352 The Period of Constitution
But the sworn inquest in its non-judicial use also con.
tinued, and was receiving a great extension about the
end of the twelfth century. In the Assize of Arms, 1181
a jury of "lawful knights or other free and lawful men'*
were to assess their neighbours' wealth with a view to
determining their proper military equipment.1 This
was in principle the same thing as to assess them for
taxation. By the Ordinance of the Saladin Tithe,2 1188
the same method of assessment was to be used when a
man was suspected of having paid less than he ought.
In this instance, it was in connection with a true tax*
and from this time, assessing juries were increasingly
employed for the new personal property taxes. The
itinerant justices' commission of 11942 shows the great
variety of the information elicited from the knights and
lawful men of the hundreds, much of it of a non-judicial
character. In this came document, is the first official
mention of coroners, who had been in existence since
some time in the reign of Henry II. The coroner was
then in the first stage of his development, a minor local
justice who disposed of many small criminal cases and
held preliminary hearings on more important ones
preparatory to the visitation of the justices.4 The
coroners were regularly drawn from the class of knights.
Thus there is much evidence that, if the knights had with-
drawn from the camp and the court, they were finding
plenty to do at home, and that the king regarded them
and the class next below them as most useful in develop-
ing his court system, his revenue, and the general efficiency
of his local control. Indeed as soon as the enrolled royal
letters (the enrolment began early in John's reign) lift
the veil on the detail of local administration, one mar-
vels at the variety of information and service which
the king was getting from the people. In his own in-
terest he was making the people assume burdens and
1 A. and S., p. 24; W. and N., pp. 90, 91.
2 Ibid. p. 28; pp. 91, 92. 3 IUdn pp. 29-33; PP- 92, 93.
4 See above, pp. 196-198.