The politics of this remarkable reign consisted of three branches: to
redress the gross abuses which prevailed in the civil government and the
revenue, to humble the great barons, and keep the aspiring spirit of
the clergy within proper bounds. The introduction of a new law with a
new people at the Conquest had unsettled everything: for whilst some
adhered to the Conqueror's regulations, and others contended for those
of St. Edward, neither of them were well executed or properly obeyed.
The king, therefore, with the assistance of his justiciaries, compiled a
new body of laws, in order to find a temper between both. The coin had
been miserably debased, but it was restored by the king's vigilance, and
preserved by punishments, cruel, but terrifying in their example. There
was a savageness in all the judicial proceedings of those days, that
gave even justice itself the complexion of tyranny: for whilst a number
of men were seen in all parts of the kingdom, some castrated, some
without hands, others with their feet cut off, and in various ways
cruelly mangled, the view of a perpetual punishment blotted out the
memory of the transient crime, and government was the more odious,
which, out of a cruel and mistaken mercy, to avoid punishing with death,
devised torments far more terrible than death itself.

But nothing called for redress more than the disorders in the king's own
household. It was considered as an incident annexed to their tenure,
that the socage vassals of the crown, and so of all the subordinate
barons, should receive their lord and all his followers, and supply them
in their progresses and journeys, which custom continued for some ages
after in Ireland, under the name of _coshering_. But this indefinite and
ill-contrived charge on the tenant was easily perverted to an instrument
of much oppression by the disorders of a rude and licentious court;
insomuch that the tenants, in fear for their substance, for the honor