This system was further developed under the Tudors, while in the middle of the 16th century the military functions of the sheriff were handed over to a new officer, the lord-lieutenant, who is now more prominently associated with the headship of the county than is the sheriff. The lord-lieutenant now usually holds the older office of custos rotulorum, or keeper of the records of the county. The justices of the peace are appointed upon his nomination, and until lately he appointed the clerk of the peace. The latter appointment is now made by the joint committee of quarter sessions and county council.
The Tudor system of local government received little alteration until the establishment of county councils by the Local Government Act of 1888 handed over to an elected body many of the functions previously exercised by the nominated justices of the peace. For the purposes of this act the ridings of Yorkshire, the divisions of Lincolnshire, east and west Sussex, east and west Suffolk, the soke of Peterborough and the Isle of Ely are regarded as counties, so that there are now sixty administrative counties of England and Wales. Between 1373 and 1692 the crown granted to certain cities and boroughs the privilege of being counties of themselves. There were in 1835 eighteen of these counties corporate, Bristol, Chester, Coventry, Gloucester, Lincoln, Norwich, Nottingham, York and Carmarthen, each of which had two sheriffs, and Canterbury, Exeter, Hull, Lichfield, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Poole, Southampton, Worcester and Haverfordwest, each of which had one sheriff. All these boroughs, with the exception of Carmarthen, Lichfield, Poole and Haverfordwest, which remain counties of themselves, and forty-seven others, were created county boroughs by the Local Government Act 1888, and are entirely dissociated from the control of a county council. The City of London is also a county of itself, whose two sheriffs are also sheriffs of Middlesex, while for the purposes of the act of 1888 the house-covered district which extends for many miles round the City constitutes a county.
The county has always been the unit for the organization of the militia, and from about 1782 certain regiments of the regular army were associated with particular counties by territorial titles. The army scheme of 1907–1908 provided for the formation of county associations under the presidency of the lords-lieutenant for the organization of the new territorial army.
See Statutes of the Realm; W. Stubbs, Constitutional History of England (1874–1878); F. W. Maitland, Domesday Book and Beyond (1897); Sir F. Pollock and F. W. Maitland, History of English Law (1895); H. M. Chadwick, Studies on Anglo-Saxon Institutions (1905), and The Victoria History of the Counties of England.
(G. J. T.)
COUNTY COURT, in England, a local court of civil jurisdiction. The county court, it has been said, is at once the most ancient and the most modern of English civil tribunals. The Saxon Curia Comitatus, maintained after the Norman Conquest, was a local court and a small debts court. It was instituted by Alfred the Great, its jurisdiction embracing civil, and, until the reign of William I., ecclesiastical matters. The officers of the court consisted of the earldorman, the bishop and the sheriff. The court was held once in every four weeks, being presided over by the earl, or, in his absence, the sheriff. The suitors of the court, i.e. the freeholders, were the judges, the sheriff being simply a presiding officer, pronouncing and afterwards executing the judgment of the court. The court was not one of record. The appointment of judges of assize in the reign of Henry II., as well as the expensive and dilatory procedure of the court, brought about its gradual disuse, and other local courts, termed courts of request or of conscience, were established. These, in turn, proved unsatisfactory, owing both to the limited nature of their jurisdiction (restricted to causes of debt not exceeding 40s. in value, and to the fact that they were confined to particular places). Accordingly, with the view of making justice cheaper and more accessible the County Courts Act 1846 was passed. This act had the modest title of “An Act for the Recovery of Small Debts and Demands in England.” The original limit of the jurisdiction of the new courts was £20, extended in 1850 to £50 in actions of debt, and in 1903 (by an act which came into force in 1905) to £100. Thirteen amending acts were passed, by which new jurisdiction was from time to time conferred on the county courts, and in the year 1888 an act was passed repealing the previous acts and consolidating their provisions, with some amendment. This is now the code or charter of the county courts.
The grain of mustard-seed sown in 1846 has grown into a goodly tree, with branches extending over the whole of England and Wales; and they embrace within their ambit a more multifarious jurisdiction than is possessed by any other courts in the kingdom. England and Wales were mapped out into 59 circuits (not including the city of London), with power for the crown, by order in council, to abolish any circuit and rearrange the areas comprised in the circuits (sec. 4). There is one judge to each circuit, but the lord chancellor is empowered to appoint two judges in a circuit, provided that the total number of judges does not exceed 60. The salary of a county court judge was originally fixed at £1200, but he now receives £1500. He must at the time of his appointment be a barrister-at-law of at least seven years’ standing, and not more than sixty years of age; after appointment he cannot sit as a member of parliament or practise at the bar.
Every circuit (except in Birmingham, Clerkenwell, and Westminster) is divided into districts, in each of which there is a court, with a registrar and bailiffs. The judges are directed to attend and hold a court in each district at least once in every month, unless the lord chancellor shall otherwise direct (secs. 10, 11). But in practice the judge sits several times a month in the large centres of population, and less frequently than once a month in the court town of sparsely inhabited districts. By sec. 185 of the act of 1888 the judges and officers of the city of London court have the like jurisdiction, powers, and authority as those of a county court, and the county court rules apply to that court.
The ordinary jurisdiction of the county courts may be thus tabulated:—
Subject matter.
Pecuniary limit of jurisdiction.
Common-law actions, with written consent of both parties
There is no discoverable principle upon which these limits of the jurisdiction of the county courts have been determined. But the above table is not by any means an exhaustive statement of the jurisdiction of the county courts. For many years it has been the practice of parliament to throw on the county court judges the duty of acting as judges or arbitrators for the purpose of new legislation relating to social subjects. It is impossible to classify the many statutes which have been passed since 1846 and which confer some jurisdiction, apart from that under the County Courts Act, on county courts or their judges. Some of these acts impose exceptional duties on the judges of the county courts, others confer unlimited jurisdiction concurrently with the High Court or some other court, others, again, confer limited or, sometimes, exclusive jurisdiction. A list of all the acts will be found in the Annual County Courts Practice. A county court judge may determine all matters of fact as well as law, but a jury may be summoned at the option of either plaintiff or defendant when the amount in dispute exceeds £5, and in actions under £5 the judge may in his discretion, on application of either of the parties, order that the action be tried by jury. The number of
