Judges were then but the servants of the king and he could move them about as mere pawns upon the chess board of his own expediency, or dismiss them, at a moment’s notice, if they refused to do his bidding.[41] Hubert de Burgh succeeded Hubert Walter and Geoffry Fitz Peter, as Chief Justiciar, but he seldom sat on the bench and was removed in 1232,[42] when the Chief Justiciarship was committed to a lawyer, named Stephen Segrave. The latter was disgraced and dismissed by the King, in 1234, just two years after his appointment and from this period until 1258, or until the revolution, the justiciarship was in abeyance.[43] In lieu of an appeal, or writ of error, which challenged the sufficiency or correctness of a record or judgment, instead of the judge himself, we find that from the time of Cnut, until the reign of Henry I., if a judgment was challenged the proceeding was what was known as that of “false judgment,” growing out of the practice of early Saxon days, when a litigant who was dissatisfied with a decision or “doom,” charged the doomsman who uttered it with falsehood.[44] Until the thirteenth century the exception to a given judgment or decree of an inferior court was tested by the charge of “false judgment.” The record was transferred from the inferior tribunal to the superior one by certain knights, appointed for the purpose. Frequently, these knights would challenge the litigant questioning the correctness of the judgment to trial by battle, to test the correctness of the decree[45] but if this were not done, and the issue upon the legality of the finding of the lower court thus determined, the justices of the king’s court proceeded to examine the record. If the King’s Justices found, on an examination of the record that the judgment of the county, the hundred or the manor, were wrong, a fine was assessed against the judge rendering the erroneous judgment and by a finding of “false judgment” a Lord lost forever the right to hold a court.[46] Here was a method of recall, almost as bad as that existing under the Babylonian Empire, for instead of removing the judge who attempted to right a wrong, he was removed before having been given the opportunity to get right. As late as the year 1219 we find that the justices in eyre were brought before the justices of the Court of King’s Bench, upon a charge of “false judgment,” for having unlawfully condemned a man to death and upon examination of the record by the Council, their judgment was set aside and they were amerced with a fine for having entered such a “false judgment.”[47]