rter
that came before him; if any was imperfect he was ready to draw one up
with his own hand; he watched every difficult point of law, noted every
technical detail, laid down his own position with brief decision. In the
uncertain and transitional state of the law the king's personal
interference knew scarcely any limits, and Henry used his power freely.
But his unswerving justice never faltered. Gilbert de Bailleul, in some
claim to property, ventured to make light of the charter of Henry I., by
which it was held. The king's wrath blazed up. "By the eyes of God," he
cried, "if you can prove this charter false, it would be worth a thousand
pounds to me! If," he went on, "the monks here could present such a
charter to prove their possession of Clarendon, which I love above all
places, there is no pretence by which I could refuse to give it up to
them!"

It is hard to realise the amazing physical endurance and activity which
was needed to do the work of a medieval king. Henry was never at rest. It
was only by the most arduous labour, by travel, by readiness of access to
all men, by inexhaustible patience in weighing complaint and criticism,
that he learned how the law actually worked in the remotest corners of
his land. He was scarcely ever a week in the same place; his life in
England was spent in continual progresses from south to north, from east
to west. The journeyings by rough trackways through "desert" and swamp
and forest, through the bleak moorlands of the Pennine Hills, or the
thickets and fens that choked the lower grounds, proved indeed a sore
trial for the temper of his courtiers; and bitter were the complaints of
the hardships that fell to the lot of the disorderly train that swept
after the king, the army of secretaries and lawyers, the mail-clad
knights and barons followed by their retainers, the archbishop and his
household, bishops and abbots and judges and suitors, with the "actors,
singers, dicers, confectioners, huxters, gamblers, buffoons, barbers, who
diligently followed the court." Knights and barons and clerks, accustomed
to the plenty and comfort of palace and castle, found themselves at the
mercy of every freak of the king's marshals, who on the least excuse
would roughly thrust them out into the night from the miserable hut in
which they sought shelter and cut loose their horses' halters, and whose
hearts were hardly softened by heavy bribes. They were often half-starved;
if food was to be had