Bringing justice and obedience to law in Placentia was a little easier than in the rest of Newfoundland, because it had civil government of some sort for most of its history.
Osborne could appoint Justices of the peace, could build stocks, and set out guidelines for his new justices. He could not however oversee the fishing admirals. In 1730, these gentlemen refused to obey the new governor, took the power of the judiciary system into their own hands, and imprisoned one man in the fort for disobeying their regulations. Incidents such as this helped lower the power of the new justice and made it difficult to carry out the new civil regulations.