The ordinary freeman, upon whom falls the ultimate burden
of military service, has no voice in the debates of the Mayfield; but
ordinances affecting the old customary laws of the several races which make up
the kingdom (Salians, Ripuarians, Saxons, etc.) do not take effect till they have
been accepted by popular assemblies in the provinces which they concern. And
such revisions are infrequent. The royal prerogative in legislation is limited
by a popular prejudice, which regards the customary law as sacred and
immutable. The Capitularies are chiefly administrative ordinances; the
"law of the land," which is the same everywhere and for all persons,
is an ideal to be realised in England alone of medieval states. Elsewhere the
king's law is a supplement, a postscript; the privilege of the free man is to
live under the law of his province, his lord's fief or his free city.
In local administration the king relies, outside the
tribal duchies, on counts whose districts are subdivisions of the old national
provinces. The count, often a hereditary official, is a royal deputy for all purposes,
military and civil. He collects the royal dues, leads the free men to the host,
maintains the peace and administers justice. His tribunal is the old Germanic
hundred-court, in which the free suitors ought to be the judges; but the
suitors for this purpose are represented by a few doomsmen (scabini)
chosen for their respectability and knowledge of the law. They are an
ineffectual check upon the count, and it is a standing difficulty to find ways
and means of compelling these local viceroys to act with common honesty. For
this purpose the king annually appoints itinerant inspectors (missi dominici);
in twos and threes they are dispatched on circuit to acquaint the count with royal
instructions, to promulgate new legislation, and above all to receive and
adjudicate upon the complaints of all who are oppressed. A comparatively late
expedient, and the first part of the Carolingian system to disappear, these
tours of inspection were the one safeguard against local misgovernment and the
feudalising of official power. When they ceased, the Carolingian county too
often became a hereditary fief exploited for the lord's sole benefit.
