By a free use of writs running from the King or his Justiciar, he limited the jurisdiction of all other courts, and subordinated them to the King’s Court. By a regular system of removal from lord to county, and from county to King, he secured the gradual unification of the law. The lord’s courts had administered the customs of each manor; each county court, too, had its customs, all based upon the Germanic law, but differing materially in the several counties, and especially in the several ancient divisions of the kingdom. The King’s Court now began to develop a common law, partly Anglo-Saxon in its origin, partly Norman, but molded largely by Henry’s formal or informal legislation, and tempered, as Glanville several times asserts, by equity. To increase the influence of the King’s courts and to bring them to the people, Henry relied on an already existing institution, the _iter_ or eyre; but he so improved the system as to make it almost a new invention. The Kingdom was divided into circuits, each made up of a number of neighboring counties; and judges were appointed to ride each circuit, holding a King’s court in each county, and thus bringing every part of the Kingdom under the direct control of the King. Glanville himself became one of the first judges of the Northern Circuit. One of the most important of Henry’s provisions for securing the King’s peace was the invention of writs for the protection of peaceful seisin, and the prevention of disseisin, even by the true owner. These writs put an end to forcible self-help, and brought every legal dispute over dispossession into the King’s Court. The writs of novel disseisin, of mort d’auncestor, and of darrein presentment, established by Henry’s legislation, became the basis of the land law. Another reform, of even more far-reaching consequence, was his invention of a more rational method of establishing the truth of facts. In place of trial by ordeal, by compurgation, or by battle, he provided the assise (soon followed by the jury) as a means of eliciting truth. Trial by jury in the King’s Court, by favor or by right, became so popular as eventually to deprive the other courts of their litigation; and so satisfactory as to cultivate in the people of England a respect for law and a willingness to abide by its decisions that have been characteristic of the race for centuries. The doctrine of res judicata seems to have been adopted at this time as another rule tending to the preservation of peace. When Glanville wrote, it had not been fully settled that the judgment even in a writ of right was necessarily final; Glanville’s strong opinion that it was so no doubt settled the law as we now have it.