In 1333[45] Edward informed the Commons that one of his principal reasons for calling them together was to take counsel with them concerning the means that should be adopted for preserving the peace, and to this end charged them to assist him to the best of their ability. The Commons readily accepted the invitation, and subsequently lost no opportunity of expressing the interest they took in the Justices of the Peace, whose office was the constant theme of suggestions and petitions, which, however, the King, who preferred to take his own line, usually disregarded. Of the several Statutes that were successively passed dealing with the office in question, the most important became law in 1360.[46] "In every county in England, there shall be assigned for the keeping of the peace, one lord, and with him three or four of the most worthy men in the county, together with some learned in the law, and they shall have power to restrain offenders, rioters, and other barretors, and to pursue, arrest, take, and chastise them, according to their trespass or offence; and to cause them to be arrested and duly punished according to the law and custom of the realm, and according to that which to them shall seem best to do by their discretions and good advisement; ... and to take of all them that be not of good fame, where they shall be found, sufficient surety and mainprise of their good behaviour toward the King and his people ... and also to hear and determine at the King's suit all manner of felonies and trespasses done in the same county according to the laws and customs aforesaid." Two years after the Statute above quoted had been enacted, the Justices were empowered to sit quarterly for the transaction of business,[47] and before long Quarter Sessions absorbed the major portion of the executive and administrative government of the county.[48] When Richard II. ascended the throne, the Justice of the Peace was thus firmly established as one of the permanent institutions of the kingdom. Since that time, the office has passed through many vicissitudes, experiencing many a rise and many a fall; but through all these changes, the Statute quoted above, which first defined his position, has always been referred to when any doubt arose as to the powers a Justice may exercise by virtue of his commission, and its meaning has been stretched and extended by degrees until, as Burn says, "there is scarcely any other Statute which hath received such a largeness of interpretation."[49]