These reforms, besides influencing the current of events in England in numerous ways, both direct and indirect, all helped to strengthen the throne of Henry and his sons. Another class of reforms contributed greatly to the same result, namely, the reorganization of the army. This was effected in various ways: partly by the revival and more strict enforcement of the obligations connected with the old Anglo-Saxon fyrd or militia, under the Assize of Arms in 1181, which compelled every freeman to maintain at his own expense weapons and warlike equipment suited to his station in life; partly by the ingenious method of increasing the amount of feudal service due from Crown tenants, based upon an investigation instituted by the Crown and upon the written replies returned by the barons, known to historians as “the _Cartae_ of 1166”; and partly by the development (not, as is usually supposed, the _invention_) of the principle of scutage, a means whereby unwilling military service, limited as it was by annoying restrictions as to time and place, might be exchanged at the option of the Crown for money, with which a more flexible army of mercenaries might be hired. By these expedients, along with many others, Henry raised the English monarchy, always in the ascendant since the Conquest, to the very zenith of its power, and left to his sons the entire machinery of government in perfect working order, combining high administrative efficiency with great strength. Full of bitter strifes and troubles as his reign of thirty-five years had been, nothing had interfered with the vigour and success of the policy whereby he tightened his hold on England. Neither the long bitter struggle with Becket and the Church, ending as it did in Henry’s personal humiliation, nor the unnatural warfare with his sons, which involved the depths of personal suffering to the King and hastened his death in 1189, was allowed to interfere with his projects of reform in England. The last twenty years of his life had been darkened for him, and proved troubled and anarchic in the extreme to his continental dominions; but in England profound peace reigned. The last serious revolt of the powers of feudal anarchy had been suppressed in 1173 with characteristic thoroughness and moderation. After that date, the English monarchy retained its supremacy almost without an effort. II. William I. to Henry II.—Problem of Local Government.