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The executive power of the Anglo-Norman government was lodged in the king. Besides the stated meetings of the national council at the three great festivals of Christmas, Easter, and Whitsuntide,[*] he was accustomed, on any sudden exigence to summon them 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 dependence and subordination.

The king himself often sat in his court, which always attended his person:[**] he there heard causes and pronounced judgment;[***] and though he was assisted by the advice of the other members, it is not to be imagined that a decision could easily be obtained, contrary to his inclination or opinion. In his absence the chief justiciary presided, who was the first magistrate in the state, and a kind of viceroy, on whom depended all the civil affairs of the kingdom.[****] The other chief officers of the crown, the constable, mareschal, seneschal chamberlain, treasurer, and chancellor,[*****] were members, together with such feudal barons as thought proper to attend, and the barons of the exchequer, who at first were also feudal barons appointed by the king.[******] This court, which was sometimes called the king’s court, sometimes the court of exchequer, judged in all causes, civil and criminal, and comprehended the whole business which is now shared out among four courts the chancery, the king’s bench, the common pleas, and the exchequer.[*******]

Such an accumulation of powers was itself a great source of authority, and rendered the jurisdiction of the court formidable to all the subjects; but the turn which judicial trials took soon after the conquest, served still more to increase its authority, and to augment the royal prerogatives. William, among the other violent changes which he attempted and effected, had introduced the Norman law into England,[********] had ordered all the pleadings to be in that tongue, and had interwoven with the English jurisprudence all the maxims and principles which the Normans, more advanced in cultivation and naturally litigious, were accustomed to observe in the distribution of justice.

     [** Madox, Hist. of the Exch. p. 103.]

     [*** Bracton, lib. iii. cap. 9, sect. 1; cap. 10,
     sect. 1.]

     [**** Spel. Gloss, in verbo Justiciarii.]
     54. The Normans introduced the practice of sealing charters;
     and the chancellor’s office was to keep the great seal.
     Ingulph. Dugd. p. 33, 34.]

     [****** Madox, Hist, of the Exch. p. 134, 135.
     Gerv. Dorob. p, 1387,]

     [******* Madox. Hist. of the Exch. p. 56, 70.]

     [******** Dial, de Scac. p. 30, apud Madox, Hist,
     of the Exch.]

Law now became a science, which at first fell entirely into the hands of the Normans; and 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 copied from English. (p. 6.)]