and absorbed so many of its functions. But, with the growth of the poor law system in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the secular unit, with its overseers and relieving officers, began once more to reappear under the names of "poor law parish," or "civil parish." And, although the tradition of the Middle Ages was still strong enough to enable the ecclesiastical officers (the incumbent and churchwardens) and the ecclesiastical assembly (the vestry) to claim much of the control, even in secular affairs, yet the increasing difficulties of the situation gradually led to a complete severance of the ecclesiastical and secular parishes, which are now, in many cases, totally different in area (f). The three great steps by which this result was achieved were (1), the Public Health Act, 1875, which, virtually, constituted each urban civil parish (outside the Metropolitan area), a separate "urban district"; (2), the Local Government Act, 1894, which conferred certain powers of self-government upon rural civil parishes; and (3), the London Government Act, 1899, which converted the London civil parishes into municipal boroughs. As ten families of freeholders made up a township or tithing, so ten tithings composed a superior division, called a hundred, as consisting of ten times ten families (g). The hundred was governed by a high constable or bailiff; and formerly there was regularly held in it the hundred court for the trial of causes, though that court has now fallen into disuse. Moreover, the hundred was answerable for the riotous demolition of churches, buildings, and machinery, and for plunder of wreck. But now, under the Riot (Damages) Act, 1886 (h), the compensation for damage to buildings or other property occasioned by riots is payable out of the police rate; and (f) The period of struggle is re- 1853. presented by such statutes as the (g) The Vestries Act, 1818 (Sturges Bourne's Act), the Vestries Act, 1831 (Hobhouse's Act), and the Vestries Act, numerical inferences drawn from the names are extremely doubtful.-E. J. (h) 49 & 50 Vic. c. 38. by the Local Government Act, 1888, the county council is made the local authority for the execution of the Act. The liability for plunder of wreck was likewise, by the Merchant Shipping Act, 1894, s. 515, transferred to the police district. But the liability for the maintenance of roads still occasionally falls on the hundred. In some of the more northern counties these hundreds are called wapentakes. [An indefinite number of hundreds make up a county or shire. Shire is a Saxon word which signifies merely a division; but a county (comitatus) is plainly derived from comes, the count of the Franks, that is, the earl or alderman, (as the Saxons called him,) of a shire, to whom the government of it was entrusted. This he usually exercised by his deputy, still called in Latin vice-comes, and in English, the sheriff, shrieve or shire-reeve, signifying the officer of the shire, upon whom the whole civil administration gradually devolved. In some counties there is an intermediate division between the shire and the hundred, as lathes in Kent and rapes in Sussex, each of them containing about three or four hundreds a-piece (i). And these had formerly their lathe-reeves and rape-reeves, acting in subordination to the shirereeve. Where a county is divided into three of these intermediate jurisdictions, they are called trithings, which were antiently governed by trithing-reeves (k). These trithings still subsist in the large county of York; where, by an easy corruption, they are denominated Ridings, the North, the East, and the West Riding.] It seems probable that the realm was originally divided into counties, with a view to the more convenient administration of justice; for the judicial business of the kingdom was in early times chiefly despatched in local (i) For some purposes, connected chiefly with magisterial business, certain counties are split up into divisions, a principle adopted for general purposes by the Local courts, held in each different county, before the sheriff, as its principal officer. And as regards crime, the trial is, as the general rule, still conducted in the county wherein the offence is alleged to have been committed; the trial taking place either before the judges and commissioners of assize, on their periodical circuits, or else before the justices of the peace for the county at their quarter sessions. But, under the provisions of modern Acts of Parliament, counties may be united together for the trial of prisoners (1). Another important object, connected with the distribution into counties, is that of parliamentary representation. Every county used to send to the House of Commons its own members, called knights of the shire, who represented their respective counties, as the borough members their respective towns. Latterly, the larger counties have been subdivided, each portion forming (so far as this purpose is concerned) a separate county, and sending its separate representative. And this subdivision of counties has been recently carried to a great length, and boroughs also have been subdivided, by the Redistribution of Seats Act, 1885 (48 & 49 Vict. c. 23). For the object of local taxation, too, the division into counties is of practical effect and importance. For, as each parish is subject to a rate for the relief of the poor, so is every county subject to a county rate, which is directed to be levied on the occupiers of land within the county, and is applicable for many miscellaneous purposes, such as the maintenance of the rural police, lunatic asylums, gaols, bridges, and the like. And, finally, new elective county councils have been provided, by the Local Government Act, 1888, for the administration of local affairs, the working of which will hereafter be explained (m). [Three of these counties, viz., Chester, Durham, and (2) Winter Assizes Act, 1876; (m) See post, bk. iv., pt. iii, Spring Assizes Act, 1879. [Lancaster, are called counties palatine. The two former are such by prescription or immemorial custom (»), which dates back at least to the Norman conquest. Lancaster was created a county palatine by King Edward the Third, in favour of Henry Plantagenet, Duke of Lancaster, whose heiress being married to John of Gaunt, the king's son, the franchise was afterwards greatly enlarged and confirmed in Parliament, to honour John of Gaunt himself (o). Counties palatine are so called a palatio, because the owners thereof, the Earl of Chester, the Bishop of Durham, and the Duke of Lancaster, had formerly in those counties jura regalia as fully as the king in his palace (p). That is to say, they might pardon treasons, murders, and felonies; they appointed judges and justices of the peace; all writs and indictments ran in their names, as in other counties in the king's; and all offences were said to be done against their peace, and not, as in other places, contra pacem domini regis (q). And indeed, by the antient law, in all peculiar jurisdictions, offences were said to be done against his peace in whose court they were tried; in a court leet, contra pacem domini; in the court of a corporation, contra pacem ballivorum; and in the sheriff's court or tourn, contra pacem vice-comitis. These palatine privileges, so similar to the regal independent jurisdictions usurped by the great barons on the Continent, during the weak and infant state of the first feudal kingdoms in Europe, were in all probability originally granted to the counties of Chester and Durham, because these counties bordered upon inimical countries, Wales and Scotland; in order that the owners, being encouraged by so large an authority, might be the more watchful in its defence. And upon this account also there were formerly two other counties palatine, Pembrokeshire and Hexhamshire (the latter now united with (n) Seld. Tit. Hon. 2, 5, 8. (0) Case of Duchy of Lancaster, (1562) Plowd. 212. (p) Bracton, L. 3, ch. 8, s. 4. (9) 4 Inst. 205, [Northumberland); but these were abolished by Parliament, the former in the twenty-seventh year of Henry the Eighth, and the latter in the fourteenth year of Elizabeth. In the twenty-seventh year of Henry the Eighth, moreover, the powers before mentioned of the owners of the three remaining counties palatine were abridged, the reason for their continuance having in a manner ceased (r);] and in modern times, alterations have taken place in regard to the administration of justice in the counties palatine, which have, for the most part, assimilated them in that respect to the rest of England. Thus, by the Law Terms Act, 1830, the jurisdiction of the court of session. of the county palatine of Chester was abolished, and that county was subjected in all things to the jurisdiction of the superior courts at Westminster. And by the Judicature Act, 1873, the jurisdictions of the Court of Common Pleas of Lancaster and of the Court of Pleas of Durham were respectively transferred to the High Court of Justice by that Act established (s). [None of the counties palatine any longer remain in the hands of subjects. For the earldom of Chester was united to the Crown by Henry the Third, and has ever since been one of the titles of the monarch's eldest son; the palatine jurisdiction of Durham was taken from the Bishop of Durham by the Durham (County Palatine) Act, 1836 (amended by the Durham County Palatine Act, 1858), and was vested as a separate franchise and royalty in the crown; and the county palatine of Lancaster, with the duchy which had been conferred on John of Gaunt, was at length, in the year 1485, vested in King Henry the Seventh and his heirs, as a distinct and separate inheritance from the Crown of England. The Isle of Ely was never a county palatine, though frequently so called, but merely a royal franchise, the Bishop having, by grant of King Henry the First, jura () 27 Hen. VIII. (1536) c. 24. (s) 36 & 37 Vict. c. 66, s. 16. |