When the office of Justice was first created, it was not intended that the Sheriff should be altogether superseded, but rather that the new officer should become an auxiliary agent for the preservation of the peace, to co-operate, as the Conservator had formerly done, with the Sheriff, who still retained the primary responsibility for the policing of his shire. It would appear that the supremacy of the royal officer in matters of police was generally recognised throughout the thirteenth century; for when, in 1285, Edward I. had occasion to rebuke the men of Kent for the prevalence of crime in their county, he made no mention of the Conservator, but ordered the inhabitants to afford in future every assistance in their power to the Sheriff, whose especial province it was (so the King declared) to keep the peace, not only by his own power, but also by means of the "posse comitatus," or power of the county.[41] On the other hand, even at this time, the Sheriff was not always given a free hand. In Warwickshire, for example, all arrangements for the preservation of the peace had first to be submitted to the Conservator for his approval;[42] it cannot, however, be supposed that the supervision exercised by the Conservators over the police administration was more than nominal, because, as a rule, they were great noblemen, holding a plurality of offices, and because the districts within their wardenship were usually too large to be effectively controlled by any one man. We learn, for instance, that in 1281 the Earl of Cornwall was Peace Warden for the counties of Middlesex, Essex, Herts, Cambs, Hunts, Norfolk, Suffolk, Kent, Surrey, Oxon, Beds, Bucks, Berks, Northants, Lincoln, and Rutland. When both population and trade increased, and when offenders and offences grew more varied and numerous, it became necessary to augment to a proportionate degree the staff of officers answerable to the King for the internal peace of the kingdom: it was no good making more Sheriffs, who had seldom proved a success in the past (whose misconduct, in fact, had led to the restricting of their power to do harm on more than one occasion), and so it came about that the Justice gradually superseded the Conservator, and in the end not only deprived the Sheriff of his judicial powers, but to a large extent took his place as director of the police also.