The first stage of the policy was to organise the
administration of those parts of each kingdom which, not having been absorbed
in privileged fiefs, were still subject to the royal justice and contributory
to the royal revenue. Owing to the foresight of William the Conqueror, there
were few such fiefs in England; only in two palatine earldoms (Durham and
Cheshire), on the Welsh and northern borders, and on the lands of a few
prelates, was the king permanently cut off from immediate contact with the
subject population. With these exceptions the face of England was divided into
shires, and administered by sheriffs who were nominees of the Crown,
dismissable at pleasure.
The shires again were divided into hundreds governed
under the sheriff by subordinate officials. But for the most important duties
of executive routine the sheriff alone was responsible; he collected the
revenue, he led the militia, he organised the Watch and Ward and Hue and Cry
which were the medieval equivalents for a constabulary; finally, he presided over
the shire moot in which the freeholders gathered at stated intervals to declare
justice and receive it. The shires were periodically visited by Justices in
Eyre (analogous to the Frankish missi) who heard complaints against the
sheriff, inspected his administration, tried criminals, and heard those civil
suits (particularly cases of freehold) which were deemed sufficiently important
to be reserved for their decision. These itinerant commissioners were selected
from the staff of the royal law court (Curia Regis), a tribunal which,
in the thirteenth century, was subdivided into the three Courts of Common Law
and acquired a fixed domicile at Westminster. The shire courts and the royal
court were alike bound by the statute-law, so far as it extended; but, in the
larger half of their work, they had no guides save the local custom, as
expounded by the good men of the shire court, and the decisions recorded on the
rolls of the royal court.
