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Indiana University Studies 
First Plantagenets. The first of the Plantagenets, espe- 
cially Henry II, completed the work carried on by the Nor- 
mans. They did so much, in fact, that it is difficult to decide 
whether their work marks the end of the Archaic Period or 
the beginning of the Strict Period. Roscoe Pound says that 
English law owes more to Henry II than to any other ruler. 
Henry II attempted to concentrate the whole system of English 
justice in a court of professional judges, the Curia Regis, from 
which in his day there was separated the Court of Exchequer 
presided over by barons. He tried to get control of the church 
courts by the Constitutions of Clarendon (1164), but failed 
in this effort thru his quarrel with his chancellor, Thomas 
a Becket, and final murder of him. This reform was brought 
to pass in the fifteenth century. The nation was offered royal 
justice in place of the Anglo-Saxon local courts of the county 
and hundred and of the domestic Court Baron which had come 
in with the feudal system, and the king's justices appeared 
as Justices in Eyre. The other courts were not abolished. So 
long as litigants would continue to go to them they continued 
to function, but by the reign of Henry III the kings' courts, 
which then consisted of Exchequer, Common Pleas, and King’s 
Bench, had practically supplanted the local courts. It is be- 
cause they did not supplant the local courts before this time 
that the Archaic Period should be said to continue thru the 
reign of Henry III and the Strict Period to begin only with 
Edward I. 
Social Interests. The only social interest protected in the 
times of the Normans and the first four of the Plantagenets 
was the social interest in peace. These Plantagenets and the 
Normans were, like the Anglo-Saxons, interested in keeping 
the peace. The thing which characterized their work, and 
distinguishes it from that of the Anglo-Saxons, was the more 
effective way in which they protected this social interest. As 
has been said, they did not entirely supplant vengeance and 
self-help until the very close of the period, but continued to 
regulate them; but their regulation was much more perfect 
than was that of the Anglo-Saxons. They protected the social 
interest in peace by changing and enlarging the private ante- 
cedent rights, by the recognition of certain public rights, by 
creating new remedial rights, by creating new courts, and by 
making available a new and better system of legal procedure. 
