LAW LIBRARY, Vic, B. C.

INTRODUCTION.

ORIGIN OF THE OFFICE OF JUSTICE OF THE PEACE.

Early English Courts.—The territorial divisions bearing upon the subject of the administration of justice in England, at the time of the Norman Conquest, were the KINGDOM, the COUNTY or SHIRE, the HUNDRED OF WAPENTAKE, and the TITHING, TOWNSHIP or PARISH, the greater townships being called burhs. The Hundreds or Wapentakes were large districts or divisions of the County; and the townships, tithings, parishes, and burhs, or boroughs, were subdivisions of the Hundred.

For each county or shire there was an ealdorman.—(whose office became, about the time of the Conquest, merged in the titular dignity of an earl).—and there was also a viscount or sheriff for each county. There were, for each township or tithing, a reeve and four other principal inhabitants, and there was, very likely, a chief officer for every hundred.

This organization formed the police system of the country, and, nominally, at least, continues to the present day. For England still has its shires with their sheriffs, its hundreds with-until 1869, -their high bailiffs, chief constables, or other such officers, and its parishes, townships, or tithings, with.-until 1872,-their parish constables; although the police functions of these various officers were, before the dates just mentioned, practically superseded by more modern police arrangements.

From a period much earlier than the Conquest, the King of England had come to be regarded as the "source of justice, the lord and patron of his people, and the owner of the public lands." Occasionally, he exercised his high prerogative of administering justice either personally or by his officers in immediate attendance

upon him, but the regular and stated method of doing so was through the local courts, held before his officers in the Counties and the Hundreds, each such court being in the nature of a public meeting attended by specified "suitors" or members. The suitors at the Hundred Court were the parish priest, the reeve, and the four principal men of each township in the Hundred; and, at the County Court, the suitors were the same persons from every township, parish or tithing in the whole county, together with all the county's land owners and public officers.

These County and Hundred Courts had civil and criminal jurisdiction. On the criminal side the Court was called the tourn or circuit of the Sheriff, who, when the ealdorman's office was merged in the earl, became, in connection with the administration of justice, the chief officer of the county; and there appears, in reality, to have been no distinction, for the purposes at least of criminal jurisdiction, between the Hundred Court and the County Court; the Sheriff's tourn or circuit being simply the County Court held in and for a particular Hundred.

The Court seems to have consisted of the suitors collectively; but a representative body of twelve men (possibly the predecessors of the Grand Jury of later times), appears to have been instituted as a Judicial Committee of the Court.

The procedure consisted of accusation and trial; the accusation being made either by the above mentioned Committee, by the reeve and the four principal men of a township, or by a private accuser; and, as the proceedings were conducted orally, the memorials of the Court were entrusted to the recollections of the Witan, the Judges by whom the decrees were pronounced; so that if evidence was required of judicial transactions, the proof was made by the Hundred or the Shire in its corporate capacity, the suitors bearing witness to the judgments pronounced by them or their predecessors. (1)

Decline of the County or Hundred Courts.-It will thus be seen that, before the Conquest, the ordinary Court in

(1) 1 Steph. Hist. Cr. L., 65-68.