<P> In England, although most agents of the Crown served "at the pleasure of the King," public officials were often granted a life tenure in their offices . Lesser lords were given the authority to bestow life tenure, which created an effective multi-tiered political patronage system where everyone from paymasters to judges to parish clerks enjoyed job security . Without some kind of effective control upon their conduct, this would engender intolerable injustice, as the King's ministers would be free to' vent their spleen' upon defenseless subjects with impunity . </P> <P> The English solution to this problem was to condition the holding of office upon good behavior, as enforced by the people through the writ of scire facias . Although it was technically a writ of the sovereign, this power concerned only the interests of his subjects; as the King exercised it only as parens patriae, he was bound by law to allow the use of it to any subject interested . Sir William Blackstone explains in his landmark treatise on the common law, Commentaries on the Laws of England: </P> <P> WHERE the crown hath unadvisedly granted any thing by letters patent, which ought not to be granted, or where the patentee hath done an act that amounts to a forfeiture of the grant, the remedy to repeal the patent is by writ of scire facias in chancery . This may be brought either on the part of the king, in order to resume the thing granted; or, if the grant be injurious to a subject, the king is bound of right to permit him (upon his petition) to use his royal name for repealing the patent in a scire facias . </P> <P> Violations of good behavior tenure at common law included "abuse of office, nonuse of office, and refusal to exercise an office," and the "oppression and tyrannical partiality of judges, justices, and other magistrates, in the administration and under the colour of their office, (which could be prosecuted) by information in the court of king's bench ." As the remedy of the writ of scire facias was available in every one of the colonies, its efficacy as a deterrent against abuse of judicial office was assumed rather than debated . </P>

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