By JOHN H. KENNEDY

Edward W. (Peter) Vincent Jr., a well-known Edgartown attorney and longtime community leader who has served on an array of town and Island boards, was ordered by a district court judge last week to serve 100 hours of community service and two years probation after he admitted to sufficient facts on larceny charges involving two real estate transactions he handled.

Mr. Vincent, 64, was charged last April with two counts of larceny over $250 and two more of fiduciary embezzlement after he failed to pass along proceeds from the two real estate sales totaling more than $600,000.

In Edgartown district court last Friday, Mr. Vincent admitted sufficient facts on the two larceny charges, and the cases were continued without a finding. He was also ordered to pay a $50 monthly probation fee and victim witness fees. The embezzlement charges were dismissed.

The Hon. H. Gregory Williams noted that while Mr. Vincent had “absolutely no criminal record,” he had undermined the public perception that lawyers are members of an “honorable profession.”

“This doesn’t help,” the judge said. “I don’t care if it’s one time, two times, a lifetime. It doesn’t matter. This does not help.”

Mr. Vincent was temporarily suspended from practicing law in July pending the results of the criminal cases against him. “Now we’ll go forward from here,” said bar counsel Constance V. Vecchione, whose office investigates lawyer misconduct in Massachusetts, on Monday.

Ms. Vecchione would not speculate on the sanction Mr. Vincent might receive because the state Supreme Judicial Court ultimately decides on lawyer discipline. But under enforcement rules, the charges are considered “serious crimes,” and a wide range of sanctions is still possible, all the way up to disbarment, or a minimum of eight years before reinstatement, she said.

Robert L. Jubinville, an attorney with offices in Milton, Falmouth and Holyoke who specializes in criminal law and represents Mr. Vincent, said his client hoped to be reinstated after five years.

The cases came to light in March when the Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals filed a lawsuit citing $190,000 in missing proceeds from the sale of one of its buildings.

A second lawsuit by First American Title Insurance Co. said that Mr. Vincent had represented the buyers and lender and acted as settlement agent for the purchase of a home on Robin’s Nest Road in Edgartown. It alleged that Mr. Vincent signed documents saying he had collected more than $400,000 and used it to pay the sellers’ mortgages, when in fact they had not been paid.

In April, about a week after he was arrested at his South Water street home and briefly jailed on the criminal charges, Mr. Vincent settled the civil claims by paying back the money. A property on Oyster Pond Road owned by a trust belonging to Mr. Vincent’s wife, Melissa Norton Vincent, was mortgaged for $700,000 to Michael Kidder, an Edgartown resident and friend of the Vincents.

Mr. Kidder told the Gazette that he had made the loan to help Mr. Vincent repay the money.

In court last Friday, Mr. Jubinville said that just as the criminal charges were filed in early April, Mr. Vincent was settling the civil lawsuits. “And you can see both of those were dismissed [in mid-April] upon full restitution,” he added.

He also noted that Mr. Vincent is a lifelong resident of the Island and has a record of extensive public service. Among other things he is chairman of the Edgartown conservation commission, the town appointee to the MVTV board of directors, secretary-treasurer of the Martha’s Vineyard Land Bank. He is former chairman of the board of directors of the Martha’s Vineyard Museum and a former board member of the Island Housing Trust.

The defense attorney said that the real estate transactions constituted “conduct that was aberrant in nature” for Mr. Vincent.

“He has certainly suffered a great deal for his actions,” Mr. Jubinville told the judge. “He admitted and takes responsibility for that brief episode.”

Judge Williams rejected the first version of the plea that had Mr. Vincent’s administrative — or unsupervised — probation lasting for one year rather than two. He also instructed Mr. Vincent that his public service to date, while admirable, is different from what he will need to do to comply with the terms of his probation.

“That’s community service,” the judge said. “That’s not serving on a board . . .”

Mr. Vincent and his wife waited in the first row of the courtroom’s spectator benches for several hours, watching a procession of other criminal and civil court cases before his hearing was conducted.

Outside the courthouse, after the court session, Mr. Vincent declined to comment.