The punishing of recusants and the discipline of those who refused or neglected to go to church was, as already stated, an active occupation of the justices.
At certain times, such as the period just following the Gunpowder Plot, when the search was for Catholics, and somewhat later, when the search was for Puritans and Separatists, the Privy Council brought severe pressure upon the justices to fulfill these duties, and numerous prosecutions were brought by them. In Middlesex during the reign of James I. the indictments averaged eighty-five per year for religious offences, and sometimes at one session there were as many as one hundred and fifty persons indicted. [Footnote: Middlesex County Sessions Rolls, II., III.; Hamilton, Devonshire Quarter-Sessions, 27, 74, etc.; Cal. of State Pap., Dom., 1633-1634, p. 531.]
The justices were constantly called upon to act in special emergencies or to give special relief. If a man's thatched cottage were burned, the nearest justice might authorize him to make an appeal to his neighbors for help to rebuild; if a whole village or town suffered from a more extensive fire, the justices in their sessions quartered the homeless people in various parishes, announced a subscription, and, calling constables and leading villagers before them, exhorted them to liberal voluntary gifts, and appointed a subcommittee to administer the funds for relief; if a pestilence appeared, a tax-rate for immediate assistance was levied, and the justices supported the sick and enforced the quarantine; if food became scarce and high-priced the justices forbade its export from the county or conversion into malt, and even announced a maximum market-price for it. When weavers or other artificers were out of work the justices set to work to induce masters to employ them or merchants to buy their goods, or, as a last resort, levied a rate for their support. If news came of the capture of a number of English sailors or merchants by Barbary pirates, collections were taken up by the justices of the maritime counties for their redemption. In all such exigencies it was the justices of the peace who were expected to tide over the special temporary difficulty or need.
Besides the ancient regulative duties of the justices, and besides those that were definitely given them by successive statutes, they were constantly subject to the commands and instructions of the Privy Council. In 1592, soon after the remodelling of the commission, a circular letter was sent by the Privy Council to certain commissioners in each county requiring them to call a special meeting of all justices of the peace, at which the oath of office and the oath of supremacy must be taken by each, or they must retire from the commission of the peace. [Footnote: Hamilton, Devonshire Quarter-Sessions, 36, 48; Nichols, Hist. of the Poor Law, 252; Hist. MSS. Commission, Report XIV., App. IV., 42.] This seems to have been preparatory to a more strict discipline and oversight of their actions, for communications from the council now became more frequent and more drastic. In requiring them to fulfil their duties as magistrates the Privy Council spoke categorically in the name of the king in a constant series of letters, couched often in such harsh terms of reproof as to make it hard to realize that the justices were gentlemen of rank and dignity, fulfilling laborious services practically without compensation. In 1598 vigorous letters were sent to the various counties calling the attention of the justices to the recently enacted poor law, and requiring them to see it put into execution. [Footnote: Leonard, "the Poor Law," 143.] From this time forward to the outbreak of the civil war the pressure of the council on the justices became stronger and stronger. In January, 1631, a "Book of Orders" was issued by the Privy Council giving instructions in greater detail to the justices as to their duties, especially in regard to the poor law, and requiring them to make reports every three months to the sheriffs, who were to transmit these reports to the justices of assize, who were in turn to send them to certain members of the Privy Council deputed for the purpose. The judges of assize were also to report directly to the king if they learned of the negligence of any of the justices of the peace. [Footnote: Ibid., 158, etc.] "The Book of Orders" was reissued from time to time and its requirements followed up.
An attempt was made by these means to introduce a system of "thorough" in the affairs of local government during the period of the personal government of Charles I., analogous to that attempted in the higher ranges of government by Wentworth, Laud, and their fellow-members of the Privy Council. The great instruments of this plan were the justices of the peace, acting within the limits of their respective counties, carrying out the manifold duties imposed upon them by law, under constant pressure from the Privy Council and the king. After even this partial enumeration of the services of the justices of the peace and of the supervision kept over them, one can readily appreciate the feeling of the justices of Nottingham who complained that they had "little rest at home or abroad." [Footnote: "Cal. of State Pap, Dom," 1631-1633, p. 18.]
The centre of gravity of local government in England was in the county. The power which put its machinery in motion was that of the central government; but the actual administration was in the hands of the sheriff, the lord-lieutenant, the coroner, and the justices of the peace. The county bounded the sphere of activity of all these officials. The commission of any group of justices named the county in which they were to exercise their functions, and outside of its boundaries all their powers dropped from them. The coroner could not hold an inquest outside of his own county, and even the lord-lieutenant could exercise his military functions only within the shire or shires named in his commission. When, in 1603, James I. rode southward from Edinburgh on the news of the death of Elizabeth, and crossed the border at Berwick, he was met by the sheriff of Northumberland and escorted by him to the borders of Durham, where he was met by the sheriff of that county, and so from shire to shire through the whole length of England till he reached London.
The basis of representation in Parliament was the county: the counties formed the districts for all the circuit courts; national taxation was largely distributed by counties, and, as has been seen, local jurisdiction and administration were largely in the hands of county officials.
CHAPTER XVI
ENGLISH PARISH OR TOWNSHIP GOVERNMENT (1500-1650)
Next below the county as a political subdivision of England came the hundred, or wapentake, as it was called in the northern shires. One of the oldest political units of the country, perhaps the very oldest, it had become the least important of all. Its ancient significance as the primary organization of the community for judicial purposes disappeared long before the beginning of the seventeenth century, leaving only a desultory practice of holding a sheriff's semi-annual "tourn" through the hundreds of the shire; and some traditional payments of fees to the noblemen who held the hundred court as a "liberty," or to the crown. Apart from its existence as a unit of jurisdiction, the hundred was still put to some use as a subdivision of the county for purposes of taxation, for military organization and service, for the preservation of order, and as the sphere of activity of the high-constable. [Footnote: Lambarde, Constables, S 25; Cal. of State Pap., Dom., 1637, pp. 39, 104.] The high-constables were, indeed, the only officers of the hundreds, one or more being chosen annually by the justices of the peace in quarter-sessions from the same class of rural gentry as we have already seen furnishing the county local officials. The hundred, for some reason, took but slight root in colonial soil, though it was established in a few of the colonies, and in such places many of its English functions reappeared. [Footnote: Howard, Local Constitutional History of the U. 5., 272-286; Wilhelmi, Local Institutions of Maryland, 60, n. 5.] An ancient Latin law writer says, "England is divided into counties, counties are divided into hundreds (which in some parts of England are called wapentakes), and hundreds are again subdivided into villas." [Footnote: Fortescue, De Laudibus Legum Angliae, chap. cxxiv.] By using the general word villas ("vills") he evaded one of the greatest difficulties in the description of English local government in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the confusing and conflicting use of terms for the smallest subdivision of civil government. Shall we use parish, town, township, manor, or tithing when we speak of a neighborhood organized for the affairs of petty government? All these terms are used abundantly in the records of the time and to a great extent are used indiscriminately.