(_b_) The mass of new business attracted to the King’s Courts made it necessary to increase, the staff of judges and to distribute the work among them. A natural division was that ordinary pleas (or common pleas) should be tried before one set of judges, and royal pleas (or pleas of the Crown) before another. This distinction is recognized in many separate chapters.[155] Thus two groups of judges were formed, each of which was at first rather a committee of the larger _Curia_ as a whole than an independent tribunal; but, in later years, the two rapidly developed into entirely separate courts—the Court of Common Pleas (at first known as the Bench, that is, the ordinary Bench), and the Court of King’s Bench (that is, the royal Bench, known also at first as the court _Coram Rege_, since it was always supposed to be held in the King’s presence). Footnote 155: See _infra_, under chapters 17 and 24. ----- (_c_) Special procedure for determining pleas of disputed titles to land or rights of possession was also invented by Henry to take the place of the ancient method of trial by battle. These Assizes, as they were called, are fully discussed elsewhere.[156] The Grand Assize was looked on with suspicion by the barons as a procedure competent only before the royal courts, and therefore closely bound up with the King’s other devices for substituting his own jurisdiction for that of the private courts. The petty assizes, on the contrary, met with a ready acceptance, and the barons in 1215, far from objecting to their continuance, demanded that they should be held in regular sessions four times a year in each county of England. Footnote 156: See _infra_, under chapter 18. ----- These were the chief innovations which enabled Henry, while instituting many reforms urgently required and gladly welcomed by the mass of his subjects, at the same time to effect a revolution in the relations of royal justice to feudal justice. As time went on, new royal writs and remedies were being continually devised to meet new types of cases; and litigants flocked more and more readily to the King’s Courts, leaving the seignorial courts empty of business and of fees. Nor was this the only grievance of the barons. When one of their own number was amerced or accused of any offence involving loss of liberty or lands, he might be compelled by the Crown, under Henry and his sons, to submit to have the amercement assessed or the criminal proceedings conducted by one of the new Benches (by a tribunal composed of some four or five of the King’s officials), in place of the time-honoured judgment of his peers assembled in the _Commune Concilium_ (the predecessor of the modern Parliament).