sessions system; become sessions as the administra of the appointed by the justices at their quarter sessions,1 a practice which has been extended to the appointment of the petty constables as well.2 From the right of appointment naturally followed the right of dismissal, and in that way the quarter the quarter sessions acquired full control over all local police officers, control the including even the coroners themselves. Thus deprived of local police every important function, the courts-leet withered and became courts-leet obsolete in the shade of the quarter sessions, just as the obsolete; ancient county courts, after having their powers transferred to the courts of assize, withered into that theoretical existence which they have preserved to the present day. The court of the quarter quarter sessions must be viewed, however, not simply as a police court, but rather as the supreme administrative body of supreme the county, constituted by the crown for the supervision and tive body direction of the limited system of local self-government which county; the parishes were permitted to enjoy. The supervisory power made a of the quarter sessions - which by 43 Eliz. c. 2, s. 6, was court of declared to be a general court of appeal for "all persons who appeal by 43 Eliz. c. feel themselves aggrieved by any action or neglect of the 2, s. 6; church-wardens or overseers of the poor" - really extended to nearly every branch of the parochial administration. While the church-wardens as church officers were accountable only the justices to the ecclesiastical parish,5 as administrators of the poor rate the poorthey were directly accountable to the justices of the peace, who appointed the overseers as their colleagues, who examined their accounts, who settled all appeals against the rating, who assessed other parishes in the hundred when any one parish was unable to make the necessary provision; in fine, who supplied all the coercive authority necessary for the enforcement and the of the poor-law system. Over the management of highways manage the justices exercised a similar control through the statutory highways. 1 Vol. i. p. 454. 2 The right of the courts-leet to chose parish constables was taken away in 1842 by 5 & 6 Vict. c. 109, s. 21. As to the ancient mode of appointment by the courts-leet, see Sir Thomas Smith, The Commonw. of Eng. (1621), bk. ii. c. 12. 8 By I Hen. VIII. c. 7, the magistrates were authorized to punish the coroners for breach of duty. 4 Vol. i. pp. 320, 321, and notes. In theory and as matter of law, both the general supervise law system, ment of Tudors strengthened the power to fix the working days for the repair of the roads,1 and through the imposition of the supplementary highway tax, which, like the bridge rate, was levied upon the same basis as the poor rate. The primary agent, then, of the Tudor administrative system was the invigorated parish, which discharged control of its functions under the supervision and control of the county local admin- government as represented by the quarter sessions of the justices of the peace, who were appointed by the crown, and who could be summarily punished by it, either by dismissal, or through the corrective jurisdiction over the abuses of office as exercised in the star chamber.2 central over istration. Tudors reorganized the militia; host composed of both feudal and national elements; In connection with the system of county administration must also be mentioned the reorganization, which took place during the Tudor period, of the county militia, the national force, whose existence is clear from the earliest times. In the the Norman review heretofore made of the military system as it existed after the Conquest, the conclusion was reached that as successors of the Old-English kings the Norman and Angevin rulers retained the right to summon, under the command of the sheriffs, the ancient constitutional force of the shire, while as feudal lords they gained through the growth of tenures the right to call upon the feudal array to perform the military service due from their lands. To the army thus made up of feudal and national elements were sometimes added mercenary soldiers, whom the Norman kings employed from the beginduty of the ning. As the primary and normal duty of the county militia militia was that of national defence, the crown was forced to rely mainly upon the feudal array for military service abroad or in the border wars against Wales and Scotland. And yet the very nature of that service implied long campaigns, with which the short-time service due from the feudal array was incompatible. The need thus created for mercenary soldiers, whose services could be controlled as long as they were required, led to the commutation of personal service for the money payment called mercenary soldiers sometimes added; primary national defence; feudal array and military service abroad; 1 See 5 Eliz. C. I3; 29 Eliz. c. 5. was only technically developed somewhat later by the formation of a 'Staatsrath' and 'Behördensystem' for the provincial and district government." Gneist, Hist. of the Eng. Const., p. 531. 8 Vol. i. p. 296. service money called great lords deprived created; mainte scutage, an anti-feudal device, whereby a fund for the hiring of such mercenaries was provided.1 In addition to that blow at the commuted feudal array, by the breaking up of the great estates which for the the process of subinfeudation steadily advanced, the great lords payment were gradually deprived of their military followings, whose scutage; numbers originally depended upon the extent of their terri- how the torial possessions. In spite, however, of both assaults the were feudal element was able to nourish and maintain itself as the of their most powerful military force in the state by an artificial process military followings; of adoption, which consisted of the giving of their liveries an artificial by the baronial houses not only to the smaller gentry and vassalage farmers of the neighborhood, but also to the vagrant or the outlaw who was willing to swell the retinue of the great man and to wear his livery, in consideration of his maintenance and livery and protection. Through the artificial vassalage which thus grew nance; up the great baronial leaders were surrounded after the French wars began by standing companies of trained and liveried soldiers, who stood to their chief in a relation which substantially reproduced that embodied in the comitatus of earlier times. With the feudal array thus reconstituted the crown soon en- the crown tered into new relations through a series of contracts, which with the appear in the archives in great numbers from the time of Ed- feudal ward III., and in which the great lords undertook to furnish reconstituted; greater or smaller bands at a daily rate per man which varied according to rank. Of the superior efficiency of these trained bands in foreign warfare there can be no doubt, but the difficulty was that when such warfare ended, the military house- the new holds of the baronial chiefs became hotbeds of a lawless spirit households military of disorder, ever ready to overawe not only the law courts and become the parliament, but even to defy the king himself. By this disorder; condition of things was fostered the two rival parties which for so long a time involved the realm in the dynastic struggle the system carried on under the opposing banners of York and Lancaster. extin It is not therefore strange that at the close of the War of the guished by Henry Roses, during which the strength of the feudal element was VII.; 1 Vol. i. p. 284. 2 Ibid., pp. 412, 413, 566. 3 Ibid., pp. 566, 567. 4 Ibid., pp. 110, III. 5 Cf. Grose's Military Antiquities, vol. i. p. 71 seq. As to the extant musterroll of the English army which besieged Calais, giving every detail as to the pay 6 Vol. i. p. 567. contracts array as hotbeds of of liveries well-nigh exhausted, the house of Tudor, which rose triumphant as the one dominant force in the state, should have addressed itself as a primary duty to the final extinction of the system of liveries, by which the peace of the realm and the authority of the crown had been for so long a time imperilled.1 So fully was that end accomplished during the reign of Henry by the end VII. that at the accession of his son the old feudal arrays were of his reign in practice abolished,2 leaving as the only armed force in the realm 3 the national militia, whose reorganization thus became an imperative necessity. the feudal array practically abolished. Henry II.'s Assize of Arms reviving and the county militia; The statement has heretofore been made that the natural supplement to Henry II.'s assault upon the feudal array through the institution of scutage was his Assize of Arms, rearming whereby the old constitutional force of the shire was revived and rearmed by the imposition of the duty upon every freeman to provide himself with weapons according to his means.4 In order to insure the performance of that duty, the itinerant justices were required to ascertain by the oaths of local jurors the value of the rents and chattels of all freemen, who were then enrolled in classes according to the nature of the arms which the estate of each compelled him to provide.5 The lists were then read in open court, where all were required to swear that they would provide themselves with the proper arms within a given time, and that they would be loyal to the king.6 the system By that time the ancient system for the security of the peace embodied in the ancient frithborh (incorrectly translated by the Norman lawyers into frank-pledge) had become so inadequate that it was necessary to supplement it by a new arrangement known as Watch and Ward, whereby the duty of keeping watch from sunset to sunrise was imposed, in every city, borough, and township, upon companies whose numbers depended of Watch and Ward; 1 See above, pp. 24, 25. 2 The feudal array, summoned for the last time by Charles I. to serve in his expedition of 1640 against the Scots, was extinguished by 12 Charles II. c. 24, abolishing military tenures. London, Portsmouth, the castle of Dover, the fort of Tilbury, and before the union, at Berwick and a few other places on the Scottish border. Cf. Macaulay, Hist. Eng., vol. i. p. 20; Hallam, Const. Hist., vol. ii. p. 131. 3 From that statement must be excepted the small body-guard of household troops maintained by Henry VII. and Henry VIII., a force which never numbered more than two hundred, and i. the garrisons kept at the Tower of 4 Vol. i. pp. 284, 312. For the assize, see Benedictus, vol. p. 278; Hoveden, vol. ii. p. 261. of civil and cry; of Win upon that of the inhabitants. This system, whose structure was clearly defined in 1233, was twenty years later strengthened and perfected through a union with the county militia as perfected through a reorganized under the Assize of Arms, which was at that time union with renewed.1 In order to render the militia more effective for the county militia, the protection of internal peace, it was ordered that those who were required to provide themselves with arms should be placed under the command of the civil authorities in the which was placed cities and boroughs under the mayor and bailiffs; in each under the township under the constable; the whole being subjected to command the higher command of the chief constable of the hundred. officers; All were to join the hue and cry 2 when required, and none the hue except those charged with the preservation of the peace were to bear arms. Then in the reign of Edward I. the whole scheme, both in its police and military aspects, was still further the scheme developed by the Statute of Winchester, which "may be re- by the as perfected garded as representing the sum of the series of documents, Statute touching the Assize of Arms and Watch and Ward." 8 By chester; reason of attempts made during the reigns of Edward I. and Edward II. to constrain individuals to furnish equipments at their private cost, and to compel the county force thus bound only to national defence and the preservation of the peace to perform service abroad, a serious opposition arose, which brought about in the first year of Edward III. the enactment 1 Edw. III. of a statute which provided "that no man from henceforth to prevent should be charged to arm himself otherwise than he was wont ment of in the time of the king's progenitors; and that no man be the militia compelled to go out of his shire but when necessity requireth and sudden coming of strange enemies into the realm; and then it shall be done as hath been used in times past for the defence of the realm." 5 When Edward attempted to evade this statute by reviving the practice of calling upon the counties, boroughs, and townships, as corporate bodies, to furnish him with troops, parliament replied through an 1 Select Charters, pp. 362, 370, 374. 2 Cf. Reeves, Hist. of Eng. Law, vol. iii. p. 713, and note (a), Finlason ed. 8 Select Charters, p. 469. See, also, p. 410. 4 For illustrations of these irregular demands, see Fadera, under the reigns of Edward I. and Edward II. 5 Edw. III. c. 5. 6 In 10 Edw. III., in addition to a levy of knights, a certain number of horsemen were demanded from the counties, with the option of a payment in lieu of such service at a fixed rate. In the next year men were demanded of the boroughs and townships, at the c. 5 enacted the employ abroad; |