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Home England under Foreign Kings England under Foreign Kings; Part 9 |
England under Foreign Kings; Part 9Further, since most offences were punishable by fines, justice and revenue were closely connected, and Henry I, though less oppressive in his taxation than Rufus, was quite as much alive to the advantage of a plentiful supply of money. He began his reign with the thoroughly practical step of seizing the Treasury at Winchester, and, from that time onward, never loosed his hold over it. He found in Bishop Roger of Salisbury, an official who organized his exchequer thoroughly, and he made its power felt by sending "barons of the exchequer" on circuit through the country, thus bringing out-of-the-way districts into connection with royal taxation, just as the Sheriffs made them familiar with royal justice.How closely justice and revenue were connected with each other, and also with policy, is brought home to us by the King's Council. In its widest sense (the Magnum Concilium) this included much the same persons as the old Saxon Witan, though with a different qualification. The Witan had been the assembly of the "Wise", and included church dignitaries, officials, and chief landholders. So did the king's "Great" Council, but for another reason. To it came all the king's tenants-in-chief; and since archbishops, bishops, abbots, officials of the court, and barons were of course tenants-in-chief, we find them all in the Great Council just as they met in the Witan. But the qualification was no longer "wisdom", but the holding of land direct from the king. |
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