II.: Keeping and Trying Criminal Pleas.

The machinery for bringing criminals to justice, as organized by Henry II., was somewhat elaborate. For our present purpose, it may be sufficient to emphasize two important stages in the procedure. An interval had always to elapse between the commission of grave crimes and the formal trial of the accused, for the coming of the itinerant justices took place only at intervals of about seven years. Meanwhile, preliminary steps were taken to collect and record evidence, which might otherwise be lost. The magistrate responsible for these preliminary steps was said to “keep” the pleas (custodire placita)—that is, to prevent them from passing out of mind while waiting for the justices who would formally “hold” or “try” or “determine” them (placitare or habere or tenere placita).

Before the reign of John, the two functions had been entrusted to two distinct types of royal officials. The local magistrates of each district “kept” royal pleas, while only the King’s justices could “hold” them. The process of differentiation was accelerated in consequence of the jealousy with which the Crown regarded the increasing independence of the sheriffs. The elaborate instructions issued in 1194 to the justices, whom Archbishop Hubert Walter was despatching through the counties, contain provisions intended to keep the pretensions of sheriffs within bounds: they were expressly forbidden to act as justices within any counties in which they had acted as sheriffs since Richard’s coronation.

It is safe to infer that the “trying” of royal pleas was the province from which the sheriff was thus to be excluded. Even with regard to the “keeping” or preliminary stages of such pleas, the sheriff was by no means left in sole command. The justices received instructions to cause three knights and one clerk to be chosen in each county as “custodes placitorum coronae.” It is possible that these new local officers, specially entrusted with the duty of “keeping” royal pleas, were intended rather to co–operate with, than to supersede, the sheriffs in this function; but, in any view, the sheriffs had no longer a monopoly of authority in their bailiwicks. Magistrates, to be afterwards known as coroners, were thenceforward associated with them in the administration of the county.

The ordinance of 1194 seems to have settled subsequent practice in both respects. Sheriffs, while still free to punish petty offenders in their half–yearly tourns or circuits, allowed the coroners to “keep” royal pleas, and the justices to “try” them. Public opinion of the day approved both rules. Yet John condoned and encouraged irregularities, allowing sheriffs to meddle with pleas of the Crown, even when no coroners were present to check their arbitrary methods; and allowing them to give final judgments, involving loss of life or limb, without waiting for the Justices. He employed the same men to visit as justices the very counties they had oppressed as sheriffs. The notorious Engelard of Cigogné, branded by name in chapter 50 of Magna Carta, acted as justice in his own county of Gloucester.

The Articles of the Barons condemned such practices; and Magna Carta, in this first of a series of clauses directed against sheriffs’ misdeeds, forbade them under any circumstances to try royal pleas.