, and, "thanks to our lord the
king," the land was adjudged to the suitor, he had to raise fresh money
to fee the lawyers, the bishop's staff, the officers of the King's Court,
the king's physicians, the king and queen, besides the sums which must be
given to his helpers and pleaders. The end of the story leaves him
mournfully counting up a long list of Jewish creditors, who bid fair to
exhaust the profits of his new possessions.

Such were in brief outline some of the difficulties which made order and
justice hard to win. Society was helpless to protect itself: news spread
slowly, the communication of thought was difficult, common action was
impossible. Amid all the shifting and half understood problems of
medieval times there was only one power to which men could look to protect
them against lawlessness, and that was the power of the king. No external
restraints were set upon his action; his will was without contradiction.
The medieval world with fervent faith believed that he was the very spring
and source of justice. In an age when all about him was changing, and when
there was no organized machinery for the administration of law, the king
had himself to be judge, lawgiver, soldier, financier, and administrator;
the great highways and rivers of the kingdom were in "his peace;" the
greater towns were in his demesne; he was guardian of the poor and
defender of the trader; he was finance minister in a society where
economic conditions were rapidly changing; here presented a developed
system of law as opposed to the primitive customs of feud and private war;
he was the only arbiter of questions that grew out of the new conflict of
classes and interests; he alone could decree laws at his absolute will and
pleasure, and could command the power to carry out his decrees; there was
not even a professional lawyer who was not in his court and bound to his
service.

Henry saw and used his opportunity. Even as a youth of twenty-one he
assumed absolute control in his courts with a knowledge and capacity which
made him fully able to meet trained lawyers, such as his chancellor,
Thomas, or his justiciar, De Lucy. Cool, businesslike, and prompt, he set
himself to meet the vast mass of arrears, the questions of jurisdiction
and of disputed property, which had arisen even as far back as the time of
Henry I., and had gone unsettled through the whole reign of Stephen, to
the ruin and havoc of the lands in question. He examined every cha