For these things are to be found in Yorkshire and Derbyshire and Cumberland, and, of all places, in Wild Wales. And one who has lived a quarter of a century in Manchester and made good use of his time can at least say this in its favour with all truth and honesty, that it is the best city in the United Kingdom to get away from.
CHAPTER VI
QUARTER SESSIONS
Second Citizen: Marry, we were sent for to the justices.
Third Citizen: And so was I: I’ll bear you company.
Shakespeare: “Richard III.”
The quarter sessions courts are some of the oldest criminal courts in the kingdom. Some time in the reign of Edward III. their quarterly sittings were ordained by statute, but long before that they were a general court of justices for the maintenance of the peace, though not sitting quarterly. Henry V. appointed them to sit in the first weeks after Michaelmas Day, the Epiphany, Easter and the Translation of St. Thomas à Becket, which is July 7. These dates are but slightly modified by modern statute.
It is curious how through the ages the clever ones of the world have gibed and jeered at justices and justices’ justice. And yet at the bottom of the heart of English folk there is a feeling of love for these old institutions, and after all—fair play to them—they work well and make no more blunders in the administration of justice than any other courts, as the statistics of Appeal Courts will testify. But when you have on the bench a large number of laymen, many invested with a power the attributes
of which they do not understand, you are bound to get character and comedy, and that is what to my mind attracted the writers of various ages to the justice of the peace rather than any burning desire for legal reform.