Again, the corrupt administration of the sheriffs had been matter of complaint under Henry; but it was far worse under John; for whereas Henry, and after him Hubert Walter acting for Richard, had endeavoured by various means to check the independent action and curtail the powers of the sheriffs, now the king himself was almost openly in league with those officers, and their usurpations and extortions were not merely condoned, but encouraged, if not even directly instigated, by him for his own interest. Owing to the rise in the value of land and a variety of other causes, the sheriffs’ annual receipts had for many years past been generally in considerable excess of the sum--fixed under the Norman kings on the basis of the Domesday Survey--for which they were accountable to the royal treasury as ferm of the shire. Whatever they received beyond this fixed sum seems to have been originally, in theory at least, their own profit. But a share of it was naturally soon claimed by the Crown; and this was done, not by putting the ferm at a higher figure, but by charging the sheriff with an additional lump sum under the title of _crementum_, or, in John’s time, _proficuum_.[936] Whatever proportion the increment thus paid to the Crown may have borne to the actual receipts of the sheriffs, it is clear that under a sovereign of John’s character an arrangement which made king and sheriff partners in gain would make them also partners in extortion. The partnership began when the sheriff entered upon his office; he was appointed to it by the king alone, he held it during the king’s pleasure; John had no trouble in finding sheriffs after his own heart. As the improvement of the royal demesnes and the legitimate proceeds of royal jurisdiction were inadequate to produce increment on a scale such as is shown in some of the Pipe Rolls of the reign, these men fleeced the people of their shire by every means they could devise, for the joint profit of the king and themselves; and the king connived at and abetted every possible usurpation of the sheriffs, that they might wring out of the shire a larger amount of money for him. They set at nought the restrictions which John’s predecessors had placed upon their action. They took upon themselves to keep the pleas of the Crown, without reference to the coroners to whom that duty had been specially intrusted under Richard.[937] They accused men of offences and sent them to the ordeal without more ado, in defiance of Henry’s ordinance limiting the employment of that mode of trial to cases in which the charge was made on the presentment of a sworn jury.[938] The corrupt and extortionate rule of the sheriffs had been strongly condemned by the bishops and magnates in the king’s name at the council at S. Albans in August 1213, and it is said that after the coming of the legate some attempt was made to check these abuses by removing the most glaring offenders from office;[939] but a mere change of officers was of little