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. From the latter source was derived the English
Common Law, a system of precedents which, in spite of curious subtleties
and technicalities, remains the most striking monument of medieval
jurisprudence. In and after the fourteenth century it was supplemented
by Equity, the law of the Chancellor's court, to which those suitors
might repair whose grievances could not be remedied at Common Law, but
were held worthy of special redress by the king in his character of a
patron and protector of the defenceless. Lastly, on the fiscal side, the
work of the sheriffs and of the judges was supervised by the Exchequer,
a chamber of audit and receipt, to which the sheriffs rendered a