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The hundreds and tythings were represented by their own officers, and had their hundred-courts and courts-leet, which exercised a trifling criminal jurisdiction, but were chiefly assemblies answering to our grand juries and parish vestries. All householders were members of them, and every man thus became responsible for keeping the king's peace."
Courts-baron were held in but few places, and almost solely for the purpose of making land transfers; courts-leet were held only infrequently and irregularly, many lords of manors who possessed the right exercising it but once a year or less frequently; the whole system of frank-pledges had long gone into desuetude.
He could erect manors, with courts-baron and courts-leet, and confer titles and dignities, so that they differed from those of England. He could make laws with the assent of the freemen of the province, and, in cases of emergency, ordinances not impairing life, limb, or property, without their assent.
Even in the early days of Prince Edward Island, when it was necessary to mature a plan of colonization, it was gravely proposed to the British government that the whole island should be divided into "hundreds," as in England, or into "baronies," as in Ireland, with courts-baron, lords of manors, courts-leet, all under the direction of a lord paramount; but while this ambitious aristocratic scheme was not favourably entertained, the imperial authorities chose one which was most injurious in its effects on the settlement of this fertile island.
Contemporary legal treatises concerning county government are Michael Dalton, Officium Vicecomitum, or the Office and Authority of Sheriffs , and The Country Justice ; William Greenwood, Authority, Jurisdiction, and Method of Keeping County Courts, Courts-Leet, and Courts-Baron, etc. ; William Lambarde, Eirenarcha, or the Office of the Justices of Peace ; A. Fitzherbert, L'Office et Authorities de Justices de Peace , often quoted as "Crompton", an editor who enlarged the original work in 1583; John Wilkinson, Office and Authority of Coroners and Sheriffs . All these appear in numerous editions, the above dates being, as far as ascertained, those of the earliest editions.
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