power of moving them in this direction; and he hoped to make the crown
the arbiter of disputes between the rival spiritual and temporal
jurisdictions, realizing that the only alternative to this supreme
authority was the arbitrament of war. He also contended that clergy who
had been unfrocked in the clerical courts for murder or other crimes
should be handed over as laymen to be further punished according to the
law of the land, while Becket maintained that unfrocking was a
sufficient penalty for the first offence, and that it required a second
murder to hang a former priest.

Next, he sought to curb the barons. He instituted scutage, by which the
great feudatories granted a money payment instead of bringing with them
to the army hordes of their sub-tenants who might obey them rather than
the king; this enabled the king to hire mercenaries who respected him
but not the feudatories. He cashiered all the sheriffs at once, to
explode their pretensions to hereditary tenure of their office. By the
assize of arms he called the mass of Englishmen to redress the military
balance between the barons and the crown. By other assizes he enabled
the owners and possessors of property to appeal to the protection of
the royal court of justice: instead of trial by battle they could
submit their case to a jury of neighbours; and the weapons of the
military expert were thus superseded by the verdicts of peaceful
citizens.

This method, which was extended to criminal as well as civil cases, of
ascertaining the truth and deciding disputes by means of juratores, men
sworn to tell the truth impartially, involved a vast educational
process. Hitherto men had regarded the ascertainment of truth as a
supernatural task, and they had abandoned it to Providence or the
priests. Each party to a dispute had been required to produce oath-