Читать книгу Magna Carta: A Commentary on the Great Charter of King John. With an Historical Introduction онлайн

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(3) Royal Courts. Originally, the King’s Court had been merely one feudal court among other feudal courts—differing in degree rather than in kind from those of the great earls or barons. The King, as a feudal lord, dispensed justice among his feudal tenants (whether barons and freemen or only servile dependents), just as any baron or freeman dispensed justice among his tenants, bond or free. No one dreamed, in the time of the Norman Kings, that the Curia Regis would or could undertake the enormous labour of dispensing justice for the whole nation (or even of supervising the courts which did dispense it). Each individual must, on the contrary, look for the redress of wrongs either to the court of the people of his own district, or to the court of his lord. Royal justice for all (in the modern sense) was simply impossible. The monarchy had no machinery at command for effecting this. The task was a gigantic one, which no Anglo-Saxon King, which not even William I., could possibly have undertaken. No attempt in this direction was made by the Crown until the reign of Henry II., who was placed in a position of unprecedented power, partly by circumstances, but chiefly by his great abilities. Even he, born reformer as he was, would never have increased so greatly the labours of government, if he had not clearly seen how enormously the change would enhance both the security of his throne and the revenue of his exchequer.