[4] The absurdity of this doctrine of Coke is made more apparent by the fact that, at that time, the "justices" and other persons appointed by the king to hold courts were not only dependent upon the king for their offices, and removable at his pleasure, but that the usual custom was, not to appoint them with any view to permanency, but only to give them special commissions for trying a single cause, or for holding a single term of a court, or for making a single circuit; which, being done, their commissions expired. The king, therefore, could, and undoubtedly did, appoint any individual he pleased, to try any cause he pleased, with a special view to the verdicts he desired to obtain in the particular cases. This custom of commissioning particular persons to hold jury trials, in criminal cases, (and probably also in civil ones,) was of course a usurpation upon the common law, but had been practised more or less from the time of William the Conqueror. Palgrave says: "The frequent absence of William from his insular dominions occasioned another mode of administration, which ultimately produced still greater changes in the law. It was the practice of appointing justiciars to represent the king's person, to hold his court, to decide his pleas, to dispense justice on his behalf, to command the military levies, and to act as conservators of the peace in the king's name. [5] .. The justices who were assigned in the name of the sovereign, and whose powers were revocable at his pleasure, derived their authority merely from their grant... Some of those judges were usually deputed for the purpose of relieving the king from the burden of his judicial functions... The number as well as the variety of names of the justices appearing in the early chirographs of 'Concords,' leave reason for doubting whether, anterior to the reign of Henry III., (1216 to 1272,) a court, whose members were changing at almost every session, can be said to have been permanently constituted. It seems more probable that the individuals who composed the tribunal were selected as suited the pleasure of the sovereign, and the convenience of the clerks and barons; and the history of our legal administration will be much simplified, if we consider all those courts which were afterwards denominated the Exchequer, the King's Bench, the Common Pleas, and the Chancery, as being originally committees, selected by the king when occasion required, out of a large body, for the despatch of peculiar branches of business, and which committees, by degrees, assumed an independent and permanent existence... Justices itinerant, who, despatched throughout the land, decided the ' Pleas of the Crown,' may be obscurely traced in the reign of the Conqueror; not, perhaps, appointed with much regularity, but despatched upon peculiar occasions and emergencies." 1 Palgrave's Rise and Progress, &c;., p. 289 to 293.