Rustic Manner's and Czistoms. 73 



Two other important officials in county government were 

 the coroner, and the clerk of the market, the former enjoying 

 judicial and ministerial powers only a degree less important 

 than those of the sherijBf, and the latter, though principally 

 concerned in the verification of weights and measures, possess- 

 ing a court of his own in which he kept and held pleas.^ 



The officials of those lesser districts into which the counties 

 had been divided and subdivided from time immemorial had 

 sunk considerably in public importance. The bailiff, who up 

 to the reign of Edward III. was the president of the Hundred 

 Court, had vanished simultaneously with the introduction of 

 the County Court; and save in a few towns, principally in East 

 Anglia, such as Ipswich, Yarmouth, and Colchester, no public 

 officer was known by the name, except those obnoxious but 

 necessary individuals whose degrading duty it is to serve 

 writs. ^ 



Here and there, as we have had occasion to mention before, 

 a steward remained to preside over the Court Leet and take 

 the view of Frank Pledge. But after the abolition of the 

 feudal laws they had not the powers, which the following rules 

 and orders, issued by the Privy Council in 1630, gave them : 

 " The stewards and gentlemen, in keeping their leetes twice a 

 year, doe specially enquire upon those articles that tend to the 

 reformation or punishment of common offences and abuses ; as 

 of bakers and brewers for breaking of assizes ; of forestallers 

 and regrators against tradesmen of all sorts, for selling with 

 under weights or at excessive prises, or things unwholesome, 

 or things in deceipt ; of people, breakers of houses, common 

 theeves, and their receivers ; haunters of taverns or alehouses ; 

 those that goe in good clothes and fare well, and none knowes 

 whereof they live ; and those that be night walkers, builders of 

 cottages and takers in of victuallers, artificers, workemen and 

 labourers." Also the headboroughs of the tithing, who as 

 Custodes Pads had formerly possessed powers not unlike those 

 of the modern justice of the peace, had sunk in public 

 importance to a condition but little recognisable from the 



' TTie New State of England, Part III. ch. vii. p. 71. 

 » Id. Ibid., p. 75. 



