avail; the fault lay not only in the persons who worked the system, but also in the system itself; and the evil extended far beyond the sphere of the sheriffs’ activity. The whole judicial administration of the realm was corrupt. There was very distinctly one law for the rich and another for the poor.[940] Justice was sold, delayed, or refused altogether, at the king’s will.[941] Proceedings for which the presence of only the parties concerned in the suit, and a certain number of jurors, was legally necessary, were made a pretext for summoning other persons,[942] evidently for the sake of exacting fines from them if they failed to attend, and were protracted[943] so as to make attendance as vexatious as possible, that there might be the more defaulters and the more fines. The course of justice was subjected to constant interference through the summary evocation of causes from the lower courts to that of the king, at the instance of any suitor who could afford to pay for the writ of “_praecipe_” whereby the sheriff was authorized to effect the transfer.[944] Fines were imposed without regard either to the scale of the offence or the offender’s means of paying, so that men of all classes were reduced by them to ruin, being unable to make up the required sum except by selling their sole means of livelihood--the free yeoman his tenement, the villein his cart, the merchant his stock in trade;[945] clerks were amerced to the full value not only of any lay tenement which they possessed, but also of their ecclesiastical benefices.[946] Henry’s Assize had given to the Crown only the chattels of a convicted felon; but now the Crown took his land also, without compensation to the mesne lord to whom it ought to have reverted.[947]