Law Courts 203
years uncertainty arose as to just what it had been the
intention to include in this restriction. It was finally
interpreted as applying to felonies and all the more serious
crimes, also to new matter made punishable or actionable
by statute. In this crippled condition, the outlived
the middle ages, and the sheriff, who had been a dangerous
local power for four centuries and against whom a long
line of strong kings had waged relentless war, was fast
becoming a minor executive officer in the county. x
The justices of the peace, as judges acting under royal
commission, of course used the jury procedure of the older
royal courts; but they had to deal with many petty
offences which demanded a summary process. The
variety of their work led to a distinction in the business
and names of their sessions of court. A single justice
exercised many police functions and was empowered by
statute to deal with a few petty offences. His principal
business was to conduct preliminary hearings.2 Two or
more justices could act together in what came to be
known as Petty Sessions; they sat usually, but not neces-
sarily, at an accustomed time and place and for a definite
part of the county, often the hundred. They dealt with
many cases summarily3 and with some that required jury
trial. The chief court held by the justices was, from the
1 The sheriffs were much hated in the fourteenth century as exploiters of
the counties. They took the counties at a rent and got what they could
out of them. This started an attempt by Parliament, evidenced by a
series of acts, running from 1354 to 1444, to make the sheriff an annual offi-
cer. This succeeded in the fifteenth century and was decisive in the sher-
iff's decline. He was no longer the military and police head of the county.
He carried out the courts' orders, such as seizing property, maMng arrests,
keeping the gaol, and hanging felons. The office became undesirable and
much of the work was often left to an undersheriff, for whom the sheriff
was responsible. By the seventeenth century it was hard to get men to
take the office of sheriff; but they could be, and were at times, compelled
to do so. Yet in his low estate the sheriff still kept his ceremonial dignity
—"he is the greatest man in the county and should go to dinner before the
Lord Lieutenant." On the sheriff's decline, see Jenks, Government of the
British Empire, p. 326. t .
3 That is, committing to prison or letting out oa bail before trial, or
dismissing the charge.
s Below the indictable offences was growing a class of pettier offences
which could be tried without jury before the justices of the peace. They
were all created by statute.