64 George E. Hozuard, 



Peace in each shire, have been so multipHed, and their char- 

 acter has been so thoroughly changed, that an assembly 

 of them is practically an assembly, not of royal officers, but of 

 the Thegns of the shire in their local character. A court of 

 Quarter Sessions has become an assembly, whose best rule 

 of action could not be better described than in the words of 

 Eanwene, when she bade the Scirgemot of Herefordshire to 

 'do thegnly and well.' The shire has become an aristocratic 

 commonwealth, ruled by an assembly not so very unlike what 

 the gathering of the Thegns of Herefordshire must have been 

 in the days of Cnut. No royal viissiis is there, except in so 

 far as all the Thegns have themselves become inissi. The 

 Thegns alone can speak and vote, but the rest of the men of 

 the shire may, if they think good, look on. And they now 

 have means of influence and criticism, which, though less 

 direct, are perhaps as effectual as the ancient right to cry 

 Yea or Nay. In the judicial business of the court, popular 

 juries, grand and petty, keep up the ancient right of every 

 freeman to have a share in the administration of justice. 

 And the judges of the court are Thegns of the shire, men 

 commissioned indeed by the Crown, but whom no one looks 

 on as royal officers. Indeed, whenever a cry is raised for the 

 transfer of their judicial powers to other hands, it is sought 

 to transfer it to men in whom the character of royal officers 

 shall be more prominent." ^ 



Nevertheless, the union of judicial and general administra- 

 tive powers, of so varied a character, in one body thus com- 

 posed, came more and more to be regarded as anomalous. 

 At length the demand for their separation and for the 

 re-establishment of popular self-government in the shire 

 found expression in the act of Parliament which went into 

 effect April i, 1889.2 By this act the justices in quarter 



* 1 Freeman, Norman Cotiqucsf, V, 301-2. Cf. his The Home of Lords and the 

 County Councils: Fort. Rev., May, 18S8, pp. 601-4; and Bowles, The Destruc- 

 tion of Self Government : Fort. Rev., April, 1888, pp. 498 ff. 



2 51 and 52 Vict., c. 41 : " An act to amend the laws relating to Local Govern- 

 ment in England and Wales, and for other purposes connected therewith." 

 Passed, August 13, 1888. 



298 



