As soon as Cromwell's victory was complete he at once set to work to establish an orderly government, only to find that the old implements that had served his predecessors were now broken and well-nigh useless. In London, the Parliamentary stronghold, the re-establishment of order presented no insuperable difficulties, but in the rural districts the case was different. There the gentry, to which class both Justices of the Peace and grand jury-men belonged, were in the main royalists--whilst constables, tythingmen and petty jurymen were usually Roundheads. The resulting friction hampered the Protector's administration from the first; so that, much as he would have preferred to have made use of the constitutional machinery for peace-maintenance, he was often compelled to resort to novel expedients to police the new commonwealth. If it was denied to Oliver Cromwell to govern on constitutional lines, he held, nevertheless, the supreme command of a large and powerful army, such as no sovereign in England had previously had the control of, and inevitably therefore, he fell back upon the military forces that had served him so well in the past, hoping by their aid to restore, if not to improve upon, the state of security that had been wrecked by the war. An attempt to reform the county magistracy by the creation of a new commission of the peace in the year 1651 having ended in failure, the Protector had no choice but to hand over to the Army those police functions which no alternative organization was competent to undertake, and so for the first time in English history, the civil power was subordinated to a military dictatorship, and for a while the sword supplanted the baton. In the course of the year 1655 the whole of England and Wales was divided for administrative purposes into twelve police districts, viz.:-- i. Kent and Surrey. ii. Sussex, Hants, and Berks. iii. Gloucester, Wilts, Dorset, Somerset, Devon and Cornwall. iv. Oxford, Bucks, Herts, Norfolk, Suffolk, Essex and Cambs. v. London. vi. Westminster and Middlesex. vii. Lincoln, Notts, Derby, Warwick and Leicester. viii. Northants, Beds, Rutland and Hunts. ix. Herefordshire, Salop and N. Wales. x. Cheshire, Lancashire and Staffordshire. xi. Yorkshire, Durham, Cumberland, Westmoreland and Northumberland. xii. Monmouth and S. Wales.