It is one of the most distinct marks of Henry’s mind, that whatever pressure his most engrossing employments put upon him, he never for a moment gave up the task of developing the great legal reforms with which he began his reign. Even at the siege of Bridgenorth, in 1155, he had lent an ear to the suit of the monks of Battle; in the very thick of the Becket struggle he was busily employed in reforming the criminal law and introducing or expanding the system of presentment by grand jury. The same purpose is constantly maintained, and every great and famous exploit of his adventurous life may be matched with some measure of practical reform, some step in the progress of a policy by which his people were to be made safer and his own power consequently to be made stronger. Throughout the whole reign there may be traced a constant and progressive policy of taking power out of the hands of the great vassals of the crown, of entrusting power to the great body of the freemen of the nation, and of consolidating the royal authority by employing the people in the maintenance of law. The blow struck at the military power of feudalism by the institution of scutage, the commutation of personal service in the field for a money payment, was one of the first of his distinctive measures. The judicial power of the same body he limited, quite as much, by the mission of itinerant judges throughout the country to hear the suits of the people and to punish criminals. These visitations had been practised under Henry I.; they were restored by Henry II., at the beginning of the reign. These officers were employed not only for the trial of prisoners and determination of lawsuits, but for the assessment and collection of revenue. When the national council had decreed a tax, the itinerant judges, as Barons of the Exchequer, travelled through the land, fixing the payments to be made by the towns or by individuals. It was not a very difficult business, for as all the revenue was raised from the land and the land remained divided in much the same proportions as it was in the Domesday Book, that famous record became, as it were, the rate-book of the country; every land-owner could refer to it, to see what was the valuation of his property, and be taxed accordingly. Only the towns, therefore, which had grown in wealth and number since the time of the Conqueror’s survey, would have occasion for debating with the judges how much they would have to pay. Almost every year of Henry’s reign we find these officers making their circuits, which are the historical origin of the circuits of the Judges of Assize in the present day. Sometimes, in the earlier part of the reign, one or two go over the whole country; sometimes six circuits are made, each managed by three judges; sometimes four circuits of four, or two circuits of five or more. The chief epochs of this development are these: the year 1166, when the Assize of Clarendon was published; the year 1176, when