Alongside of the sheriff at the head of the shire was another officer, the lord-lieutenant, whose position, although but recently attained, was in some ways more conspicuous and in certain exigencies more powerful than his. No statute or other formal action provided for the original creation of the lord-lieutenancy, and it is probable that Henry VIII. simply began the habit of delegating his military power in the shires to such officers. Early in the reign of Edward VI., October, 1549, they are mentioned as existing in the counties, and by 1600 their office was fully established.[Footnote: 3 and 4 Ed VI, chap v, in Statutes of the Realm, IV, 107.]This position was usually held by the greatest nobleman with estates in the county, and he appointed as his deputies various knights and gentlemen of high position; as when, in 1626, the duke of Buckingham was lord-lieutenant of Bucks, and Sir Edward Verney and five others were his deputies in that county. Although purely honorary, the appointment was one of much dignity and responsibility in military matters.
It was the duty of the lord-lieutenant in times of peace to see that the musters of the trained bands were regularly held, that the militia- men had their arms, and that men of higher rank who owed military service to the crown were prepared to perform it; in time of war to levy, muster, and train soldiers, fix the quotas of the hundreds and townships, see to the payment of troops, the collection of horses, and equipment generally, until the recruits were actually handed over to their officers. It was also their duty to see that the beacons were kept in order. The lords-lieutenant must be present, by an order of 1615, nine months in the year [Footnote: Cal. of State Pap., Dom., 1611-1618, p. 337.] in their counties; but there was no such rigorous requirement of constant residence as in the case of the sheriff, nor was the appointment restricted to a single year.
Such an official as the lord-lieutenant was not likely to be left unburdened with other duties when the government was struggling to obtain the enforcement of its laws, and, as a matter of fact, functions quite unmilitary were imposed upon him. In 1637 the council orders the lords-lieutenant of six of the eastern counties to assist in the better enforcement of the acts for the drainage of the marshes. [Footnote: Cal. of State Pap., Dom., 1637, p. 92.] In 1621 they are to investigate frauds of his majesty's carters. [Footnote: Hist. MSS. Commission, Report VII., App., 670.] They are asked to help collect subsidies and benevolences, to search for popish recusants, to oversee ale-houses, slaughter-houses, and the assize of bread and ale, to assist in the administration of poor relief and the suppression of vagrancy. [Footnote: Chetham Society, Lancashire Lieutenancy, I, Int., 19; Camden Society, Verney Papers, 37, 88.] In 1619 the Lords of the Council write to the lieutenant of Surrey asking him to urge co-operation in a lottery for the success of "the English colonies planted in Virginia, to accept the sums adventured, and to report to the treasurer and council of Virginia." [Footnote: Hist. MSS. Commission, Report VII., App., 670.] Much less dignified in position than either the lord- lieutenant or the sheriff, and yet filling an old and important office, was the coroner. He was elected by the freeholders of the county in the county court, and his oath was administered by the county clerk. He was, therefore, more distinctly local and representative than the other county officers, who were appointed by the crown; and as a result he was the only officer whose office did not terminate with the death of the king. Notwithstanding the generality of duties indicated by his name, "custos placitarum coronae," his functions were few beyond the fundamental duty of investigating sudden deaths and binding over for trial such persons as were indicated by the jury through which he made his inquest. [Footnote: Smith, Commonwealth of England, book II., chap. xxiv.] Under some circumstances the coroner took the place of the sheriff, and in general his position looked back to a time when it was of greater significance than it had become in the seventeenth century. [Footnote: Greenwood, The County Court, 258.]
CHAPTER XV
ENGLISH JUSTICES OF THE PEACE (1600-1650)
However extensive the duties of the officers whose functions are described above, the real men-of-all-work in the counties at this time were the justices of the peace. The law required that a justice of the peace must have lands and tenements to the value of L 20 a year, the amount of the legal knight's fee; [Footnote: 18 Henry VI., chap. xi] but ordinarily he had much greater property. John Evelyn's father, who has been so often referred to as a typical country gentleman of the early seventeenth century, had an estate of L 4000 a year when he was successively sheriff and justice of the peace. [Footnote: Evelyn, Diary, year 1634] The justice of the peace, like the sheriff, the lord- lieutenant, and the coroner, was expected to perform his public services as part of his patriotic duty. It is true that certain statutes provided that part of the fines for any violation should go to the justices before whom the violators were prosecuted; two or three others gave small fees to the justice for affixing his seal or signing a document; but these were apparently casual efforts to secure enforcement, and can have brought no appreciable return to the justices. The law gave each justice 2s. for each day of quarter- sessions up to three days; but this could have produced at most only 6s., and seems to have been usually jointly expended by the magistrates in a dinner.
In an interesting speech by a Mr. Glascock in the House of Commons, December 16, 1601, two equally undesirable justices are described— first, the one "who from base stock and lineage by his wealth is gotten to be within the commission"; the other "a gentleman born, virtuous, discreet, and wise, yet poor and needy. And so only for his virtues and qualities put into the commission. This man I hold unfit to be a justice, though I think him to be a good member in the commonwealth. Because I hold this for a ground infallible—that no poor man ought to be in authority. My reason is this: he will so bribe you and extort you that the sweet scent of riches and gain taketh away and confoundeth the true taste of justice and equity." [Footnote: Townshend, Proceedings, 953, 954] But burdensome as the duties of a justice must have been, and almost unpaid as they were, the office does not seem to have been avoided as was that of sheriff. Probably such service was taken as a matter of course by the gentry, and compensation was found in the stamp of social position it placed upon them, and in the sense of power, as well as of a patriotic fulfilment of duty. It was sometimes a matter of complaint that "with us these magistrates have been so unsuitably appointed that a county justice is made a jest in comedies, and his character the subject of buffoonery and laughter." [Footnote: Carey, English Liberties, 275] This is an obvious reference to Justice Shallow and other worthies of the dramatists. It is dangerous to make too serious an inference from contemporary comedies, because certain personages soon became stock characters and ceased to have any very close relation to actual life, and in this particular instance Shakespeare was probably gratifying an old grudge.
Nevertheless, there was evidently some foundation for this picture of the county justice. Dorothy Osborne, in one of her delightful letters to Sir William Temple, in giving her requirements for a husband, pokes fun at such ambitions. "He must not be so much of a country gentleman as to understand nothing but hawks and dogs, and be fonder of either than his wife; nor of the next sort of them whose aim reaches no further than to be Justice of the Peace, and once in his life High Sheriff, who reads no book but statutes, and studies nothing but how to make a speech interlarded with Latin that may amaze his disagreeing poor neighbours, and fright them rather than persuade them into quietness." [Footnote: Letters of Dorothy Osborne to Sir William Temple, letter 36 (ed. by Parry), p 171] With all these criticisms, and in the face of occasional ineptitude, the body of justices of the peace included much ability. It was scarcely possible for a justice to act without some knowledge of Latin, as almost all the records and documents which he would have to make, read, or sign were in that language. A succession of text-books on the duties of the office, the more important of them appearing in many successive editions, proves an intelligent interest and demand for instruction in their duties. Moreover, the men who served as justices were often well known in other ways, many of them as sheriffs, as members of Parliament, and in still other capacities. They were of families who provided the active men of enterprise of the period. The list of Devonshire justices in 1592 includes Sir Francis Drake, Sir Ferdinando Gorges, Gilberts, Carews, Seymours, Courtenays, and other names prominent among the men who laid the foundations of the maritime greatness of England and of the existence of America. Of the fifty-five, twenty-eight were at one time or another high-sheriffs of the county, twenty more were then, or became afterwards, knights, six sat in the House of Commons, and three in the House of Lords. [Footnote: Hamilton, Devonshire Quarter- Sessions, 3, 330-348.]
The justices of the peace were fair representatives of that great class of rural gentry which exercised so strong an influence over the destinies of England in the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries. From this class were drawn all the county officials who have been named, except the lord-lieutenant; from it were chosen the county representatives to Parliament; and in it were found the strength and the weakness of the English political system. James I., in appealing to the country gentry to continue to live on their estates in their counties, said to them, "Gentlemen, at London you are like ships in a sea, which shew like nothing, but in your country villages you are like ships in a river, which look like great things." [Footnote: Bacon, Apothegms, in Works (Spedding and Heath ed), VII., 125.]
Out of this body of rural gentry from twenty to sixty in each county were chosen by the lord-chancellor to serve as justices of the peace. [Footnote: Lambard, Eirenarcha, book I., chap. v.] The "commission of the peace," by which the justices were appointed and from which they drew their powers, was a formula well known and constantly quoted and commented upon, and added to from time to time until late in the sixteenth century. In was then, in 1590, revised and formulated anew by Sir Christopher May, Chief-Justice, with the advice of all the other judges of the time, and has not been changed from that day to this. [Footnote: Ibid., book II., chap. vii.]