Page:The history of medieval Europe.djvu/526

476 THE HISTORY OF MEDIEVAL EUROPE which in England alone was there to be developed in the Middle Ages a national body of law. In England alone were the royal courts and judges to be supreme over the entire land. This was to a large extent the work of Henry II and his itinerant justices. They traversed the country looking after royal interests and holding courts or "assizes" throughout the shires in the king's name. By means o f royal wr i ts they took ce ttajn_casesaway from t he courts of the feudal lords, an cLatthe_same time they brought the old English local court s of just i ce in shire an d hundred dire ctly u nder roy al contro l. They combined the popular legal cus- toms which they found in the various localities with new methods of procedure which emanated from the king, thus gradually building up a common law for all England. These royal judges and administrative officials often had studied the Roman law and were influenced by its spirit and scien- tific character, but they did not attempt to introduce it as a whole in the place of English custom. This is shown by two important treatises of the time upon the laws and customs of England, the one written either by Ranulf Glanville or by Hubert Walter toward the close of the reign of Henry II, and the other written by Bracton in the thirteenth century. Not only did the judges go about the kingdom on circuit, but when with the king or at Westminster they constituted The three central courts of justice which became perma- courtsof nent and ultimately supplanted all other juris- common law «« , • rr>i « r . dictions. I nree such courts of common law grew up in the course of the thirteenth century; namely, the Court of the Exchequer which at first- considered cases connected with the royal revenue, the King's Bench which originally dealt with important criminal cases and other suits in which the Crown was concerned, and the Common Pleas whose jurisdiction covered lawsuits between private parties. But "in the end it came about that, while each court had some work all its own, each could entertain any of the common civil actions." A chief feature of procedure by the royal justices under