Incidentally, we have here witness to that system, of which the Pipe-Roll of 1130 is the solitary but vivid exponent, and under which the very name of "plea" became a terror to all men. Every man was liable, on the slightest pretext, to be brought within the meshes of the law, with the object, as it seemed, and at least with the result, of swelling the royal hoard (cf. pp. 11, 12, _n._ 1). Even to secure one's simplest rights money had always to be paid. Thus, here, Geoffrey stipulates that he and his men are to hold their possessions "sine placito," and "ita quod ... non ponantur in ullo modo in placito de aliquo forisfacto," etc., etc. So again, in his later charter, we find him insisting that he and they shall hold all their possessions "sine placito et sine pecuniæ donatione," and that "Rectum eis teneatur de eorum calumpniis sine pecuniæ donatione." The exactions he dreaded meet us at every turn on the Pipe-Roll of 1130. But, on the other hand, the charter, broadly speaking, illustrates, by the retrograde concessions it extorts, the cardinal factor in the long struggle between the feudal nobles and their lord the king, namely, their jealousy of that royal jurisdiction by which the Crown strove, and eventually with success, to break their semi-independent power, and to bring the whole realm into uniform subjection to the law. After the clauses conferring on Geoffrey the _hereditary_ shrievalty of Essex, a matter which I shall discuss further on, there immediately follows this passage, the most significant, as I deem it, in the whole charter:— "Et ut sit Capitalis Justicia in Essexiâ hereditabiliter mea et heredum meorum de placitis et forisfactis que pertinuerint ad coronam meam, ita quod non mittam aliam justiciam super eum in comitatu illo nisi ita sit quod aliquando mittam aliquem de paribus suis qui audiat cum illo quod placita mea juste tractentur." The first point to be dealt with here is the phrase "_Capitalis_ Justicia in Essexiâ." Here we have the term "capitalis" applied to the _justicia_ of a single county. On this I would lay some stress, for it has been generally supposed that this style was reserved for the Great Justiciary, the _alter ego_ of the king himself.[340] In his learned observations on the "obscurities" of the style "_justitia_ or _justitiarius_," Dr. Stubbs writes that "the _capitalis justitia_ seems to be the only one of the body to whom a determinate position as the king's representative is assigned in formal documents" (i. 389). It was probably the object of Geoffrey, when he secured this particular style, to obtain for himself all the powers vested in "the king's representative," and so to provide against his supersession by a justiciar claiming in that capacity. Let us now examine the witness of the charter to the differentiation of the sheriff (_vicecomes_) and the justice (_justitia_), for that is the development which its terms involve.