The mayor, and some of the inhabitants of the borough, are also magistrates and attend to police cases; while the town council looks after matters connected with sewers, lighting, paving, and cleansing the streets of the town. It has now also charge of educational affairs in many of the big towns, a committee of each county council being the educational authority in all other parts of the country. In London and large towns, where there is much police court business, there are special magistrates, trained lawyers, who attend to nothing else. In country places, for centuries, the manor court governed the manor; but gradually, and by Tudor times, most of the power of the manor court, or court leet as it was sometimes called, had passed into the hands of the Vestry. This consisted of the parish officers and rate-payers in the whole parish. It was called the vestry because its meeting-place was the vestry of the parish church, or even the church itself. [Illustration: _Police Officer and Jailer, early Nineteenth Century. A scene from "Oliver Twist" (Charles Dickens)_] The relief of the poor and the care of the highways provided the vestry with most of its business. The churchwardens had special care of the property of the church, but in Tudor times they were also charged with the relief of the poor. To help them in this work two overseers, at least, in each parish, were chosen every year. All the rate-payers were liable to serve in turn if elected, unless they could show a good reason for not serving. The elections took place about Lady Day. The vestry fixed what rates were to be made, and the overseers collected them. But the overseers had to be admitted to their office, and all rates allowed, by two justices of the peace, before they were legal.