Godfrey undertook to rule so many conflicting pretensions, and to bring a tumultuous government into some regular form. In order that the execution of his project might have the greater solemnity, he chose the circumstance which had conducted the Latin princes to Jerusalem. After having accompanied them as far as Jericho, to celebrate with them the festival of the Epiphany, he returned to his capital, where he assembled the enlightened and pious men of the city, of whom he formed the states, or the assizes, of his kingdom. In this solemn assembly the first care was to regulate and determine the duties of the barons, the lords, and the common subjects, towards the king, and the duties of the king towards the lords and subjects. The king was to undertake to maintain the laws, to defend the Church, to protect widows and orphans, to watch over the safety of both people and lords, and to lead in war. The lord, who was the lieutenant of the prince, as regarded his vassals, was to guarantee them from insult, and to protect their property, their honour, and their rights. The first duty of the counts and barons towards the king was to serve him in council and fight. The first obligation of a subject or a vassal towards his prince or his lord, was to defend him or avenge him in every case of outrage, and to protect the honour of his wife, his daughter, or his sister; to follow him in all perils, and to surrender himself as hostage for him, if he fell into the hands of his enemies.[227] The king and his subjects, the great and the small vassals, mutually engaged their faith to each other. In the feudal hierarchy, every class had its privileges maintained by honour. Honour, that grand principle among knights, commanded all to repulse an injury inflicted upon a single one, and thus became, restrained within just limits, the security of public liberty. War was the great affair in a kingdom founded by knights and barons; every one capable of bearing arms was reckoned as something in the state, and protected by the new legislation; all the rest, with the exception of the clergy, whose existence and privileges were held by divine right, were reckoned as nothing, and scarcely merited any attention from the legislators. The Assizes of Jerusalem did, indeed, deign to take notice of villains, slaves, peasants or cultivators, or captives taken in war; but they were only considered in the light of property, of which they wished to assure the enjoyment to its legitimate possessors. Those who had lost them could reclaim them as they could a falcon or a hound; the value of a falcon and a slave was the same; a war-horse was estimated at more than double the value of a peasant or a captive. The laws did not condescend to notice these unhappy classes, and left it to religion alone to protect them.