200 The Period of Constitution Making
administrative side. Year after year commissions were
issued appointing them until they were an indispensable
and regular part of government; and at the beginning of
Edward III.'s reign, they were about to receive the powers
and organisation which gave their office its completed
form. They were appointed by the king, not locally
elected. This point must receive some notice here. The
coroner failed to supply the desideratum in the local gov-
ernment, perhaps because of his elective character. It
was natural that he should have been locally elected, for
he originated at just the time that the king was learning
the wisdom of taking from the sheriff the appointment of
certain juries, and assigning it to the county courts. But
in the thirteenth century a new method was tried; the
king himself, probably from locally furnished lists, ap-
pointed the knights who were to be keepers of the peace.
And, as far as can be learned, this remained the method,
with the exception of a few occasions early in Edward
I.'s reign. On those occasions, local election was used,
and, it may be added, was often used at other times to fill
vacancies when death or other cause suddenly terminated
the service of those appointed by the king. The system
of royal appointment has been justified by the later his-
tory of the justice of the peace. He was a king's official
and his court a king's court, a court of record.1 His
appointment by the king seems to have been an indis-
pensable element in securing the satisfactory correlation
of central and local jurisdiction and administration.2
After some interruption late in Edward II.'s reign,
conservators of the peace were again appointed in 1327;
and in 1328 is the first indication of their exercising a real
1 One among the justices in each county was charged to keej> the record;
he was the custos rotulorum. In the Tudor period, the Lord Lieutenant of
the county, who was a sort of honorary head of the justices and who
often recommended who should be appointed, was generally custos rotu-
lorum.
2 In the reign of Edward III., Parliament presented some urgent peti-
tions that justices of the peace be elected. There was also a demand that
sheriffs be elected. The king firmly and, as it has^ proved, wisely, with-
stood these demands.