But a nobler and more beneficial object aimed at was to ensure that justice should be “truly and indifferently administered” to both rich and poor, to the strong and to the defenceless. It is interesting in this connection to observe what was the so-called “eight-fold ban” proclaimed by the Frankish legislator. Any one who (1) dishonored Holy Church; (2) or acted unjustly against widows; (3) or against orphans; (4) or against poor men who were unable to defend themselves; (5) or carried off a free-born woman against the will of her parents; (6) or set on fire another man’s house or stable; (7) or who committed _harizhut_--that is to say, who broke open by violence another man’s house, door, or enclosure; (8) or who when summoned did not go forth against the enemy, came under the king’s _ban_, and was liable to pay for each offence sixty solidi (£36).[75] Here we see that three of the specified offences were precisely those which a powerful local count or _centenarius_ would be tempted to commit against the humbler suitors in his court, and which it would be the business of a _missus dominicus_ to discover and report to his lord. The _missi_ had, however, a wide range of duties beyond the mere control and correction of unjust judges. It was theirs to enforce the rights of the royal treasury, to administer the oath of allegiance to the inhabitants of a district, to inquire into any cases of wrongful appropriation of church property, to hunt down robbers, to report upon the morals of bishops, to see that monks lived according to the rule of their order. Sometimes they had to command armies (the brave Gerold of Bavaria was such a _missus_) and to hold _placita_ in the name of the king. Of course the choice of a person to act as _missus_ would largely depend on the nature of the duties that he had to perform: a soldier for the command of armies or an ecclesiastic for the inspection of monasteries. As Charles, in his embassies to foreign courts, was fond of combining the two vocations, and sending a stout layman and a subtle ecclesiastic together to represent him at Cordova or Constantinople, so he may often have duplicated these internal embassies, these roving commissions, to inquire into the abuses of authority in his own domains. We have, in one of Charles’s later Capitularies, an admirable exhortation which, though put forth in the name of the _missi_, surely came from the emperor’s own robust intellect:--“Take care,” the _missi_ say to the count whose district they are about to visit, “that neither you nor any of your officers are so evil disposed as to say ‘Hush! hush! say nothing about that matter till those _missi_ have passed by, and afterwards we will settle it quietly among ourselves.’ Do not so deny or even postpone the administration of justice; but rather give diligence that justice may be done in the case before we arrive.”