The themes of Volume III are the government and parliamentary representation of Shropshire from their beginnings up to 1974. The long perspective allows the vicissi-tudes of successive institutions of county government to be examined thoroughly. For example, the rise of the justices of the peace is fully chronicled from their in-conspicuous origins under Edward I to the amplitude of their powers and duties in the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries. Shropshire's medieval government had a number of peculiarities, caused by the county's fron-tier position opposite the hostile Welsh. Accordingly its...