book IV., chap. xix.

The powers and duties of the justices of the peace in quarter-sessions and separately were so considerable and varied as to tax the ability of an Elizabethan or Jacobean text-book writer to reduce them to simplicity of statement, or to the compass of five or six hundred pages of enumeration. Many of these powers were general, arising from the nature of the office for the "conservation of the peace"; but the great mass of their duties was placed upon them by statutes. Ten early statutes are enumerated in the commission itself, before coming to the inclusive "and cause to be kept all other ordinances and statutes made for the good of our peace and the quiet rule and government of our people." From the middle of the fifteenth century forward, the enforcement of the greater number of new laws was placed primarily in the hands of the justices of the peace.

As time passed on legislation became more and more minute and inclusive. Few interests in human life escaped the paternal attention of government under the Tudors and Stuarts, and this great mass of enactment it became the duty of the groups of country gentry in the counties and of the civic magistrates of the towns to put into force. A writer of the time enumerates two hundred and ninety-three statutes passed previous to 1603 in which justices of the peace are mentioned and given some jurisdiction or duties. [Footnote: Lambarde, Eirenarcha,