II - Sir William Boteler’S Charges To The Grand Jury At Quarter Sessions 1643-1647

Summary

INTRODUCTION

‘yee see that (for this County) the present dispensacion of right & punishment is invested in this Court, it rests upon the Bench as to the pronunciacion of the sentence, it rests upon you of this inquest as to the presentacion of offences, we are the physicians that must prescribe the Cure, but yee are the patients that must discover the disease; for yee are the representative body of the County, or rather the pulse of that body, and according to your motion, we are to judge of the health or distemper of it.’ (The charge at the Christmas Sessions, 1644).

The speeches that follow were delivered by Sir William Boteler, Justice of the Peace and local parliamentarian, to the Grand Jury at Quarter Sessions for Bedfordshire on four separate occasions during and after the first Civil War of 1642-46. Examples of these ‘charges’ as they were known, in which the chairman of the magistrates’ bench addressed the jurymen of the county on their responsibilities in court, are rare for any period and few have appeared in print. These are, to the best of my knowledge, the only examples of charges which were given during the actual Civil War. They are therefore of particular interest. What impact did the war have on the local administration of criminal justice? How far was the recent parliamentary legislation incorporated? What concept of their task was transmitted to the jurymen during a period when it may be supposed the institution of Quarter Sessions, along with others in society, was under particular stress? In the introduction that follows I first attempt to put the charges in their context by describing the background of their author and the functions of the JPs, Quarter Sessions and the Grand Jury. The purpose of the charge is then examined and points of special interest in the present charges discussed.

The author of the charges – Sir William Boteler

The Bedfordshire gentry of the seventeenth century are a very poorly documented group compared with those of other counties such as Kent, Sussex or Lincolnshire. Of the author of a group of interesting and unusual charges such as these, we are bound to ask, who was he? What background of character, education and experience did he bring to this task? Fortunately enough information exists in the case of the Boteler family to provide some answers.