To the great honour of this Realme, and of the government thereof: Justices of the peace in Tudor England

This thesis examines the responsibilities and significance of the office of justice of the peace in sixteenth-century England, using prescriptive texts such as statute law and early modern guidebooks for justices as well as contemporary descriptive sources in the form of records from the county Quarter Sessions, the courts over which the JPs presided. This investigation highlights the role of the justices as both arbiters of national law and protectors of local peace, enforcing national law and answering complaints from residents of their counties; it also demonstrates the degree to which the justices used their own discretion when determining how best to execute laws and enforce order. Modern scholars have identified the reigns of the Tudor monarchs (1485 to 1603) as a period of transformation in administrative practices in government, and this thesis suggests that justices of the peace played an active role in that process. The JPs aided in the construction of the early modern English state by supporting the expression of monarchical authority in the counties of the realm. The focus of the study is the county of Cheshire, with particular emphasis on the 1590s. This county's geographic location in the northwest demonstrates the long reach of the central government, while the final decade of the century, marked by important developments in English domestic policy especially concerning poor relief, serves to exhibit alterations in the form and function of county justice. In addition, Cheshire's historiographical reputation as regionally distinctive is considered in this thesis, but evidence suggests that, in matters pertaining to law and order, the JPs there performed their tasks in a fashion similar to that of their counterparts in other areas of the realm. This thesis also analyzes how justices of the peace sought to enforce changing ideas about what constituted appropriate behavior to make a contribution to scholarship on the early modern European "reformation of manners." Finally, this examination considers early modern English social networks and displays the ways in which county justices went about policing these relationships. Contemporary source material demonstrates the multiple roles sixteenth-century justices of the peace played. They both balanced the dictates of the Tudor state's concept of law and order and responded to the needs of the populace in ensuring personal property and wellbeing, indicating the JPs' seminal role in doing justice in early modern England.