From the amounts of the _royal_ fees or stipends paid to Edward III.'s judges, it may be vaguely estimated how far they were dependent on gifts and _court_ fees for the means of living with appropriate state. John Knyvet, Chief Justice of the King's Bench, has L40 and 100 marks per annum. The annual fee of Thomas de Ingleby, the solitary puisne judge of the King's Bench at that time, was at first 40 marks; but he obtained an additional L40 when the 'fees' were raised, and he received moreover L20 a year as a judge of assize. The Chief of the Common Pleas, Robert de Thrope, received L40 per annum, payable during his tenure of office, and another annual sum of L40 payable during his life. John de Mowbray, William de Wychingham, and William de Fyncheden, the other judges of the Common Pleas, received 40 marks each as official salary, and L20 per annum for their services at assizes. Mowbray's stipend was subsequently increased by 40 marks, whilst Wychingham and Fyncheden received an additional L40 par annum. To the Chief Baron and the other two Barons of the Exchequer annual fees of 40 marks each were paid, the Chief Baron receiving L20 per annum as Justice of Assize, and one of the puisne Barons, Almaric de Shirland, getting an additional 40 marks for certain special services. The 'Issue Roll of 44 Edward III., 1370,' also shows that certain sergeants-at-law acted as Justices of Assize, receiving for their service L20 per annum. Throughout his reign Edward III. strenuously exerted himself to purge his law courts of abuses, and to secure his subjects from evils wrought by judicial dishonesty; and though there is reason to think that he prosecuted his reforms, and punished offending judges with more impulsiveness than consistency--with petulance rather than firmness[14]--his action must have produced many beneficial results. But it does not seem to have occurred to him that the system adopted by his predecessors, and encouraged by the usages of his own time, was the real source of the mischief, and that so long as judges received the greater part of their remuneration from suitors, fees and the donations of the public, enactments and proclamations would be comparatively powerless to preserve the streams of justice from pollution. The fee-system poisoned the morality of the law-courts. From the highest judge to the lowest usher, every person connected with a court of justice was educated to receive small sums of money for trifling services, to be always looking out for paltry dues or gratuities, to multiply occasions for demanding, and reasons for pocketing petty coins, to invent devices for legitimate peculation. In time the system produced such complications of custom, right, privilege, claim, that no one could say definitely how much a suitor was actually bound to pay at each stage of a suit. The fees had an equally bad influence on the public. Trained to approach the king's judges with costly presents, to receive them on