Free Daily Life in Elizabethan England by Jeffrey L. Forgeng

of justices. Individual justices of the peace were also empowered to deliver summary judgment in minor local cases.
    At every level the justices of the peace had administrative and quasi-legislative powers in addition to their judiciary functions.
    In addition to the local justice of the peace, there were other sometimes overlapping local jurisdictions. Since the Middle Ages, the shires had been subdivided into hundreds (or wapentakes, as they were called in areas once conquered by the Vikings). These had their own courts and officers, although their role had been marginalized by the late 1500s.
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    At the local level, royal government more often operated through the parish. Each parish had at least one constable, a part-time officer drawn from the yeomanly class. The parish constable was responsible for local law enforcement and worked closely with local justices of the peace in administering law and policy at the community level. Parishes were also responsible for the execution of national laws: there were Surveyors of the Highway to oversee the implementation of the Highway Act of 1555, while from 1598 Overseers of the Poor were charged with administering the Poor Laws. Boroughs and manors also had their own officers and courts with authority over local matters.
    At every level, exceptions were common. London was an exception
    among the boroughs, sending four representatives to Parliament—reflecting its importance, but in no way proportional to the city’s wealth, power, or population. The Borough of Southwark on the south bank of the Thames was an exception within London, being administered not by the usual urban forms of government but as a feudal manor owned by the City of London. Within Southwark there were several areas exempted from the legal power of borough authorities: liberties such as the environs of the Marshalsea prison, exempted because it was royal land, and sanctuaries like Montague Close near London Bridge, which retained privileges from the days when it had been owned by the church.
    At all levels government relied heavily on unpaid or underpaid office-holders—by definition drawn from the classes who could afford to spare time from work. Great lords might serve in major offices of the state; local gentlemen served as justices of the peace; and even ordinary tradesmen and yeomen might be called upon to serve in minor local offices of the village, town, or parish. This kind of unpaid work was a cause of governmental corruption; men who had to spend considerable time and money on an unsalaried government office would frequently find other ways to make the post profitable.

Law
    One of the most important functions of the royal government was in overseeing a national system of courts to implement the laws. England’s Common Law had emerged in the Middle Ages as the result of royal
    efforts to centralize and standardize the patchwork of jurisdictions and practices that had emerged in the feudal environment. The guiding
    principles of the Common Law were tradition and precedent: Common
    Law was seen as the embodiment of centuries-old customs, guided and informed by legal precedent as embodied in the practice of the courts and documented in the records of prior legal cases. Common Law was supplemented by Parliamentary statute, which was seen as a vehicle for dealing with emerging needs that were not already addressed by existing Common Law.
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    Daily Life in Elizabethan England
    At the national level, both Common Law and Statute Law were implemented by the Court of Common Pleas, which handled civil matters (i.e., between subjects of the crown); the Court of the Exchequer, which handled cases in which the crown was alleged to have a financial interest; and the Court of Queen’s Bench, which dealt with criminal cases (i.e., those to which the crown was a party) and could also serve as a de facto court of appeal. All of these courts met at Westminster, within walking distance of the city of London.