king himself in council with his “wise men”--a phrase which, while on the one hand it carries us back to the very earliest form of the Curia Regis, on the other points onward to its later developements in the modern tribunals of equity or of appeal, the courts of Chancery and of the Privy Council in its judicial capacity.[869] [866] _Ib._ p. lxx and note 3. [867] _Ib._ vol. i. pp. 207, 208. [868] Stubbs, _Gesta Hen._, vol. ii., pref. p. lxxi and note 2. [869] Stubbs, _Constit. Hist._, vol. i. pp. 486, 487, 601–603; _Gesta Hen._, vol. ii. pref. pp. lxxi, lxxiv–lxxvii. All these changes in the circuits and in the Curia Regis had however another motive. The chief obstacle to Henry’s judicial and legal reforms was the difficulty of getting them administered according to the intention of their author. It was to meet this difficulty that Henry, as a contemporary writer says, “while never changing his mind, was ever changing his ministers.”[870] He had employed men chosen from every available class of society in turn, and none of his experiments had altogether brought him satisfaction. Feudal nobles, court officials, confidential servants and friends, had all alike been tried and, sooner or later, found wanting.[871] There was only one who had never yet failed him in a service of twenty-five years’ duration--Richard de Lucy “the loyal”; but in the summer of 1179 Richard de Lucy, to his master’s great regret, resigned his office of justiciar and retired to end his days a few months later as a brother of an Augustinian house which he had founded at Lesnes in Kent to the honour of S. Thomas of Canterbury.[872] Henry in this extremity fell back once more upon a precedent of his grandfather’s time and determined to place the chief administration, for the moment at least, again in clerical hands. Instead of a single justiciar-bishop, however, he appointed three--the bishops of Winchester, Ely and Norwich;[873] all of whom, under their earlier appellations of Richard of Ilchester, Geoffrey Ridel and John of Oxford, had long ago acquired ample experience and shewn ample capacity for the work of secular administration.[874] [870] “Sic animum a proposito non immutans, circa personas mutabiles immutabilem semper sæpe mutavit sententiam.” R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 434--part of a long passage which sets forth very fully the motives and the general aims and results of Henry’s administrative changes. [871] R. Diceto as above, pp. 434–435. [872] _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 238. Cf. Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. ii. p. 190. [873] R. Diceto as above, p. 435.