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Rh   POLICE COURTS, courts of summary jurisdiction, held in London and certain large towns of the United Kingdom by specially appointed and salaried magistrates. They were originally called “public offices” (Middlesex Justices Act 1792), but after the establishment of the police force, in 1829, they came to be called “police offices,” although no change had taken place in their nature. They are so described in a report of a select committee which inquired into the system in 1837 and 1838, in the same report the magistrates who presided in the courts were first described as “police magistrates.” Police offices were first officially described by their modern title in the Metropolitan Police Courts Act 1839. In 1839 there were nine police courts; since 1792 there had been three magistrates to each court, and the act of 1839 retained twenty-seven as the maximum number at any time (s. 2). In 1835 unsalaried justices ceased to sit in the police courts along with the paid magistrates. The Metropolitan Police Courts Act 1840 gave power to map out the whole of the metropolitan police district into police court divisions, and to establish police courts wherever necessary, the artificial limit of twenty-seven magistrates being at the same time preserved. Additional courts have from time to time been established by orders in council, and in 1910 there were in London fourteen courts with twenty-five magistrates Their divisions are regulated by orders in council of 1903 and 1905; the nine original courts are Bow Street, Westminster, Marylebone, Marlborough Street, Worship Street, Clerkenwell, Thames, Tower Bridge and Lambeth.

 POLIGNAC, an ancient French family, which had its seat in the Cevennes near Puy-en-Velay (Haute Loire). Its authentic pedigree can be traced to the 9th century, but in 1421 the male line became extinct. The heiress married Guillaume, sire de

Chalancon (not to be confused with the barons of Chalançon in Vivarais), who assumed the name and arms of Polignac. The first member of the family who was of any historical importance was Cardinal Melchior de Polignac (1661-1742), a younger son of Armand XVI., marquis de Polignac, who at an early age achieved distinction as a diplomatist. In 1695 he was sent as ambassador to Poland, where he contrived to bring about the election of the prince of Conti as successor to John Sobieski (1697). The subsequent failure of this intrigue led to his temporary disgrace, but in 1702 he was restored to favour, and in 1712 he was sent as the plenipotentiary of Louis XIV. to the Congress of Utrecht. During the regency he became involved in the Cellamare plot, and was relegated to Flanders for three years. From 1725 to 1732 he acted for France at the Vatican. In 1726 he received the archbishopric of Auch, and he died at Paris in 1742. He left unfinished a metrical refutation of Lucretius which was published after his death by the abbé de Rothelin (Anti-Lucretius, 1745), and had considerable vogue in its day. Count Jules de Polignac (d. 1817), grandnephew of the preceding, was created duke by Louis XVI. in 1780, and in 1782 was made postmaster-general. His position and influence at court were largely due to his wife, Gabrielle de Polastron, the bosom friend of Marie Antoinette; the duke and duchess alike shared the unpopularity of the court, and were among the first to “emigrate” in 1789. The duchess died shortly after the queen, but her husband, who had received an estate from Catherine II. in the Ukraine, survived till 1817. Of their three sons the second, Prince Jules de Polignac (1780-1847), played a conspicuous part in the clerical and ultra-royalist reaction after the Revolution. Under the empire he was implicated in the conspiracy of Cadoudal and Pichegru (1804), and was imprisoned till 1813. After the restoration of the Bourbons he held various offices, received from the pope his title of “prince” in 1820, and in 1823 was made ambassador to the English court. On the 8th of August 1829 he was called by Charles X. to the ministry of foreign affairs, and in the following November he became president of the council. His appointment was taken as symbolical of the king's intention to overthrow the constitution, and Polignac, with the other ministers, was held responsible for the policy which culminated in the issue of the Four Ordinances which were the immediate cause of the revolution of July 1830. On the outbreak of this he fled for his life, but, after wandering for some time among the wilds of Normandy, was arrested at Granville. His trial before the chamber of peers resulted in his condemnation to perpetual imprisonment (at Ham), but he benefited by the amnesty of 1836, when the sentence was commuted to one of exile. During his captivity he wrote Considérations politiques (1832). He afterwards spent some years in England, but finally was permitted to re-enter France on condition that he did not take up his abode in Paris. He died at St Germain on the 29th of March 1847.  POLIGNY, a town of eastern France, capital of an arrondissement in the department of Jura, 18 m. N. N. E. of Lons-le-Saunier on the Paris-Lyons railway. Pop. (1906), 3756. The town lies in the valley of the Glantine at the base of a hill crowned by the ruins of the old castle of Grimont, once the repository of the archives of the county of Burgundy. The church of Montivillard, its most remarkable building, dates in the oldest portions from the 12th century, its chief features being a Romanesque tower and reredos of the Renaissance period. Amongst the other old buildings of the town, the church of St Hippolyte, of the first half of the 15th century, and a convent-church serving as corn market are of some interest. The tribunal of first instance belonging to the arrondissement is at Arbois. Poligny has a sub-prefecture, a communal college and a school of dairy instruction. Under the name of Polemniacum the town seems to have existed at the time of the Roman occupation.  POLISH SUCCESSION WAR (1733-1735), the name given to a war which arose out of the competition for the throne of Poland between the elector August of Saxony, son of August II. (the Strong), and Stanislaus Leszcynski, the king of Poland installed thirty years before by Charles XII. of Sweden and displaced by