504: POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS. 



decisions, or seeing them made. In England, &quot;Edgar and 

 Canute had themselves made judicial circuits ;&quot; and there is 

 good evidence of such judicial travels in England up to the 

 time of the Great Charter. Sir Henry Maine has quoted 

 documents showing that King John, in common with earlier 

 kings, moved about the country with great activity, and held 

 his court wherever he might happen to be. 



Of course with the progress of political integration and 

 consequent growing power of the central ruler, there come 

 more numerous cases in which appeal is made to him to rectify 

 the wrongs committed by local rulers ; and as State-business 

 at large augments and complicates, his inability to do this 

 personally leads to doing it by deputy. In France, in Char 

 lemagne s time, there were the &quot; Missi Eegii, who held 

 assizes from place to place ;&quot; and then, not forgetting that 

 during a subsequent period the chief heralds in royal state, as 

 the king s representatives, made circuits to judge and punish 

 transgressing nobles, we may pass to the fact that in the later 

 feudal period, when the business of the king s court became 

 too great, commissioners were sent into the provinces to 

 judge particular cases in the king s name : a method which 

 does not appear to have been there developed further. But 

 in England, in Henry IL s time, kindred causes prompted 

 kindred steps which initiated a permanent system. Instead 

 of listening to the increasing number of appeals made to his 

 court, personally or through his lieutenant the justiciar, the 

 king commissioned his constable, chancellor, and co-justiciar 

 to hear pleas in the different counties. Later, there came a 

 larger number of these members of the central judicial court 

 who made these judicial journeys : part of them being clerical 

 and part military. And hence eventually arose the esta 

 blished circuits of judges who, like their prototypes, had to 

 represent the king and exercise supreme authority. 



It should be added that here again we meet with proofs 

 that in the evolution of arrangements conducing to the main 

 tenance of individual rights, the obligations are primary and 



