Quarter sessions (1842), Thorpe Road, Peterborough;
W. J. Donthorne, architect The liberty justices in quarter sessions had long-held powers in excess of those of most other quarter sessions. They could try and decide many serious crimes, including treason and murder, which normally could only be heard and determined in a court of assize, and in view of the special powers of the liberty justices, a judge of assize had no power to act in the Soke of Peterborough. Until the time of the
Dissolution of the Monasteries, the abbot had been empowered to appoint
justices of the peace for the Hundred, or Liberty, of Nassaburgh. When Peterborough Monastery was dissolved in 1539 Abbot Chambers was made the first
Bishop of Peterborough, and the following year
Henry VIII granted three Commissions of the Peace to the coterminous Liberty of Peterborough. They were: • The Commission of the Peace for the appointment of Justices to sit in Petty Sessional Courts and exercise the ordinary duties of the magistracy; • The Commission for Gaol Delivery, and • The Commission of Oyer and Terminer, that is to hear and determine, which empowered the Justices of the Liberty to hear assize offences at Quarter Sessions. The last commission gave to the justices of the liberty, power to enquire more fully "... by the oath of good and lawful men of the Liberty of Peterborough, by whom the truth of the matter may be better known and by other ways, means and methods by which they shall or better know, of the treasons ... insurrections ... rebellions, counterfeitings, clippings, wastings, false comings ... murders, felonies, manslaughters ... and many other grave offences mentioned therein which in other counties are only triable by a judge of assize, and the Justices are commanded at days appointed for this purpose to make diligent enquiries into and to hear and determine the above mentioned offences." In 1877
Queen Victoria confirmed these commissions and endorsed the ancient privileges of jurisdiction of the liberty justices and at the same time excluded the
High Sheriff of Northamptonshire from exercising his authority in the soke. The commissions of oyer and terminer and gaol delivery were not renewed by the monarchs immediately succeeding Queen Victoria and in 1920 the
Court of Criminal Appeal quashed a conviction recorded at Peterborough Quarter Sessions. It was held that three of the liberty magistrates adjudicating at the hearing were not in order, as the assize authority of the court then derived from commissions granted during the reign of Queen Victoria. The three justices in question had been appointed to the commission of the peace subsequent to her death and only justices appointed during her reign were in order in adjudicating at such a court. This resulted in a renewal of the commissions in continuation of the ancient assize jurisdiction, and an announcement was made at the Easter Quarter Sessions in 1921 that "whatever may have happened as a result of a recent case in the Court of Criminal Appeal by authority of this Commission now granted, this Court will continue to exercise this ancient jurisdiction in the same manner as it has done under similar commissions since the days of
Charles I." In fact, the justices of the liberty did not exercise their full powers, although they were always jealous of their special and historic privileges. (1555–1587), seat of the Marquesses of Exeter In 1949, the
Marquess of Exeter moved an amendment in the
House of Lords to the
Justices of the Peace Bill. This was necessary to safeguard the special position of the liberty jurisdiction as the new Bill provided there should be a separate commission of the peace for every administrative county and
county borough and not for any other area. Accordingly, an amendment was accepted by the
Lord Chancellor and the following paragraph was included in the Act: In accepting the amendment the Lord Chancellor said that in murder cases this ancient jurisdiction had survived all these years only because it had never been exercised and he added, "if the justices ever appear to act upon the powers they possess, I shall be the first to come and remove those powers for them." The courts of assize and quarter sessions were eventually abolished in
England and
Wales by the
Courts Act 1971 and replaced by a single permanent
Crown Court.
Administrative county bridge over the
River Nene at
Wansford; the southern end has "County of Huntingdon" Under an amendment by
Lord Exeter to the
Local Government Act 1888, the Soke became a separate
administrative county in its own right, distinct from the remainder of Northamptonshire. An elected
county council, consisting of a chairman, 10
aldermen, and 30
councillors, took over the administrative functions of the Quarter Sessions and had its meetings at the Guildhall; but this formal change hid a great deal of continuity, as Justices of the Peace were often elected councillors, the Clerk of the Peace became the Clerk to the Council and so on. During its life the county council gradually acquired more powers, such as taking over the functions of school boards in 1902,
boards of guardians in 1930 and various
town planning and housing responsibilities from 1949. As the
fire authority, under the
Fire Services Act 1947, the county council also retained
Peterborough Volunteer Fire Brigade, one of the few of its kind. The Soke county council was granted a
coat of arms by the
College of Arms in 1950. The design placed the crossed keys of
Saint Peter from the arms of the Diocese of Peterborough on the silver and blue barry field of the arms of the Cecil family, Marquesses of Exeter, who held the chairmanship of the council for most of its existence. The crest was an ermine lion from the Cecil arms rising from a
mural crown emblematic of local government. The lion held two wheatears, symbolising agriculture. The
Latin motto adopted by the council was
Cor Unum, part of the Cecil motto
Cor Unum, Via Una or "One Heart, One Way". The
Local Government Act 1894 divided the Soke into three
districts; the existent
city (1541) and
municipal borough (1874) of Peterborough, and the two
rural districts of
Peterborough and
Barnack. The administrative county had an area of approximately 83 ½ square miles (216.37 km2) with only one, minor, boundary change in its lifetime. The county's population recorded at each
census since 1901 was as follows: 's seventeenth-century map of Northamptonshire including the Soke (as "Nasaburgh Hund.") In 1961, the last year for which figures are available, the breakdown was as follows: The Soke had a very small population for a county and so, in 1965, the administration was merged with that of the neighbouring small county of
Huntingdonshire, to form the slightly more viable administrative county of
Huntingdon and Peterborough (population 202,622 in 1971). Under the
1974 local government reorganisation, Huntingdon and Peterborough became part of the
non-metropolitan county of Cambridgeshire (population 436,441 in 1981), as had first been proposed in 1947 and an area broadly corresponding to the Soke, called the City of Peterborough, became one of its six
districts. When the new Cambridgeshire county council was granted arms in 1976 it included references to those of the Soke; two keys around the neck of the dexter supporter and the motto,
Corde Uno Sapientes Simus, or "With One Heart Let Us Be Men of Understanding". In 1998 the City of Peterborough became a
unitary authority, but it continues to form part of Cambridgeshire for
ceremonial purposes. Because of intervening development and a
new town project in Peterborough, the present district has a much larger population than the Soke had. ==Politics==