half-yearly statement, and in which were prepared the articles of
inquiry for the itinerant justices. Originally a branch of the Curia
Regis and a tribunal as well as a treasury, the Exchequer always remains
in close connection with the judicial system, since one of the three
Courts of Common Law is primarily concerned with suits which affect the
royal revenue. Such was the English scheme of administration, and
_mutatis mutandis_ it was reproduced in France. Here the royal
demesne, small in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, was enormously
enlarged by the annexations of Philip Augustus and the later Capets, who
brought under their immediate control the larger part of the Angevin
inheritance, the great fiefs of Toulouse and Champagne, and many smaller
territories. To provide for the government of these acquisitions, there
was built up, in the course of the thirteenth century, an administrative
hierarchy consisting of provosts, who correspond to the bailiffs of
English hundreds, of _baillis_ and _senechaux_ who resemble the English
sheriffs, of _enqueteurs_ who perambulate the demesne making inspections
and holding sessions in the same manner as the English Justices in Eyre.
All these functionaries are controlled, from the time of St. Louis, by
the _Chambre des Comptes_ and the _Parlement_, the one a fiscal
department, the other a supreme court of first instance and appeal.
Within the _Parlement_ there is a distinction between the Courts of
Common Law and the _Chambre des Reqeutes_ which deals with petitions by
the rules of Equity.

The vices of both systems were the same. The local officials were too
powerful within their respective spheres; neither inspectors nor royal
courts proved adequate as safeguards against corruption and abuses of
authority, which were the more frequent because the vicious expedients
of farming and selling offices had become an established practice.
Otherwise the English system was superior to that of France,