The king abode for no more than three months in England; he got himself recrowned at Winchester, apparently to wipe out the stain of his German captivity and of an enforced homage which the emperor had extorted from him. Then he raised a heavy tax from his already impoverished subjects, sold a number of official posts and departed to France--never to return, though he had still five years to live. He left behind Archbishop Hubert Walter as justiciar, a faithful if a somewhat high-handed minister. Richard's one ruling passion was now to punish Philip of France for his unfriendly conduct during his absence. He plunged into a war with this clever and shifty prince, which lasted--with certain short breaks of truces and treaties--till his death. He wasted his considerable military talents in a series of skirmishes and sieges which had no great results, and after spending countless treasures and harrying many regions, perished obscurely by a wound from a cross-bow-bolt, received while beleaguering Châlus, a castle of a rebellious lord of Aquitaine, the viscount of Limoges (April 6, 1199). English constitutional development. During these years of petty strife England was only reminded at intervals of her king's existence by his intermittent demands for money, which his ministers did their best to satisfy. The machine of government continued to work without his supervision. It has been observed that, from one point of view, England's worst kings have been her best; that is to say, a sovereign like Richard, who persistently neglected his duties, was unconsciously the foster father of constitutional liberty. For his ministers, bureaucrats of an orderly frame of mind, devised for their own convenience rules and customs which became permanent, and could be cited against those later kings who interfered more actively in the details of domestic governance. We may trace back some small beginnings of a constitution to the time of Henry II.--himself an absentee though not on the scale of his son. But the ten years of Richard's reign were much more fruitful in the growth of institutions which were destined to curb the power of the crown. His justiciars, and especially Hubert Walter, were responsible for several innovations which were to have far-spreading results. The most important was an extension of the use of juries into the province of taxation. When the government employs committees chosen by the taxpayers to estimate and assess the details of taxation, it will find it hard to go back to arbitrary exactions. Such a practice had been first seen when Henry II., in his last year, allowed the celebrated "Saladin Tithe" for the service of the crusade to be assessed by local jurors. In Richard's reign the practice became regular. In especial when England was measured out anew for the great carucage of 1197--a tax on every ploughland which replaced the rough calculation of Domesday Book--knights elected by the shires shared