Page:The statutes of Wales (1908).djvu/72

lxviii In addition to the Justices of Great Sessions the Lord Chancellor appointed eight Justices of the Peace and one "custos rotulorum" for each shire. This provision was extended in 1693 (5 W. & M., c. 4) by allowing the King to appoint as many Justices as he pleased. These Justices of the Peace met quarterly, and for urgent matters at other times. The President of the Council of, the Justices of the Great Sessions, the King's Attorney and Solicitor were put in every commission of the peace. The Justices of the peace were qualified to sit "if of good name and fame, even if they did not dispend £20, and even if not learned in the law." They appointed two substantial gentlemen or yeomen, in each hundred, to be chief constables for the conservation of the peace. Sheriffs, the chief executive officers of the county, were to be nominated yearly according to English fashion by the President of the Council and Justices of to the Privy Council, on the Morrow of All Souls (crastino animarum), altered later (by 24  2, c. 48) to the Morrow of St. Martin. The Sheriffs formerly had been elected for life, and, it is said, "sought more to enrich themselves by the office than to see justice administered." Sheriffs rendered accounts to the auditor for, each sheriff having a yearly fee of £5. An escheator, who attended to the King's revenues and seized all escheated goods and forfeited lands, was appointed for every county. The sheriffs were to hold their monthly county courts and their hundred courts for pleas under forty shillings, as was the custom in England. In these courts, and also before Stewards in courts Baron, the trials were to be decided by the verdict of six men or by wager of law (the latter being a proceeding which consisted in a defendant discharging himself on his own oath, bringing with him at the same time eleven of his neighbours as compurgators to swear that they believed his denial to be true). The sheriff was to provide gaols and to continue to hold his "tourn" once after Easter, and once after Michaelmas. Fines were not to be inflicted in murder cases or felonies and no