The institution of the collective Frank pledge, which recent writers incline to treat as a Norman innovation, is so distinctly colored by English custom that it has been generally regarded as purely indigenous. If it were indeed a precaution taken by the new rulers against the avoidance of justice by the absconding or harboring of criminals, it fell with ease into the usages and even the legal terms which had been common for other similar purposes since the reign of Athelstan. The trial by battle, which on clearer evidence seems to have been brought in by the Normans, is a relic of old Teutonic jurisprudence, the absence of which from the Anglo-Saxon courts is far more curious than its introduction from abroad. The organization of jurisdiction required and underwent no great change in these respects. The Norman lord who undertook the office of sheriff had, as we have seen, more unrestricted power than the sheriffs of old. He was the king's representative in all matters judicial, military, and financial in his shire, and had many opportunities of tyrannizing in each of those departments: but he introduced no new machinery. From him, or from the courts of which he was the presiding officer, appeal lay to the king alone; but the king was often absent from England and did not understand the language of his subjects. In his absence the administration was intrusted to a _judiciar_, a regent, or lieutenant, of the kingdom; and the convenience being once ascertained of having a minister who could in the whole kingdom represent the king, as the sheriff did in the shire, the judiciar became a permanent functionary. This, however, cannot be certainly affirmed of the reign of the Conqueror, who, when present at Christmas, Easter, and Whitsuntide, held great courts of justice as well as for other purposes of state; and the legal importance of the office belongs to a later stage. The royal court, containing the tenants-in-chief of the crown, both lay and clerical, and entering into all the functions of the witenagemot, was the supreme council of the nation, with the advice and consent of which the King legislated, taxed, and judged. In the one authentic monument of William's jurisprudence, the act which removed the bishops from the secular courts and recognized their spiritual jurisdictions, he tells us that he acts "with the common council and counsel of the archbishops, bishops, abbots, and all the princes of the kingdom." The ancient summary of his laws contained in the _Textus Roffensis_ is entitled "_What William, King of the English, with his Princes enacted after the Conquest of England_"; and the same form is preserved in the tradition of his confirming the ancient laws reported to him by the representatives of the shires. The _Anglo-Saxon Chronicle_ enumerates the classes of men who attended his great courts: "There were with him all the great men over all England, archbishops and bishops, abbots and earls, thegns and knights."