Among the expedients adopted by the Norman Duke for reducing his feudatories in England into subjection to the Crown, one of the most important was the total abolition of the old provinces formerly governed by separate ealdormen or jarls. Leaving out of account the exceptional franchises, afterwards known as palatine earldoms, the real representative of the King in each group of counties was now the sheriff or _vicecomes_, not the earl. This Latin name of _vicecomes_ is misleading, since the officer so-called in no sense represented the earl or _comes_, but acted as the direct agent of the Crown. The name, “viceroy,” more accurately describes his actual position and functions, since he was directly responsible to the Crown, and independent of the earl. The problem of local government, however, was not eradicated by the substitution of the sheriff for the earl as chief magistrate in the county; it only took a different form. The sheriffs themselves, when relieved from the earl’s rivalry and control, tended to become too powerful. If they never dreamed of openly defying the royal power, they at least thwarted its exercise indirectly, appropriated to their private uses items of revenue, pushed their own interests, and punished their own enemies, while acting in the name of the King. The office threatened to become territorial and hereditary,[3] and its holders aimed at independence. New checks had to be devised to prevent this new local authority from again defying the central power. New safeguards were found, partly in the organization of the Exchequer and partly in the device of sending periodically on circuit itinerant justices, who took precedence of the sheriff, heard complaints against his misdeeds in his own county, and thus enabled the Crown to keep a watchful eye on its representatives. By such measures, Henry I. seemed almost to have solved these problems before his death; but his success was apparent rather than real. ----- Footnote 3: In one county, Westmoreland, the office did become hereditary. ----- The incompleteness of Henry’s solution of the difficulty became evident under Stephen, when the leading noble of each locality tried, generally with success, to capture _both_ offices for himself; great earls like Ralph of Chester and Geoffrey of Essex compelled the King not only to confirm them as sheriffs in their own titular counties, but also to confer on them exclusive right to act as justices therein.