witnesses in his behalf; but it was assumed that he was innocent unless the jury were certain that he was guilty. The improved method of holding the county courts was introduced by the Assize of Clarendon in 1166, and carried further by the Assize of Northampton in 1176.

Origin of the civil jury.

During Henry's reign an important change had been made in the way of conducting the trial of civil cases. In Old English times these cases had been decided by the oaths of persons who knew the facts, such as where the boundary of an estate in dispute ran, or who owned a certain wood; but the Normans introduced the trial by battle, in which such questions were decided by the issue of a combat between the suitors or their representatives. Such a decision was obviously most unfair, and the practice was much disliked, so the plan was introduced of deciding such cases by the oaths of a jury of sworn men. This jury was a civil jury, and must be distinguished from the grand and petty juries in criminal cases.

Cause of the

Normans in

During the Becket struggle a step was made towards the conquest of Ireland. After the Northmen had settled in Normandy many adventurers sought for themselves settlements settlement of and kingdoms elsewhere. One Norman became Ireland. Prince of Apulia, another King of Sicily; many had joined in the Crusades, and one, William the Conqueror, had become King of England. Many had won estates in England and Wales; others, like the Bruces and Balliols, held property in Scotland; so it was only natural that Norman knights should interfere in the quarrels of the Irish chiefs, and try to win for themselves lands in that country. Ireland, in the time of Henry II., was in the twelfth in much the same state that England had been in the time of the Heptarchy; it was divided into a number of small kingdoms, presided over by a head king, called the Ardriagh. In Dublin and the towns on the eastern coast lived the Ostmen, or Norwegian settlers, who settled in the country during the tenth and eleventh centuries. Ireland was Christian, and many of its clergy had been distinguished for their learning; but its Christianity was of the Celtic type, which had been rejected by the English at the Synod of Whitby.

State of Ireland

century.

At the beginning of his reign, Henry had taken advantage of the

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papacy of a great Englishman, Nicolas Breakspear, to obtain from him a bull authorizing him to conquer Ireland, and Henry's design bring the practices of the Irish Church into accordance of conquering with those of the rest of Europe; but he had never

Ireland.

had time to act upon it. However, in 1169 three Normans of Pembrokeshire, Richard Fitz-Gilbert, surnamed Strongbow, Invasion of Robert Fitz-Stephen, and Maurice Fitz-Gerald, took Ireland by the the part of Dermot, King of Leinster, who had been

Normans.

expelled from his kingdom. He landed in Ireland with a small body of men, obtained a footing in the country, and conquered Dublin and a good part of the east coast. Henry condemned their action, but insisted on sharing the spoil, and in 1171, just after Becket's murder, he went over to Ireland, and his supremacy was acknowledged by the chiefs. His son John was afterwards nominated Lord of Ireland in 1177; but the English with difficulty maintained their ground in the counties round Dublin, which were called the English pale, and the real conquest of Ireland did not take place till the time of the Tudors.

Causes of the barons' discontent.

The years 1173 and 1174 were marked by a great combination of Henry's enemies, who attempted to defeat him by a simultaneous attack in England and on the Continent. It was now one hundred years since the first rebellion of the barons against William the Conqueror, and the struggle had been going on ever since. During the reign of Stephen the barons had done pretty much what they liked, with what results we have noticed; but under Henry II. they had been losing ground, while the king, strong in the support of the middle classes, and of the soldiers he hired with the scutage money, and helped by able men, such as Richard de Lucy, William Mandeville, and Ranulf Glanville, was rapidly bringing the kingdom into thoroughly good order.

Barons' rising.

Accordingly, in 1173, the barons took advantage of a quarrel which had arisen between the king and his sons, Henry, Richard, and Geoffrey, to construct a general league against Henry; and into this alliance entered Louis of France, to whose court the young Henry had fled, the Count of Flanders, the King of Scotland, and the disaffected barons of England and Normandy. The plan was to invade England and Normandy simul

taneously; but Henry was on his guard, and beat the French and Bretons in Normandy, while Richard de Lucy and William Mandeville routed the barons of England. Henry's difficulties were not yet over; the Scots invaded England, and Hugh Bigod, Earl of Norfolk, was still in arms in the eastern counties. So great was the crisis, that Henry thought it good to come to England and do penance at the tomb of Becket, lest any should still regard him as under a murderer's curse. To his great joy, however, he heard that the very day he was on his knees at Canterbury, William the Lion, Capture of the King of Scots, had been captured at Alnwick; and King of Scots. shortly afterward, the barons who were in arms in Norfolk were put down, and this, the last attempt of the barons to make themselves independent of the crown, was at an end.

Henry took advantage of the captivity of the King of Scots to Treaty with make him not only do homage for the kingdom of Scotland, but also put the castles of Lothian in English hands, by the treaty of Falaise, made 1174.

Scotland.

Development of the Curia Regis.

The remaining years of Henry's reign were occupied with completing his reforms in England and quarrelling with his sons on the Continent. In 1178 he made a change in the Curia Regis, which was a great step in developing our judicial system. We saw that when the Curia Regis was dealing with the revenue, it was called the court of exchequer. In this year a selection of five judges was made from those of the Curia Regis, who sat as a court to hear cases, and this court before long developed into the two courts of King's Bench and Common Pleas. In theory the court of King's Bench tried cases in which the king was concerned, which were called pleas of the crown; the court of Common Pleas tried cases between one subject and another. From cach of these courts there was an appeal to the king in the Ordinary Council.

The last great measure of Henry was the assize of arms. Before the Conquest, every free man from sixteen to sixty had been liable to serve in the fyrd, or militia, and afterwards, though Assize of arms. the feudal array had been more prominent, the fyrd had been called out to fight against the Scots at Northallerton, against the Welsh, against Robert of Bellême, and on many other occasions. However, since the institution of scutage, Henry had

used the feudal obligation as a means rather of raising money than soldiers, so he determined to organize the militia anew. Accordingly, in 1181, an assize of arms was issued, which regulated the national fyrd, or militia, stated what arms each freeman was to possess according to his wealth, and arranged for the inspection of these arms at regular intervals. In this way the king had two armies— one a small one of paid troops, whom he hired to garrison his castles and fight his battles on the Continent; the other the militia, on whom he relied for the defence of England against foreign foes, or for putting down insurrection at home. Only freeholders were allowed to serve in the militia.

Capture of Jerusalem by Saladin.

In 1187, news was brought to Europe that Jerusalem had again fallen into the hands of the Mahomedans. The small Turkish states, which had been singly no match for the Christians, had been united by Saladin into one great power, which stretched from the Euphrates to the Nile, and before its strength the Christians of Jerusalem were defeated in the battle of Tiberias, and Jerusalem was lost. The news stirred Europe to its depths. The Emperor Frederick Barbarossa started to the relief of the Christians; and Henry had such thoughts of following him, that he collected from his subjects a tenth of their goods, which was called the Saladin tithe. This tax is notable because it was the first laid, like an income tax, on Tithe. personal property, all previous taxes having been laid on land only.

The Saladin

The quarrels between Henry and his sons, however, prevented him from going to the East. His eldest son Henry had died in 1183, but Richard was in arms against his father with Philip of France. They drove Henry from Touraine and reduced him to great straits. Henry still relied on the good will of his youngest son John; but, on seeing his name among a list of noblemen who had joined the French king, he had no heart to continue the struggle, and died, we may almost say of a broken heart, in 1189.

CHAPTER II.

RICHARD I., 1189-1199 (10 years).

Born 1157; married, 1191, Berengaria of Navarre.

Chief Characters of the Reign.-William Longchamp, Walter of Coutance, Hugh of Avalon, Hubert Walter, and Geoffrey Fitz-Peter.

On the death of his father, Richard became king without opposition. His chief wish was to lead a crusade and win glory in the Holy Preparations Land, and he looked upon England as only useful to for a crusade. provide the money for that end. Accordingly, he sold all the offices of state in England, and for the sum of ten thousand marks gave up the concessions which William the Lion had made to Henry II. at the treaty of Falaise, and so restored the relations between the King of England and the King of Scots in the same uncertain condition as they had been before that treaty.

Persecutions of

As was usual when people were filled with crusading zeal, the Jews suffered from persecution. In England this people were regarded as the king's property, and, being taxed by him the Jews. at will, were a source of great wealth to him. But, as most of their money was made by money-lending, they were hated by the borrowers, who were glad to take advantage of any excuse to attack them. Accordingly, when Richard took the lead in exacting money from the Jews for the Crusade, a general attack and massacre followed, and London, York, Norwich, with other great towns were the scenes of great atrocities. When Richard had got as much money as he wanted, he left England, and prepared to set out for the East.

Government in

In Richard's absence the government of England was entrusted to William Longchamp, the Chancellor, who became Richard's Justiciar and Papal Legate, so that he held in his own hands the chief civil and ecclesiastical authority. To satisfy his younger brother John, of whom he was extremely

absence.