of objects; for hearing civil cases, for inspecting the working of criminal jurisdiction, and, perhaps before all things, for arranging the financial matters of the country, and superintending the sheriffs in all matters connected with the exchequer. The itinerant justices during their circuits superseded the sheriff’s authority and presided in his courts. They were also allowed to enter and preside in the baronial courts. It has been mentioned that these courts were in most respects complete Hundreds. The two parallel systems, now on certain occasions presided over by the same official, were thus assimilated and brought into immediate connection with the central authority. This administrative organization gave rise to what is of much political importance, a new class of barons, new men who had risen by their talents and by the King’s favour, whose interests were therefore on the side of order and of the crown. At one period, in 1178, Henry II. appears to have found his new ministers untrustworthy, at all events in that year he restricted the Curia Regis to five persons, keeping the highest appellate jurisdiction in the hands of himself and the old Curia Regis, which may henceforth be regarded as the King’s _ordinary council_. The name Curia Regis has thus passed through three phases; a feudal court, a permanent committee of the feudal court, and a restricted committee of that committee. In these various bodies we have the sources of all the judicial bodies in England. The feudal court, with certain additions, became the Parliament; without those additions the Great Council, retaining its natural prerogative of final court of appeal, and represented now by the House of Lords. The permanent committee, or ordinary council, is represented by the privy council, still retaining some of its judicial powers. From its body of clerks, headed by the chancellor, arose the courts of Chancery. While the limited committee was divided shortly after the Magna Charta into three courts, the exchequer, the common pleas, and the king’s bench, at first with the same judges for all, but by the end of Edward III.’s reign with a separate staff. [Sidenote: Origin of jury.]