in the British policy, a magistrate subordinate to the lord-mayor of a city or town corporate. The number of these magistrates is not limited, but is more or less, according to the magnitude of the place. In London there are 26, each having one of the wards of the city committed to his care. This office is for life, so that when one of them dies or resigns, a wardmote is called, who return two persons, one of whom the lord-mayor and aldermen choose to supply the vacancy. All the aldermen are justices of the peace, by a charter of 15 Geo. II. The aldermen of London, &c. are exempted from serving inferior offices; nor shall they be put upon assizes, or serve on juries, so long as they continue to be aldermen.

among our Saxon ancestors, was a degree of nobility answering to earl or count at present.

ALDERMAN was also used in the time of King Edgar for a judge or justice. Thus we meet with the titles of aldermannus totus Angliae, aldermannus regis, comitatus, civitatis, burgi, castelli, hundredi sive wapentachti, et novemdecimorum. According to Spelman, the aldermannus totus Angliae seems to have been the same officer who was afterwards styled capitulus justiciarius Angliae, or chief justice of England; the aldermannus regis seems to have been an occasional magistrate, answering to our justice of assize; and the aldermannus comitatus, a magistrate who held a middle rank between what was afterwards called the earl and the sheriff: he sat at the trial of causes with the bishop; the latter proceeding according to ecclesiastical law, and the former declaring and expounding the common law of the land.