courts of law."[8]

[Footnote 8: W. Wilson, The State (rev. ed.,
Boston, 1903), 369.]

*9. The Plantagenet Monarchy.*--During the century and a half following
the death of the Conqueror the vigor of the monarchy varied
enormously, but not until the days of King John can there be said to
have been any loss of power or independence which amounted to more
than a passing circumstance. In a charter granted at the beginning of
his reign, in 1100, Henry I. confirmed the liberties of his subjects
and promised to respect the laws of Edward the Confessor; but the new
sovereign did not propose, and no one imagined that he intended to
propose, to relax any of the essential and legitimate power which had
been transmitted to him by his father and brother. The reign of (p. 008)
Stephen (1135-1154) was an epoch of anarchy happily unparalleled in
the history of the nation. During the course of it the royal authority
sank to its lowest ebb since the days of the Danish incursions. But
the able and wonderfully energetic Henry II. (1154-1189) recovered all
that had been lost and added not a little of his own account. "Henry
II.," it has been said, "found a nation wearied out with the miseries
of anarchy, and the nation found in Henry II. a king with a passion
for administration."[9] With the fundamental purpose of reducing all
of his subjects to equality before an identical system of law, the
great Plantagenet sovereign waged determined warfare upon both the
rebellious nobility and the independent clergy. He was not entirely
successful, especially in his conflict with the clergy; but he
effectually prevented a reversion of the nation to feudal chaos, and
he invested the king's law with a sanction which it had known hardly
even in the days of the Conqueror. The reign of Henry II. has been
declared, indeed, to "initiate the rule of law."[10] By reviving and
placing upon a permanent basis the provincial visitations of the royal
justices, for both judicial and fiscal purposes, and by extending in
the local administration of justice and finance the principle of the
jury, Henry contributed fundamentally to the development of the
English Common Law, the jury, and the modern hierarchy of courts. By
appointing as sheriffs lawyers or soldiers, rather than great barons,
he fostered the influence of the central government in local affairs.
By commuting military service for a money payment (_scutage_), and by