[874] Richard of Ilchester is well known as an active official of the Exchequer; see below, pp. 193, 194. Geoffrey Ridel seems to have acted as vice-chancellor throughout S. Thomas’s primacy and exile; see Eyton, _Itin. Hen. II._, p. 174, note 1. As for John of Oxford, his diplomatic talents are only too notorious. This arrangement was however only provisional. The number of judicial circuits was again raised to four, and to each of the three southern circuits was despatched one of the justiciar-bishops, with a royal clerk and three laymen to act as his subordinate assistants. The fourth circuit, which took in the whole district between the Trent and the Scottish border, was intrusted to six justices, of whom only two were clerks; one of these, Godfrey de Lucy the archdeacon of Richmond, a brother of the late chief justiciar, stood nominally at the head of the commission; but there can be little doubt that its real head was one of his lay colleagues--Ralf de Glanville,[875] the faithful sheriff of Lancashire and castellan of Richmond to whom William the Lion had given up his sword at Alnwick in 1174;[876] and these six were appointed to form the committee for hearing the complaints of the people, apparently in succession to the five who had been selected in the previous year.[877] All four bodies of judges brought up a report of their proceedings to the king at Westminster on August 27,[878] and it seems to have been the most satisfactory which he had yet received. When he went over sea in the following April, he left Ralf de Glanville to represent him in England as chief justiciar.[879] Ralf’s business capacities proved to be at least as great, and his honesty as stainless, as those of his predecessor; and from that time forth the management of the entire legal and judicial administration was left in his hands. Circuits, variously distributed, continued to be made from year to year and for divers purposes by companies of judges, ranging in total numbers from three to twenty-two;[880] while the King’s Court and the Exchequer pursued their work on the lines already laid down, without further interruption, till the end of Henry’s reign. [875] See the lists in _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs), vol. i. pp. 238, 239; Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. ii. pp. 190, 191. [876] Jordan Fantosme, v. 1811 (Michel, p. 82). [877] “Isti sex sunt justitiæ in curiâ regis constituti ad audiendum clamores populi.” _Gesta Hen._ as above, p. 239. See on this Stubbs, _Gesta Hen._, vol. ii. pref. p. lxxiii, and _Constit. Hist._, vol. i. pp. 601, 602. [878] R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 436. [879] Rog. Howden as above, p. 215. [880] See notices of the circuits and of the sessions of the Curia Regis and Exchequer in Eyton, _Itin. Hen. II._, pp. 236, 237, 243, 244, 247, 248, 249, 251, 253, 258, 259, 265, 272, 273, 281, 291.