The organization of jurisdiction required and underwent no great change
in these respects. The Norman lord who undertook the office of sheriff
had, as we have seen, more unrestricted power than the sheriffs of old.
He was the king's representative in all matters judicial, military, and
financial in his shire, and had many opportunities of tyrannizing in
each of those departments: but he introduced no new machinery. From him,
or from the courts of which he was the presiding officer, appeal lay to
the king alone; but the king was often absent from England and did not
understand the language of his subjects. In his absence the
administration was intrusted to a _judiciar_, a regent, or lieutenant,
of the kingdom; and the convenience being once ascertained of having a
minister who could in the whole kingdom represent the king, as the
sheriff did in the shire, the judiciar became a permanent functionary.
This, however, cannot be certainly affirmed of the reign of the
Conqueror, who, when present at Christmas, Easter, and Whitsuntide, held
great courts of justice as well as for other purposes of state; and the
legal importance of the office belongs to a later stage. The royal
court, containing the tenants-in-chief of the crown, both lay and
clerical, and entering into all the functions of the witenagemot, was
the supreme council of the nation, with the advice and consent of which
the King legislated, taxed, and judged.

In the one authentic monument of William's jurisprudence, the act which
removed the bishops from the secular courts and recognized their
spiritual jurisdictions, he tells us that he acts "with the common
council and counsel of the archbishops, bishops, abbots, and all the
princes of the kingdom." The ancient summary of his laws contained in
the _Textus Roffensis_ is entitled "_What William, King of the English,
with his Princes enacted after the Conquest of England_"; and the same