helpers or compurgators and each compurgator's oath was valued
according to his property, just as the number of a man's votes is still
proportioned to some extent to his possessions. But if, as commonly
happened, both parties produced the requisite oath-helpers, there was
nothing for it but the ordeal by fire or water; the man who sank was
innocent, he who floated guilty; and the only rational element in the
ritual was its supervision by the priests, who knew something of their
parishioners' character. Military tenants, however, preferred their
privilege of trial by battle. Now Henry began to teach men to rely upon
their judgment; and by degrees a distinction was even made between
murder and homicide, which had hitherto been confounded because "the
thought of man shall not be tried, for the devil himself knoweth not
the thought of man."

In order to carry out his judicial reforms, Henry developed the
_curia regis_, or royal court of justice. That court had simply
been the court of the king's barons corresponding to the court of his
tenants which every feudal lord possessed. Its financial aspect had
already been specialized as the exchequer by the Norman kings, who had
realized that finance is the first essential of efficient government.
From finance Henry I had gone on to the administration of justice,
because _justitia magnum emolumentum_, the administration of
justice is a great source of profit. Henry II's zeal for justice sprang
from similar motives: the more justice he could draw from the feudal
courts to his own, the greater the revenue he would divert from his
unruly barons into the royal exchequer. From the central stores of the
_curia regis_ he dispensed a justice that was cheaper, more
expeditious, and more expert, than that provided by the local courts.
He threw open its doors to all except villeins, he transformed it from
an occasional assembly of warlike barons into a regular court of