IV.: Reactionary Side of these Provisions.

To insist that in all cases a judgment of feudal peers, either in King’s Court or in Court Baron, should take the place of a judgment by the King’s professional judges, was to reverse one of the outstanding features of the policy of Henry II. In this respect, the present chapter may be read in connection with chapter 34. The barons, indeed, were not strict logicians, and probably thought it prudent to claim more than they intended to enforce. Yet, a danger lurked in these provisions; the clause was a reactionary one, tending to restore feudal privileges and feudal usage, inimical alike to the Crown and to the growth of popular liberties. John promised that feudal justice should be dispensed in his feudal court; and, if this promise had been kept, the result would have been to check the development of the small committees destined to become at no distant date the Courts of King’s Bench and Common Pleas, and to revive the fast–waning jurisdictions of the manorial courts on the one hand and of the commune concilium on the other.