from royal domains, the Danegeld or land tax, the fines of the local courts, the feudal aids from the baronial estates, which formed the chief part of the royal revenue.  Local disputes respecting these payments or the assessment of the town-rents were settled by a detachment of barons from the court who made the circuit of the shires, and whose fiscal visitations led to the judicial visitations, the “judges’ circuits,” which still form so marked a feature in our legal system.