which, even after it was communicated to the English,
required so much study and application, that the laity in those ignorant
ages were incapable of attaining it, and it was a mystery almost solely
confined to the clergy, and chiefly to the monks[*] The great officers
of the crown, and the feudal barons, who were military men, found
themselves unfit to penetrate into those obscurities; and though they
were entitled to a seat in the supreme judicature, the business of the
court was wholly managed by the chief justiciary and the law barons, who
were men appointed by the king, and entirely at his disposal.[**] This
natural course of things was forwarded by the multiplicity of business
which flowed into that court, and which daily augmented by the appeals
from all the subordinate judicatures of the kingdom.

In the Saxon times, no appeal was received in the king's court, except
upon the denial or delay of justice by the inferior courts; and the same
practice was still observed in most of the feudal kingdoms of Europe.
But the great power of the Conqueror established at first in England an
authority which the monarchs in France were not able to attain till the
reign of St. Lewis, who lived near two centuries after: he empowered his
court to receive appeals both from the courts of barony and the
county courts, and by that means brought the administration of justice
ultimately into the hands of the sovereign.[***] And, lest the expense
or trouble of a journey to court should discourage suitors, and make
them acquiesce in the decision of the inferior judicatures, itinerant
judges were afterwards established, who made their circuits throughout
the kingdom, and tried all causes that were brought before them.[****]

[* Malms, lib. iv. p. 123.]

[** Dugd. Orig. Jurid. p. 25.]

[*** Madox, Hist. of the Exch, p.65. Glanv. lib.
xii. cap. 1, 7. LL. Hen. I. sect. 31, apud Wilkins, p. 248.
Fitz-Stephens, p. 36. Coke's Comment, on the Statute of
Mulbridge, cap. 20.]

[**** Madox, Hist, of the Exch. p. 83, 84, 100.
Gerv. Dorob. p. 1410 What made the Anglo-Norman barons more
readily submit to appeals from their court to the king's
court of exchequer, was their being accustomed to like
appeals in Normandy to the ducal court of exchequer. See
Gilbert's History of the Exchequer, p. 1, 2; though the
author thinks it doubtful whether the Norman court was not
rather cop