of depending on oral tradition, was
shown by the law books which his ministers began at this time to draw
up. As a security against rebellion, a new oath of fealty was required
from every man, whether earl or villein, fugitives and outlaws were to
be more sharply sought after, and felons punished with harsher cruelty.
"Thinking more of the king than of his sheep," the legate admitted
Henry's right to bring the clergy before secular courts for crimes
against forest law, and in various questions of lay fiefs; and agreed
that murderers of clerks, who till then had been dealt with by the
ecclesiastical courts, should bear the same punishment as murderers of
laymen, and should be disinherited. Religious churchmen looked on with
helpless irritation at Henry's first formal victory over the principles
of Thomas; in the view of his own day he had "renewed the Assize of
Clarendon, and ordered to be observed the execrable decrees for which
the blessed martyr Thomas had borne exile for seven years, and been
crowned with the crown of martyrdom."

During the next two years Henry was in perpetual movement through the
land from Devon to Lincoln, and between March 1176 and August 1177 he
summoned eighteen great councils, besides many others of less consequence.
From 1178 to 1180 he paid his last long visit to England, and again with
the old laborious zeal he began his round of journeys through the
country. "The king inquired about the justices whom he had appointed, how
they treated the men of the kingdom; and when he learned that the land and
the subjects were too much burthened with the great number of justices,
because there were eighteen, he elected five--two clerks and three
laymen--all of his own household; and he ordered that they should hear
all appeals of the kingdom and should do justice, and that they should not
depart from the King's Court, but should remain there to hear appeals, so
that if any question should come to them they should present it to the
audience of the king, and that it should be decided by him and by the wise
men of the kingdom." The _Justices of the Bench_, as they were called,
took precedence of all other judges. The influence of their work was soon
felt. From this time written records began to be kept of the legal
compromises made before the King's Court to render possible the
transference of land. It seems that in 1181 the practice was for the
first time adopted of entering on rolls all the business whi