To carry out this strict police some apparatus was necessary, which at the same time should serve the purpose of diminishing the power of the great nobles, and that of beginning at all events, by its centralizing influence, to re-form the conquered people and their conquerors into one nation. The rudiments of such an apparatus Henry found already existing in the arrangements which the Conqueror had made. The system of frankpledge, increased and adapted to the more general feudal form of society, supplied him with an efficient system of police. There was no man in the kingdom but some one was answerable for him. If he was a vassal, his lord. If he was a freeman, the knot of freemen of which he was a member. As courts to carry out this system, there were the old Hundred and Shire gemots. These Henry strengthened and, it would seem from one existing order, restored when in any way decayed to their original purity. To these courts criminal cases belonged, and civil suits between vassals of different lords. Questions between vassals of the same lord seem to have fallen within the jurisdiction of the lord. But these inferior courts, although they were excellent for police purposes, and as a check upon the powers of the baronial courts, would have done little towards the formation of nationality had they not been brought into connection with a superior court of which the king was chief. This central court consisted of the King in his ordinary council, which, since the Conquest, was known as the Curia Regis. Over it was the justiciary, who was the King’s representative, his regent during his absence, the head of his administration, both judicial and financial, at all times. Under him was a selection of barons, the chief officers of the royal household, and those best qualified for judicial purposes. The clerks of this court were placed under a head, who was the chancellor. The judges themselves sat for financial purposes in the exchequer chamber, and were spoken of as the barons of the exchequer. For general business they were called justices, and their head the chief-justice. The organization of this court dates from the reign of Henry I. The office of chief justiciary had been founded by William the Conqueror, but the regular formation of the Exchequer Court was the work of Roger, Bishop of Salisbury, in the hands of whose family the direction of the machinery remained for nearly a century.[8] It was afterwards, as we shall see, brought to its completion by Henry II., but all its essential parts are to be found in the reign of his grandfather. It was as officers of finance that the justices first began to traverse the country. The sheriffs could not always be trusted in their own localities, and change of property and other causes gave rise to difficult questions, requiring to be settled by the immediate intervention of the King’s officers. From financial questions their authority naturally passed to questions of justice, and their connection