as a small
enough area. The county in Virginia was much smaller than in
Massachusetts or Connecticut. In a few instances the county consisted
of only a single parish; in some cases it was divided into two
parishes, but oftener into three or more.

[Sidenote: The county court was virtually a close corporation.]
In Virginia, as in England and in New England, the county was an area
for the administration of justice. There were usually in each county
eight justices of the peace, and their court was the counterpart of
the Quarter Sessions in England. They were appointed by the governor,
but it was customary for them to nominate candidates for the governor
to appoint, so that practically the court filled its own vacancies and
was a close corporation, like the parish vestry. Such an arrangement
tended to keep the general supervision and control of things in the
hands of a few families.

This county court usually met as often as once a month in some
convenient spot answering to the shire town of England or New England.
More often than not the place originally consisted of the court-house
and very little else, and was named accordingly from the name of the
county, as Hanover Court House or Fairfax Court House; and the small
shire towns that have grown up in such spots often retain these names
to the present day. Such names occur commonly in Virginia, West
Virginia, and South Carolina, very rarely in Kentucky, North Carolina,
Alabama, Ohio, and nowhere else in the United States.[9] Their number
has diminished from the tendency to omit the phrase "Court House,"
leaving the name of the county for that of the shire town, as for
example in Culpeper, Va. In New England the process of naming has been
just the reverse; as in Hartford County, Conn., or Worcester County,
Mass., which have taken their names from the shire towns. In this,
as in so many cases, whole chapters of history are wrapped up in
geographical names.[10]

[Footnote 9: In Mitchell's Atlas, 1883, the number of cases is in Va.
38, W. Va. 13, S. C. 16, N. C. 2, Ala. 1, Ky. 1, Ohio, 1.]

[Footnote 10: A few of the oldest Virginia counties, organized as
such in 1634, had arisen from the spreading and thinning of single
settlements originally intended to be cities and named accordingly.
Hence the curious names (at first sight unintelligible) of "James City
County," and "Charles City County."]

[Sidenote: Powers of the court]
The county court in Virginia had jurisdictio