236 HARVARD LAW REVIEW. judicial business in such assemblies, in which he not merely pre- sided but took an active part.^ At times he seems, like the Con- queror, to have given executive orders on the strength of his own information without any regular judicial hearing. On one occasion early in his reign ^ he directed his chief justiciar, the Earl of Leicester, to hold an inquest of Berl<shire, and ascertain by the verdict of twenty-four ancient men what were the rights of holding a market enjoyed by the abbot of Abingdon in the time of Henry I., the men of WalHngford and Oxford having disputed the abbot's claim. A court was held at Farnborough, and the jurors declared in the abbot's favor, but some of them were objected to for being his servants or tenants. The King ordered another court to be held at Oxford, each side to chose its own jurors. The jurors of Oxford, 6f WalHngford, and of Berkshire generally made separate and, as perhaps might have been expected, discordant returns. The Earl gave no judgment, but reported to the King his own knowledge that he had lived at Abingdon as a boy and seen a full market there not only in Henry I.'s time but earlier. The King, " pleased to have so eminent a witness," acted on this without hesitation, and sent the WalHngford and Oxford people about their business in a summary manner when they came to him at Reading. Again, the court which declared Archbishop Becket in contempt in 1 1 64 was a miscellaneous court of the King's barons.^ A dis- tinction which occurs quite naturally to the modern reader, namely, that this controversy was rather political than legal, would at the time have seemed equally irrelevant, and have been about equally unacceptable, to both parties. It must not be assumed that the King's personal attention to causes brought before him was an unmixed benefit. When ob- tained, it was effectual; but the need for obtaining it, and for that purpose following the King's constant movements not only in England but beyond England, could in the earlier part of Henry H.'s reign be a cause of grave delays. Richard de Anesti's well-known account of his adventures in recovering his uncle's land * shows about five years consumed in what might indeed be 1 See the case of Battle Abbey v. Gilbert de Baillol, Bigelow, Plac. A.-N. 175 ; and the renewal of the same Abbey's charters, ib. 221, where the King made a point of proceeding judicially. 2 Op. cit. 201. 8 lb. 214.
- Palgrave, English Commonwealth, ii. pages ix, Ixxv ; abridged in A.-N. 311 ; Hall,
Court Life under the Plantagenets, 98, 250.
