Law Courts 197

coroner's judging functions became slender and his duties
largely those which he has since kept. But there were,
for a time, a vagueness and elasticity about them which
allowed exceptions and which are a reminder of the original
motive in making the office. During the thirteenth cen-
tury, the coroner held inquests in cases of sudden death
or injury, and preliminary hearings in criminal cases in
which appeals had been made; his place in the county
court was often much like that of the sheriff, and he might
try civil cases there; he could even hold the sheriff's tourn.
But aside from his judicial functions, and of more im-
portance than some of them, was his work as a local admin-
istrative official of the king. In this, he supplemented or
took the place of the sheriff. In fact, he was often so
much like the sheriff that it is hard to see what the dis-
tinction was. One thing is certain: the kings intended
that these locally elected knights, two or four to each
shire, should Qlh^^_Jhe_E2E^IL2? the single aristocratic
tinder whom therejni^tjndeed be^morejhat^one
At "aEoutTthe same time thej^oorfngjrf certain
juries was taken from^tijgjahenff and impose? on the
comity court — another royal means of limiting the sheriff
and seddngjood local service by

i
But the coroner did not wholly solve the local govern-
ment problem. Before the end of the thirteenth century,
local complaints were made about him as well as about
the sheriff. Just why limitations were so early placed
upon the coroner's judicial activities is hard to tell.1
Inasmuch as the final solution of the problem was found
in groups of local magistrates appointed by the king, one
is led to surmise that the trouble with the coroner lay in
his elective character, but our imperfect knowledge of
the conditions of the time prevents us from understanding
why. But the coroner was the king's first experiment in
1 The right to empanel a jury which the coroner still has is a survival
of that transient twelfth-century phase of his existence when he was a
bona fide justice.