JUDICIAL AND EXECUTIVE SYSTEMS. 507 



courts.&quot; Obviously by such changes are produced unlikenesses 

 of degree and differences of kind in the capacities of judicial 

 agencies. As political subordination spreads, the local 

 assemblies which originally judged and executed in cases of 

 all kinds, lose part of their functions; now by restriction 

 in range of jurisdiction, now by subjection of their decisions 

 to supervision, now by denial of executive power. To trace 

 up the process from early stages, as for instance from the 

 stage in which the old English tything-moot discharged 

 administrative, judicial, and executive functions, or from the 

 stage in which the courts of feudal nobles did the like, 

 is here alike impracticable and unnecessary. Reference to 

 such remnants of power as vestries and manorial courts 

 possess, will sufficiently indicate the character of the change. 

 But along with degradation of the small arid local judicial 

 agencies, goes development of the great and central ones; 

 and about this something must be said. 



Returning to the time when the king with his servants 

 and chief men, surrounded by the people, administers justice 

 in the open air, and passing to the time when lib court, held 

 more frequently under cover and consequently with less of 

 the popular element, still consists of king as president and 

 his household officers with other appointed magnates as coun 

 sellors (who in fact constitute a small and permanent part 

 of that general consultative body occasionally summoned) ; 

 we have to note two causes which cooperate to produce a 

 division of these remaining parts of the original triune body 

 one cause being the needs of subjects, and the other the 

 desire of the king. So long as the king s court is held 

 wherever he happens to be, there is an extreme hindrance to 

 the hearing of suits, and much entailed loss of money and 

 time to suitors. To remedy this evil came, in our own. 

 case, the provision included in the Great Charter that the 

 common pleas should no longer follow the king s court, but 

 be held in some certain place. This place was fixed in the 

 palace of Westminster. And then as Blackstone points out 



