"Ipsi ponant de se ipsis _Ballivos_ quoscunque voluerint et _Justiciam_ ad servanda placita Coronæ nostræ et ad placitanda eadem placita infra Burgum suum et quod nullus alius sit inde Justicia nisi quem elegerint." Here we have the two offices similarly distinct throughout. We have also the _ballivi_, representing to the town what the _vicecomes_ represents to the shire, a point which it is necessary to bear in mind. The "bailiff," so far as the town was concerned, stood in the sheriff's shoes. So also did the "coroner" (or "coroners") in those of the justice. Indeed, at Colchester, two "coroners" represented the "justice" of the charter. I cannot find that Dr. Stubbs calls attention to the fact of this twin privilege, the fact that exemption from the sheriff and from the justice went, in these charters, hand in hand. Lastly, we should observe that though, in these charters, the clause relating to the sheriff precedes that which relates to the justice, yet, conversely, in the enumeration of those to whom a charter is directed, "justices" are invariably, I believe, given the precedence of "sheriffs." This, which would seem to have passed unnoticed, may have an important bearing. Ordericus, in a famous passage (xi. 2) describing Henry's ministers, tells us how the king "favorabiliter illi obsequentes de ignobili stirpe illustravit, de pulvere, ut ita dicam, extulit, dataque multiplici facultate _super_ consules et illustres oppidanos exaltavit.... Illos ... rex, cum de infimo genere essent, nobilitavit, regali auctoritate de imo erexit, in fastigio potestatum constituit, ipsis etiam spectabilibus regni principibus formidabiles effecit." Observe how vivid a light such a passage as this throws upon the clause in Geoffrey's charter:— "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 whole clause breathes the very spirit of feudalism. It betrays the hatred of Geoffrey and his class for those upstarts, as they deemed them, the royal justices, who, clad in all the authority of the Crown, intruded themselves into their local courts and checked them in the exercise of their power. Henceforth, in the courts of the favoured earl, the representative of the Crown was to make his appearance not regularly, but only now and then ("aliquando"); moreover, when he came, he was to figure in court not as the superior ("super eum"), but as the colleague ("cum illo") of the earl; and, lastly, he was not to belong to the upstart ministerial class: he was to be one of his own class—of his "peers" ("de paribus suis").