The justices of the peace combined in their persons the characters, which have since been distinguished, of prosecutor, magistrate, detective, and often policeman. They raised the hue and cry, chased malefactors, searched houses, took prisoners. A justice might issue a warrant for the arrest, conduct the search himself, effect the capture, examine the accused with and without witnesses, extract a confession by alternately cajoling him as a friend and bullying him as a magistrate, commit him, and finally give damning evidence against him at his trial. Such was the conduct of Alderman Sir Thomas Aleyn in the case of Colonel Turner, tried and convicted for burglary in 1664.[459] The alderman examined Turner in the first place, and charged him point-blank with the offence. He then searched his house. In this he was unsuccessful, but the next day, owing to information received, tracked the colonel to a shop in the Minories, where he was found in possession of money suspected to be part of the stolen property.[460] Aleyn carried him to the owner of the stolen goods, upon whose engagement not to prosecute Turner confessed that he knew where the plunder was concealed, and by a further series of artifices induced him to surrender, through the agency of his wife, part of the missing jewelry. On this he committed both Colonel and Mrs. Turner to Newgate, and finally appeared at their trial to tell the whole story of his manœuvres in considerable detail and with the greatest composure.[461] Twenty years later, as Sir John Reresby was going to bed one night, he was roused by the Duke of Monmouth’s page to play a similar part. Mr. Thynne had been shot dead as he was driving in his coach along Pall Mall,[462] and Sir John was summoned to raise the hue and cry. He went at once to the house of the murdered man, issued warrants for the arrest of suspected persons, and proceeded to investigate the case. From a Swede who was brought before him he obtained the necessary information, and set out to pursue the culprits. After giving chase all night and searching several houses, he finally took the German officer who had been a principal in the murder in the house of a Swedish doctor in Leicester fields at six o’clock in the morning, and was able to boast in his diary that he had performed the somewhat perilous task of entering the room first and personally arresting the captain.[463] On another occasion Reresby deserved well of the government by his action in an episode connected with the Rye House Plot. Six Scotchmen had been arrested and examined in the North, and were being sent in custody to London by directions of one of the secretaries of state. Sir John however was led to suspect that the examination had not been thoroughly conducted and stopped the men at York. He examined them again and extorted confessions of considerable importance, which he was then able to forward to the secretary in company with the prisoners.[464]