hem together. He could at
his pleasure command the attendance of his barons and their vassals,
in which consisted the military force of the kingdom; and could employ
titem, during forty days, either in resisting a foreign enemy, or
reducing his rebellious subjects. And what was of great importance, the
whole judicial power was ultimately in his bands, and was exercised by
officers and ministers of his appointment.

The general plan of the Anglo-Norman government was, that the court of
barony was appointed to decide such controversies as arose between the
several vassals or subjects of the same barony: the hundred court and
county court, which were still continued as during the Saxon times,[**]
to judge between the subjects of different baronies;[***] and the
curia regis, or king's court, to give sentence among the barons
themselves.[****]

[* Dugd. Orig. Jurid, p. 1.5 Spel. Gloss, in verbo
Parliamentum.]

[** Ang. Sacra, vol. i., p. 334, etc. Dugd. Orig.
Jurid., p. 27, 29. Madox, Hist, of the Exch., p. 75, 76.
Spel. Gloss, in verbo Hundred:]

[*** None of the feudal governments in Europe had
such institutions as the county courts, which the great
authority of the Conqueror still retained from the Saxon
customs. All the freeholders of the county, even the
greatest barons, were obliged to attend the sheriff in these
courts, and to assist them in the administration of justice.
By this means they received frequent and sensible
admonitions of their dependence on the king or supreme
magistrate: they formed a kind of community with their
fellow-barons and freeholders; they were often drawn from
their individual and independent state, peculiar to the
feudal system, and were made members of a political body:
and perhaps this institution of county courts in England has
had greater effects on the government than has yet been
distinctly pointed out by historians, or traced by
antiquaries. The barons were never able to free themselves
from this attendance on the sheriffs and itinerant justices
till the reign of Henry III.]

[**** Brady, Tref. p. 143.]

Circumstances which, being derived from a very extensive authority
assumed by the conqueror, contributed to increase the royal prerogative;
and, as long as the state was not disturbed by arms, reduced every order
of the community to some degree of dependenc