We have mentioned that the creation of counties with their courts had in view to render justice more accessible to all. There were by 1642, in the colony six kinds of courts for the administration of justice.
The first of these was the magistrate's court. In 1642, an Act of the Assembly empowered a magistrate or justice to try a case involving not over twenty shillings in currency or 200 pounds of tobacco in value. In 1657/58, the amount could be as much as 1,000 pounds of tobacco if two magistrates were present but only 350 pounds if but one magistrate tried the case. The appeal from the magistrate's court was to the monthly court.
The next court was the parish court. In the seventeenth century only one of these courts existed in Virginia and that only for a short time. This was the court of Bristol Parish which most likely sat in the old Merchants Hope Church, still standing and still in use. The court was discontinued before the end of the seventeenth century, and its papers passed into the custody of the Henrico County Court. A parish court was in a way a vestigial body, a relic of days when the authority of the church was preeminent in both civil and ecclesiastical matters.
The third recourse for justice was to the monthly court, developed according to Stith, from the inferior court established in 1621. The Governor named the first justices of a new county, renamed justices in the old counties and filled every vacancy as it occurred. By Act of Assembly in 1628/29, the number of justices was to be eight, but later it was increased to ten. Four constituted a quorum. Three other members of the bench associated with one member of the quorum, who had a different status from the other justices, formed a sufficient number to make a valid court. The person whose name appeared at the head of the list of those constituting the quorum probably served as presiding justice; in his absence, the one named second and so on down the list. No pay was provided for the justices.
In 1642, the Assembly ordered that at least six monthly courts be held every year and the justices were empowered to determine when extra sessions were necessary. At the same time, another Act of Assembly provided that Henrico should hold court on the first day of every month; Charles City on the third; James City on the sixth; Isle of Wight on the ninth; Upper Norfolk (later Nansemond) on the twelfth; Elizabeth City on the eighteenth; Warwick on the twenty-first; York on the twenty-fourth; and Northampton, (formerly Accomack) on the twenty-eighth. The careful spacing between these courts enabled attorneys to appear in cases in different counties with no conflict of dates.