GENERAL

MEDIEVAL CORONERS

The office of coroner was almost certainly established in September 1194, when the justices in eyre were required to see that three knights and one clerk were elected in every county as ‘keepers of the pleas of the crown’. The first county coroners were then elected. Presumably every county had four coroners for a few years, but from the early thirteenth century some normally had only two. Presumably also the original idea was that the three knights should act jointly, the clerk keeping a written record of their activities. However this may be, whether a county had two coroners or more there was far too much work for them to perform together, except for their duties in the county court. Therefore by 1200 or soon after the county coroners were all knights, each acting separately and with a clerk of his own. The inevitable consequence of this was that, although in theory there were no coroners’ districts within a county, in practice there were—not necessarily with hard and fast boundaries and possibly varying somewhat from time to time according to the place of residence of the coroners for the time being, but generally recognised areas within each of which one coroner would normally act and his colleagues would not. The practice of electing a coroner with lands in the same part of the county as his predecessor thus grew up.

With very few exceptions all county coroners were elected. During the thirteenth century the knights and freeholders of the shire seem to have been required to elect their coroners anew during every general eyre, which, until the last years of the century, meant every seven years or less. If a coronership became vacant between eyres, a writ de coronatore eligendo issued from Chancery requiring the sheriff to hold an election in the county court. With the discontinuance of general eyres after 1330 nearly every county coroner was elected on such a writ.

Coroners were elected for life, but in practice only a minority of coroners remained in office until their death.