1285 is a code of the same sort as the first, amending the Statutes of Mortmain, of Merton, and of Gloucester, as well as the laws of dower and advowson, remodelling the system of justices of assize, and curbing the abuses of manorial jurisdiction.  In the same year appeared the greatest of Edward’s measures for the enforcement of public order.  The Statute of Winchester revived and reorganized the old institutions of national police and national defence.  It regulated the action of the hundred, the duty of watch and ward, and the gathering of the fyrd or militia of the realm as Henry the Second had moulded it into form in his Assize of Arms.  Every man was bound to hold himself in readiness, duly armed, for the king’s service in case of invasion or revolt, and to pursue felons when hue and cry was made after them.  Every district was held responsible for crimes committed within its bounds; the gates of each town were to be shut at nightfall; and all strangers were required to give an account of themselves to the magistrates of any borough which they entered.  By a provision which illustrates at once the social and physical condition of the country at the time all brushwood was ordered to be destroyed within a space of two hundred feet on either side of the public highway as a security for travellers against sudden attacks from robbers.  To enforce the observance of this act knights were appointed in every shire under the name of Conservators of the Peace, a name which as the benefit of these local magistrates was more sensibly felt and their powers were more largely extended was changed into that which they still retain of Justices of the Peace.  So orderly however was the realm that Edward was able in 1286 to pass over sea to his foreign dominions, and to spend the next three years in reforming their government.  But the want of his guiding hand was at last felt; and the Parliament of 1289 refused a new tax till the king came home again.

[Sidenote:  “Quia Emptores”]

He returned to find the Earls of Gloucester and Hereford at war, and his judges charged with violence and corruption.  The two Earls were brought to peace, and Earl Gilbert allied closely to the royal house by a marriage with the king’s daughter Johanna.  After a careful investigation the judicial abuses were recognized and amended.  Two of the chief justices were banished from the realm and their colleagues imprisoned and fined.  But these administrative measures were only preludes to a great legislative act which appeared in 1290.  The Third Statute of Westminster, or, to use the name by which it is more commonly known, the Statute “Quia Emptores,” is one of those legislative efforts which mark the progress of a wide social revolution in the country at large.  The number of the greater barons was diminishing every day, while the number of the country gentry and of the more substantial yeomanry was increasing with the increase of the national wealth.  The increase