542 Sir Henry S. Maine [April 1 



descended from the popular courts were equally numerous at first 

 and equally oppressive in consequence. 



Meantime the justice which the king administered to all who 

 ai^plied to him was purer, more efficient, and more skilfully adapted 

 to the facts, since he alone had the command of expert advice. But 

 still, in order to understand the accessibility of royal justice, we must 

 bring home to ourselves what the ancient Teutonic king was. He did 

 not live at home in a distant castle or palace. He was, above all 

 things, an ambulatory, itinerant personage, moving ever about his 

 territory with surprising rapidity. The ancient Celtic king followed 

 the same practice. The ancient Irish records show the Irish king 

 perambulating the territory of his subordinate chiefs, making them 

 presents, and feasting at their expense. By the end of the sixteenth 

 century this had become a great abuse, and the " cutting and coshering " 

 of the Irish chiefs is especially stigmatised as one of the curses of 

 Ireland. The itinerancy of the English kings continued to a sur- 

 prisingly late period, and was much more constant than is popularly 

 known. One object, no doubt, was to live on the produce of their 

 widely separated lands, but another was to administer justice and 

 collect judicial fines and fees. 



The Lecturer then referred to the Itineraries of King Henry II. 

 and King John drawn up by Mr. Eyton and Sir T. Duff'us Hardy. 

 He gave as an example the movements of King John ^in May 1207, 

 and showed that the king, in the course of that month, travelled over 

 half of England. And though John passes as an effeminate sovereign, 

 the same extraordinary activity went on through every month of 

 nearly every year of his reign. Gradually, however, the itinerant 

 king became a monarch of the modern type, the early stages of the 

 change being traceable through the growth of the system of missi, of 

 itinerant deputies or "justices in eyre," which was considerably older 

 in England than King John's reign, but was much enlarged by its 

 great event. 



The rapid movements of the early Teutonic king probably left 

 him time enough at each point for the settlement of primitive 

 litigation. But as the law and men's affairs became more compli- 

 cated, a new set of abuses arose. The litigant who desired the royal 

 judgment had to hurry after the king over all parts of his dominions. 

 The Lecturer referred to the efforts of Kichard de Anersley to get 

 Henry II. to " give him a day " : the story of his trouble and expenses 

 is printed in the second volume of Palgrave's ' Rise of the English 

 Commonwealth.' It is easy for the reader of this paper to understand 

 the importance of the provision of Magna Charta that " the Common 

 Pleas are no longer to follow the king." 



The struggle between royal and popular justice has determined 

 the judicial and legal history of many different European countries. 

 The judicial system of England is of royal origin. Except so far as 

 it has been changed by the modern county courts, it is the most 

 centralised system of judicial administration in the world. The 



