of false money were grown so numerous and bare-faced, employed and even protected by the great men about the Court, that this kind of imposition on the publick became, among the rest, an object of redress, and the penalty inflicted was the loss of eyes and genitals. [102] Eadmer. [103] Eadmer. Taking the whole together, one must conclude that the profligacy, and wanton cruelty, of the King's _Suite_ must have been very enormous, to have required punishments so repugnant to natural mercy;--but we can but ill judge, at so distant a period, of the necessity there might be for such severity. The Kings, in these ages, moved their _Court_ very frequently, and often to considerable distances; and, as the state of the roads would not permit them to travel far in a day, they were forced to accommodate themselves as well as they could at such houses as lay convenient, there being then no receptacles of a public nature. These motions of so large a body of people, added to the frequency of them, were often, of themselves, very oppressive to the Yeomanry, who were obliged to supply the Court with carts and horses from place to place; and the abuse the people sustained in this kind of Purveyance was the occasion of edicts afterward to restrain any from _taking carriages_ from the subject, for this purpose, except by the persons authorized and appointed to the office, who were called the King's _Cart-takers_, a post which is now in being, though out of use. But, although the Court was not fixed in these times, yet the Kings generally kept the Feast of Christmas in one place[104], according to their liking or convenience. The other Feasts they kept at different places, as it happened, they having Palaces almost at every considerable place in the Kingdom, _viz._ besides London and its environs, at York, at Gloucester, Winchester, Salisbury, Marlborough, Bath, Worcester, and many other places, too numerous to mention _nominatim_. The great Feasts (together with that of St. George, after the institution of the Order of the Garter,) were kept with great solemnity, even so late as the Reign of King ... when the public observance of them was dropped by the King and Court. [104] _Pro more_, as the Monkish writers say: though Henry I. does not appear to have confined himself to keep the Feast of Christmas at one place. According to the Saxon Chronicle, William I. had stated places for each Feast; and on these occasions the Kings wore their Crowns. "Ter gessit [Willielmus] suam Coronam singulis annis quoties esset in Angliâ; ad _Pascha_ eam gessit in _Winchester;_ ad Pentecosten in _Westminster;_ et ad _Natales_ in _Gloucester_." Chronic. Saxon. p. 190. So before anno 1085 "Rex _induta Corona_ tenuit Curiam in _Winchester_ ad _Pascha_, atque ita Itinera instituit ut esset ad _Pentecosten_ apud _Westminster;_ ubi armis militaribus honoravit filium suum Henricum;" p. 187.