Editing Coroner (section)

==Etymology and history==
The office of coroner originated in [[medieval England]], first constituted in the reign of [[Richard I of England|Richard I]], and has since been adopted in many other countries whose legal systems have their roots in [[English law|English]] or [[United Kingdom law]].<ref>[https://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/138338/coroner "coroner"]. ''[[Encyclopædia Britannica]]'', 2009. Accessed 10 August 2009.</ref><ref name="duggan1">{{cite journal|last1=Duggan|first1=Kenneth F.|title=The Hue and Cry in Thirteenth-Century England|journal=Thirteenth Century England|date=2017|volume=XVI|pages=153–172|doi=10.1017/9781787441439.010|isbn=9781787441439}}</ref>

In September 1194, the king's itinerant [[Eyre (legal term)|justices in Eyre]] were required to ensure that in each [[Counties of England|county of England]] three knights and a clerk were elected to serve as 'keepers of the pleas of the crown' (''custodes placitorum coronae'', from whence the word "coroner").<ref>"''Praeterea in quolibet comitatu eligantur tres milites et unus clericus custodes placitorum coronae.''" [https://archive.org/details/selectchartersot00stubuoft/page/254/mode/2up Stubbs, William, ed. (Oxford, 1921) ''Select Charters and Other Illustrations of English Constitutional History: From the Earliest Times to the Reign of Edward the First''. 9th ed., revised by H. W. C. Davis, p. 254]</ref><ref>{{Cite journal|last=Gross|first=Charles|date=1892|title=The Early History and Influence of the Office of Coroner|url=http://www.jstor.org/stable/2139446|journal=Political Science Quarterly|volume=7|issue=4|pages=656–672|doi=10.2307/2139446|jstor=2139446}}</ref> The duties with which the office was entrusted, and which were involved in 'keeping' the crown pleas—which included holding inquests upon dead bodies found within his jurisdiction, hearing the confessions and appeals of felons, and receiving [[Abjuration|abjurations of the realm]] made by felons who had taken sanctuary—were not new in 1194. Many of them had previously been performed by a range of local officials, such as the [[Justiciar|county justiciar]] (an office in place under Kings Henry I and Stephen), or the serjeant or baliff of the [[Hundred (county division)|hundred]].<ref> Hunnisett, R. F. (Cambridge, 1961), ''The Medieval Coroner'', pp. 1-2.</ref> For a few decades after the institution of the office of coroner, however, his precise duties were often unclear, and there remained a degree of power-sharing with these officials: the serjeants continued to perform valid inquests on dead bodies and sometimes hear appeals and confessions as late as 1225, despite a plea of the barons to King John in 1215 that 'no sheriff concern himself with pleas of the crown without the coroners'.<ref>Hunnisett, R. F. (Cambridge, 1961), ''The Medieval Coroner'', pp. 3-4</ref>

"Keeping the pleas" was an administrative task, while "holding the pleas" was a judicial one that was not assigned to the locally resident coroner but left to judges who traveled around the country holding [[assize court]]s. The role of [[custos rotulorum]] or keeper of the county records became an independent office, which after 1836 was held by the [[lord-lieutenant]] of each county.

The person who found a body from a death thought sudden or unnatural was required to raise the "[[hue and cry]]" and to notify the coroner.<ref name="duggan1"/> While coronial manuals written for sheriffs, bailiffs, justices of the peace and coroners were published in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, handbooks specifically written for coroners were distributed in England in the eighteenth century.<ref>{{cite journal|last1=Trabsky|first1=Marc|title=The Coronial Manual and the Bureaucratic Logic of the Coroner's Office|journal=International Journal of Law in Context|date=2016|volume=12|issue=2|pages=195–209|doi=10.1017/S1744552316000069|s2cid=148552738|url=http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S1744552316000069|access-date=2 January 2017}}</ref>

Coroners were introduced into [[Wales]] following its military conquest by [[Edward I of England]] in 1282 through the [[Statute of Rhuddlan]] in 1284.