A clerk of the peace held an office in England and Wales whose responsibility was the records of the quarter sessions and the framing of presentments and indictments.
3. c. 1 (1361)[clarification needed] as an office occupied by a person who draws indictments, arraigns prisoners, joins issue for the Crown, enters judgments, awards their process and makes up and keeps records in respect of proceedings before justices assembled in quarter sessions to hear and determine felonies and trespasses.
From early times however, it seems that clerks of the peace had administrative functions apart from their legal and quasi-legal duties, especially in towns and cities.
Other duties included ordering the repair of bridges, levying county rates, provision of goals, and the putting down of diseased animals.
When the Local Government Act 1888 created county councils, clerks of the peace became their chief executive officers.
The clerk of the peace, by himself or his sufficient deputy, was required to be in constant attendance on the court of quarter sessions.
It was his duty, when prosecutors did not choose to seek professional assistance elsewhere, to draw the bills of indictment for felony at a fee of only one shilling each.
The fees of the clerk of the peace were to be ascertained, and a table expressing them approved by the court of general quarter sessions and sanctioned by the judges of the assize.
Such table was to be deposited with the clerk of the peace, and an exact written or printed copy placed and kept in a conspicuous part of the room where the quarter session held.
[citation needed] The position of clerk of the peace continued to exist in former colonies into which English law had been introduced, including New South Wales, where the first clerk of the peace (Thomas Wylde) was appointed by a general order issued by Governor Macquarie on 4 January 1817.
[5] By this time the practice had arisen of appointing clerks of the peace for the various country districts where courts of quarter sessions were held.
The dual function of the clerk of the peace in New South Wales, that is as registrar of the court as well as the prosecuting attorney for the Crown was recognised on 1 January 1980 when, by ministerial direction of the then attorney general, Frank Walker MLA, the title of the office became that of Solicitor for Public Prosecutions and Clerk of the Peace.