A HISTORY OF
POLICE IN ENGLAND

BY
Captain W. L. MELVILLE LEE
M.A. Oxon.

"Qu'on examine la cause de tous les reláchemens, on verra qu'elle vient de l'impunité des crimes et non pas de la modération des peines."—"L'Esprit des Lois-Bk. VI.," cap. xxii.

METHUEN & CO.
36 ESSEX STREET W.C.
LONDON
1901

DEDICATED
BY PERMISSION
TO
The Right Hon. LORD ALVERSTONE, G.C.M.G.
LORD CHIEF JUSTICE OF ENGLAND

CONTENTS

PREFACE

A title of convenient length, but one which shall exactly fit the subject-matter in hand, is a desideratum that seldom lies within an author's reach. The title selected for this book is open to the objection that, though consisting of as many as six words, it is, however, not quite explicit. The sense in which the word "police" is used is explained in the Introductory Chapter, but it here remains to be said that "England" must be taken to include the Principality of Wales, and, incidentally, that by the employment of the indefinite article an indication of the non-pretentious character of the work is intended.

References have been but sparingly given throughout, and, in answer to those critics who may possibly object that the array of authorities quoted is too meagre, the author can only plead in extenuation that opportunities for taking full advantage of good reference libraries are often denied to dwellers in camps and barracks. In general the plan adopted, or at least aimed at, has been to refer to all Acts of Parliament mentioned in the text, to acknowledge the source of verbatim quotations, and to give the authority relied on in support of any statement that may reasonably be held to verge on contentious, or even on debatable, ground.

In amplification of the Criminal Statistics tabulated on page 337, and in confirmation of the deductions there drawn, an encouraging fact may be mentioned. Although the Census Returns for 1901 shew that the population of England and Wales now exceeds thirty-two and a half millions, the Judicial Statistics recently published by the Home Office state that the number of persons brought to trial before the superior criminal courts during 1899 (the last year for which such statistics are available) was under eleven thousand, which is the lowest figure yet recorded.

Before concluding these prefatory remarks I must express my thanks to Lord Alverstone, who has been kind enough to find time to look through my proof-sheets and to allow me to dedicate the book to him; to H. W. Carless Davis, Esq., of All Souls' College, Oxford, who has so generously brought an expert knowledge of Anglo-Saxon history to bear upon my earlier chapters, and to those Chief Constables and other officials who have helped me with information and advice. In particular must I acknowledge my indebtedness to D. W. Rannie, Esq., of Oriel College, Oxford, for it is not too much to say that without his invaluable assistance and encouragement the following pages would never have appeared.

Inner Temple Library
August 1901

INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER

Introducing himself to his readers at the close of the eighteenth century, Dr Colquhoun wrote: "Police in this country may be considered as a new science." A full generation later, or to be more precise, in the year of Queen Victoria's accession, one of the leading magazines of the day found occasion to remark as follows: "The art of preventing offences is unbeaten ground—has hardly had a scientific teacher. On laws and general legislation, on the theory of crimes and punishments, on prison discipline, on the execution of offenders, and all the ulterior proceedings of delinquency, we have treatises without number; but on the institutions of police we have not a single work, except perhaps the matter-of-fact publication of the late Dr Colquhoun."[1] Since this paragraph was first printed a period of unparalleled literary activity has been witnessed, a period so prolific of book-making that the thirty-nine miles of shelves with which the main building of the British Museum is furnished have not sufficed to contain the ever-increasing accumulation of volumes that must be housed. It is true that in modern melodrama the detective has been found an almost indispensable property, nor has he been altogether neglected by the modern novelist; there are scores of blue-books containing evidence collected by Parliamentary Committees on the subject of police, and there is no lack of excellent manuals wherein the constable's duty is defined and explained; but at the dawn of the twentieth century, and in spite of the over-crowded state of our public libraries, we are still waiting for the advent of the teacher who will investigate and expound for us the police sciences.

In the following pages some attempt will be made to approach this strangely neglected subject, not indeed by the avenue that a scientist would use, but simply to trace in outline the story of English police, keeping in view the underlying principles that have directed, as well as those political and other considerations that have controlled, its evolution. Previous neglect is not however the only reason why the institution of police calls for historical treatment. On three other grounds in particular can the subject claim recognition; it deserves notice on account of its interest, on account of its antiquity, and on account of its importance.

The history of any national institution should not be totally devoid of interest; and amongst all our institutions it would be hard to find one so eminently characteristic of our race, both in its origin and in its development, or one so little modified by foreign influences, as the combination of arrangements for maintaining the peace, which we call "police." Police questions touch each one of us so intimately in our daily life, in our personal liberty and in our self-respect; the character of a nation is so profoundly influenced by the nature of the control to which it is subjected, that a due appreciation of the scope of police functions, a proper knowledge of the origin and extent of the powers and duties delegated to our constabulary forces, must possess a more than academic interest. Continental gendarmeries, framed for the most part on the Latin model, have been imposed—often ready-made—on various nationalities, without heed to their racial peculiarities, and careless of local tradition or circumstance. Our English police system, on the other hand, rests on foundations designed with the full approval of the people, we know not how many hundreds of years before the Norman conquest, and has been slowly moulded by the careful hand of experience, developing as a rule along the line of least resistance, now in advance of the general intelligence of the country, now lagging far behind, but always in the long run adjusting itself to the popular temper, always consistent with local self-government, and even at its worst, always English.

When a people emerges from the savage state its first care is the institution of some form of civil government. To this there is no exception, it is, in the words of Macaulay, "as universal as the practice of cookery." Martial law may co-exist with, and at times obscure, the civil machinery; but depending essentially, as it does, on local and temporary causes, must in the end inevitably be superseded, and whenever there arises a conflict between the two, the civil administration will invariably outstay the other by virtue of the inertia of its everlasting necessity. The penal department of any form of civil government must principally consist of two closely allied branches, the judiciary that interprets the law and exacts penalties for its infraction, and the police whose duty it is to enforce the legal code as laid down by the judges, it being in the nature of things that judicial functions cannot exist independently of police functions. Webster defines "police" as "the organized body of civil officers in a city, town or district, whose particular duties are the preservation of good order, the prevention and detection of crime, and the enforcement of the laws." Blackstone goes further when he says that "the public police and economy" must be considered as "the due regulation and domestic order of the kingdom, whereby the individuals of the State, like members of a well-governed family, are bound to conform to the rules of propriety, good neighbourhood and good manners, to be decent, industrious and inoffensive in their respective stations." As used in this book, the term "police" approximates to the definitions of both these authorities; in general merely a synonym for "constabulary," it also embraces all the various expedients employed by society to induce its members to acquiesce in the arrangements that tend to promote public security, including such measures as the compulsory education of children, the reformation of criminals, the observance of sanitary and hygienic conditions, the control of the liquor traffic, and the prevention of cruelty to children and animals. In this latter sense the object of police is not only to enforce compliance with the definite law of the land, but also to encourage a general recognition of the unwritten code of manners which makes for social progress and good citizenship.

Police, therefore, occupies a position of vital importance in the commonwealth; it is not too much to assert that the restraining influence exerted by a good police system is as necessary to the welfare of society as are self-imposed moral and physical restraints to the health of the individual. To the superior judges fall the duties of solving abstruse legal problems, and of determining the weightiest legal issues, but it is the police magistrate who is in daily contact with the criminal and with the aggrieved person, it is he who applies the law in the first instance, and to him the large majority of the people look for decisions upon which their liberty or their property may depend. "There is scarcely a conceivable case," said a London magistrate in 1834,[2] "arising particularly among the lower orders, which may not immediately or indirectly come under the notice of the Police Offices. It is most important, therefore, that every means should be adopted for upholding their reputation, and so extending and increasing their moral influence." Only second in importance to the magistracy comes the constabulary, "the primary constitutional force for the protection of individuals in the enjoyment of their legal rights,"[3] designed to stand between the powerful and the weak, to prevent oppression, disaster and crime, and to represent the cause of law and order at all times and in all places. In every court and alley the policeman stands for good citizenship, he is a reality that the most ignorant can comprehend, and upon his impartiality, efficiency, and intelligence depends the estimation in which the law is held by the masses.

There is no doubt that this country is well policed, and fortunately for us, there is equally no doubt that we are not over-policed. However numerous and outrageous may be the theoretical imperfections of our method for maintaining the peace, its practical superior has yet to be discovered. A police system does not only need to be efficient, it must be popular; that is to say, it must conduct its operations with so scrupulous a regard to the susceptibilities of the people that public sympathy and approval are not alienated. The problem of devising an engine of sufficient power and mechanical ability to compel subjection to a rigid standard of uniformity is not a matter of great difficulty, but there is little credit and no comfort in the indiscriminate tyranny of a Juggernaut that mangles its suicidal votaries. Government cannot be exercised without coercion, but the coercion employed ought to be reduced to the lowest possible limit consistent with safety, the ideal police force being the one which affords a maximum of protection at the cost of a minimum of interference with the lawful liberty of the subject. The real difficulty of the police problem is therefore to fix the limits where non-interference should end, and where coercion should begin. Mill enunciated the maxim that "all restraint qua restraint is an evil," and Bentham taught that only those preventive measures are sound the application of which involves no injury to the innocent; but there is one limit which cannot be disregarded if police is to be a blessing rather than a curse, and that is, that the plan adopted for the prevention of crime must never become more intolerable than the effect of the crime itself.

English police, however, is not the creation of any theorist nor the product of any speculative school, it is the child of centuries of conflict and experiment. Simple pecuniary compensation to the injured, sumptuary laws for the removal of temptation, torture in lieu of legal process, the payment of blood-money to informers, martial law enforced by puritan zealots, an amateur constabulary spasmodically supported by soldiery, the wholesale execution or banishment of offenders, these and many other expedients have all in their turn been grafted on the parent stock, tried, and found wanting. Are our present methods for the maintenance of the peace, for the suppression of crime, and for the encouragement of social virtue, perfect or nearly so? We can hardly suppose that posterity will answer these questions in the affirmative, but we can at least congratulate ourselves that the people of England, no longer living under a barbarous criminal code, enjoy to-day no small measure of security for their property and persons, without having to submit to a host of meddlesome restrictions and unreasonable formalities.

CHAPTER I
ANGLO-SAXON AND NORMAN POLICE

In the days before the attainment of English unity, the maintenance of the peace was the care of certain local institutions and bodies, the nature of which need not here be specified. The Anglo-Saxon period of our history being one of continual change and gradual development, the maintenance of the peace cannot be treated as a homogeneous whole before the various arrangements which secured it had been consolidated, and, for the first time reduced to a system, by Edgar. From this time onwards, however, the whole of the now united England may be said to have enjoyed a general guarantee for public order under the name of the "King's Peace," so called because the king guaranteed, or at least promised, to his subjects, a state of peace and security in return for the allegiance which he demanded from them.[4]

As "the highest maintainer of the peace," the king claimed an actual police supremacy, and was not content with a mere title. Moreover, by virtue of his position as Commander-in-Chief, he had the power of enforcing compliance with the rules of the peace, of which he was the chief guardian and exponent. An English king was not only the hereditary ruler of his people, he was their chosen chief magistrate also. The idea that the peace and orderliness of the kingdom intimately depended upon the personality of its ruler was so deeply rooted that, at his death, the "King's Peace" was held to have lapsed, and, on their accession, English sovereigns were wont to make proclamation afresh of "general peace orders," an example which was followed by William the Conqueror and his successors.[5] Referring to the death of Henry I., a chronicler writes: "The king died on the following day after St Andrew's mass day, in Normandy, then there was tribulation in the land, for every man that could, forthwith robbed another ... a good man he was, and there was great awe of him. No man durst misdo against another in his time. He made peace for man and beast."[6]

The King's Peace was of two kinds: there was the public peace of the realm, common to all men; and there was the private peace proper to the king himself, designed to safeguard his person, to uphold his dignity, and to secure his interests in every way. This royal peace, as it may be called, was especially concerned with certain places, seasons, and individuals; a special measure of protection was accordingly extended to the king and his nobles, to nuns, widows and clergy; whilst breaches of the peace which occurred on Coronation days, on Fast days, and the like, or which were committed in the vicinity of the royal palaces or upon the "King's Highway," received exemplary punishment from the royal judges. The public peace, on the other hand, afforded protection to all alike, to the exclusion only of the "unfrith," as those men were called whose crimes placed them without the pale of society, or who, holding no land, yet failed to enrol themselves in a "tything."

The police system which, under the king, maintained the peace was partly organised on the basis of land tenure. As in the Sudan to-day the Omdah is held responsible for the robberies committed in his district, and as in China the head of a family may legally be called upon to answer for the transgressions of his kinsfolk, so King Alfred looked to the thane[7] to produce the culprit or satisfy the claim. The plan adopted counted on the assistance of self-interest for its complete success; the thane being a landed proprietor and consequently unable to dispose of his property secretly, was security to the king for all the members of his household—if any of them broke the law, his over-lord the thane was careful to bring him to justice. Yet poverty brought no exemption to the landless freeman. He too had to find a guarantee for his good behaviour; if he was unable to attach himself to some thane, he was compelled to combine with others in the same position as himself, in order that their joint goods or aggregate credit should provide sufficient bail for the shortcomings of any member of the society: the penalty incurred by those who could not, or would not, thus find the required security was that they were forbidden to possess cattle, and were no longer under the protection of the law. Freemen, therefore, who had no freehold, banded themselves together into "tythings": a tything consisted of the inhabitants of ten homesteads, and the members elected one of their number to be their "headborough,"[8] who thus became their representative, and was responsible for the community.

The police organisation which we are considering is generally spoken of as the "Frankpledge system," frankpledge signifying the guarantee for peace maintenance demanded by the king from all free Englishmen, the essential properties of this responsibility being, that it should be local, and that it should be mutual. As we trace the history of police in England we shall see that these two qualities have survived through the successive stages of its evolution, and seem to be inseparable from our national conception of police functions.

The development of this system led to the institution of the Hundred,[9] which, as its name implies, was a group of ten tythings, under a responsible head. Hundreds as well as tythings had definite police functions to perform: when a crime was committed, information had to be at once given to the hundred-men and tythingmen of the district, and it was their duty to pursue, arrest, and bring to justice all peace-breakers. In the event of the non-appearance of a culprit at the court of justice to which he was summoned, his nine fellow-pledges were allowed one month in which to produce him, when, if he was not forthcoming, a fine was exacted, the liability falling, in the first place, on any property of the fugitive that might be available, in the second place, on the tything, and,—should both these sources prove insufficient to satisfy the claim,—on the Hundred.[10] Furthermore the headboroughs were required to purge themselves on oath, that they were not privy to the flight of the offender, and to swear that they would bring him to justice if possible. On the other hand, if any member of a tything was imprisoned for an offence, it was not customary to release him without the consent of his fellow-pledges, even though the fine had been paid.[11]

The practice of levying police fines from hundreds and tythings was an old one, and the limits of its application were clearly defined by Edgar: "and let every man so order that he have a surety, and let the surety then bring and hold him to every justice: and if anyone do wrong and run away, let the surety bear that which he ought to bear. But if it be a thief, and if he can get hold of him within twelve months, let him deliver him up to justice, and let be rendered unto him what he before has paid."[12]

The fines[13] that were exacted, called respectively fightwitt, grithbryce, and frithbrec, differed in character, and varied in amount. When several persons had participated in a common crime the fine was payable by all who had a hand in it; an infraction of the peace by seven associates constituted a riot, and if thirty-five persons were concerned, the breach amounted to a rebellion.

Distinct from the official police societies, created by the central government for the general security, there also existed certain private and voluntary associations called peace-guilds, entered into by the inhabitants of London and other towns for their own protection. Each guild consisted of members arranged in ten groups under ten headmen, one of whom acted as chief of the guild and treasurer, the remainder forming a kind of consulting committee to discuss and advise upon the various interests of the associations at their monthly gatherings. The object of these guilds was simply mutual assurance, and each member had to pay fourpence to a common fund, out of which subscribers were compensated for any loss they might sustain through theft, the treasurer being authorised further to contribute a sum not exceeding one shilling towards the apprehension of delinquents.

The military and police systems were closely allied: the national militia was organised in tythings and hundreds, and had a place to fill in the complete design of peace maintenance; its embodiment was not only resorted to in time of war, it was also liable to be called out by "summons of the array" if disturbances were feared, or even for the pursuit of a single fugitive from justice, but its members could not be called upon to serve beyond the limits of their respective shires except to repel invasion. Every free Englishman between the ages of fifteen and sixty (the clergy and infirm only excepted) was liable to be called upon to perform three public services[14] for the peace of the commonwealth; he was bound to assist in repelling invasions, in crushing rebellions, and in suppressing riots. The Sheriffs therefore who were responsible for the conservancy of the peace in the hundreds were enabled to muster the posse comitatus, or whole available police force of the shire, in case of emergency. All men went armed in those days, and since the members of a tything were obliged on the summons of a headborough to join in the pursuit, the cry of "Stop thief" was a formidable weapon in the hands of the local executive.

The Anglo-Saxon conception of police functions is thus clearly intelligible: the internal peace of the country was held by them to be of the first importance, and every free man had to bear his part in maintaining it; theoretically all men were policemen, and it was only for the sake of convenience that the headborough (or tythingman as he came to be more generally called) answered for those of his neighbours, on whom he had to rely in case of necessity. The word "peace" was used in its widest possible meaning, and a breach of the peace was understood to include all crimes, disorders, and even public nuisances. The principle on which the police system was based was primarily preventive. "The conservancy of the peace," says Lambard, "standeth in three things: that is to say, first, in foreseeing that nothing be done that tendeth either directly or by means to the breach of the peace; secondly, in quieting and pacifying those that are occupied in the breach of the peace; and thirdly, in punishing such as have already broken the peace." Our Saxon ancestors did not spend much time in "quieting" or "pacifying"—a lawbreaker was at war with the community and received no quarter—but in other respects Lambard's definition applies.

It was assumed that all but a small minority of the king's subjects were, to use a modern phrase—good citizens—and personally interested in keeping the king's peace inviolate; and that they might therefore safely be trusted to do everything in their power to preserve it, without any necessity arising for the use of coercion. Had all men been equally trustworthy in this respect no police measures would have been required and none devised; but there existed on the fringe of Anglo-Saxon society, as will occur with all societies, a certain number of delinquents perpetually on the look-out for opportunities of preying on their fellows, and the decennary system of police, as it may be called, was an attempt to hold in check this lawless minority without having to raise and permanently support an expensive or elaborate force for its suppression.

The design was to group all honest men into convenient companies, excluding therefrom and from the benefits that civil government could then confer, not only those men who were living in open defiance of the rules laid down by society for its protection, but those men also, whose reputation for honesty and fair dealing did not stand high enough in the estimation of their neighbours to induce a sufficient number to accept a share of responsibility for their defaults. By this means a fence was set up which divided with a fair degree of accuracy the law-breaking section of society from the law-abiding, the problem of peace-maintenance being much simplified thereby; it was not the declared enemy nor the recognised outcast that was feared; the former might be met with superior force, and the latter could be kept down like vermin, it was the danger of the wolf within the fold that alarmed our ancestors. The dread of secret crime is a deeply-seated national characteristic, and accounts for the savage treatment served out to witches and Egyptians (as gypsies used to be called) through the middle ages and almost up to our own times. Alfred the Great reflected this feeling when he drew a distinction between cutting down a neighbour's tree with an axe and burning it with fire, the latter offence being declared the more heinous of the two, not as one might suppose, because of the danger of the fire spreading to other trees, but because of the clandestine character of the deed, it being open to the offender if detected to declare the burning to be accidental, a plea that he could not advance if the axe was used.

A detected criminal was either fined, mutilated, or killed, but punishment, as we now understand the term, was seldom inflicted; that is to say, the dominant idea was neither to reform the culprit nor to deter others from following in his footsteps. If a man was killed it was either to satisfy the blood-feud or to remove him out of the way as a wild beast would be destroyed; if a man was mutilated by having his forefinger cut off, or branded with a red-hot iron on the brow, it was done, not so much to give him pain, as to make him less expert in his trade of thieving, and to put upon him an indelible mark by which all men should know that he was no longer a man to be trusted; if fines were levied, it was more with a view to the satisfaction of the recipients of the money or cattle or what not, than with the intention of causing discomfort or loss to the offender.

The distinction that we now make between remedial and legal justice was theoretically held by the Anglo-Saxons, that is to say, repayment in money or kind for a civil offence, and death or some less punishment for an offence against the criminal code was recognised in their penal administration; but at the same time fines to expiate criminal injuries were also allowed, both in the shape of amercements to the Crown and of compensation to the injured. Homicides rendered themselves liable to a triple penalty, which, it appears, was the same whether the killing was wilful or whether it was accidental—one third part, called "Maegbote," being assigned to the next-of-kin to compensate him for the death of a relative; a second portion, or "Manbote," reconciling the thane to the loss of his vassal; and the remaining share, known as "Wite," passing to the king on account of the violence done to his peace.[15] Only offences of a particularly heinous description were "bootless" (bote-less), as those crimes for which no compensation was permitted were called—of such a nature were murder when committed in a church, and the slaying of a man asleep.

The fines payable by the aggressor in cases where minor personal injuries had been inflicted were carefully graduated; thus, for a cut one inch long on the face, the sum of two shillings had to be paid; if the wound was underneath the hair only half that sum was exacted; but should the victim have suffered the loss of an ear, he was compensated to the extent of thirty shillings, and so on.[16]

It would offend our modern ideas of justice if a murderer were allowed to go free on payment of a sum of money to the relatives of his victim, still more so if a portion of the fine went to the Sovereign; but the practice is common amongst semi-civilised communities, to whom the complex and costly methods we now employ would be at once unintelligible and impracticable.

When it came to a question of proof, reliance was placed, in the absence of any surer method of discovering the truth, upon the oath of the interested party or parties; and just as the security of a thane was sufficient, where that of a landless freeman had to be supplemented by the contributions of his neighbours, so would the oath of a man of fortune and position prevail in cases where that of a common man had to be fortified by the corroborating oaths of his fellows.[17]

No matter what his station in life might be a man could always strengthen his case in this way: the more numerous the oath-helpers the greater the value of their evidence, and this held good even if it was clear that none of them were acquainted with the circumstances under consideration, because it was commonly believed that divine interference would prevent any considerable number of persons from perjuring themselves en bloc. The various ordeals, by combat, by fire, by water and many others, were conceived in the same spirit.

The principle of making every man responsible for his own actions, and to some extent answerable for the doings of his neighbour, has much to commend it, and its application would produce an almost ideal state of social security if its practical employment was not marred by two inherent weaknesses; in the first place it can only be applied with success to an agricultural community that is content to live always in the same spot, or whose migratory instincts the authorities are prepared to suppress; and, in the second place, such a system puts a premium both on the concealment of crime, and on the commission of perjury, since a tything had every inducement to forswear itself in order to escape the infliction of a fine or to save one of its members from punishment.

That the system above described was effectual in dealing with any crime that may have existed in England at the time cannot be doubted, and Gneist,[18] in his review of the period, says, "The insular position of the country, and the pre-eminently peaceable character of the later Anglo-Saxon times, developed the maintenance of the peace to such a perfection, that the chroniclers give an almost Arcadian picture of the peacefulness and security of the land in the time of Alfred the Great, and at some subsequent periods." Lord Coke[19] too declares that before the Conquest, whilst this ancient constitution remained entire, a man might ride through England with much money about him and run no risk of molestation, though armed with no other weapon than a white wand.[20]

If it is allowable to estimate the efficiency of a police system by the measure of the security enjoyed by those under its protection (nor is it easy to conceive of a fairer or more comprehensive test), it may then be asserted with confidence that the Anglo-Saxon model, crude as it undoubtedly was in many respects, compares not unfavourably with the various preventive agencies which the wisdom of succeeding generations has been able to produce. This comparative superiority survived, as we shall see, until the advent of the admirable system of police, not yet a century old, under which we have the good fortune to live to-day.

After the Conquest, the national police organisation was retained by the Normans, the headborough becoming the "præpositus," and the joint guarantee being known as "mutual security"; but the old forms which had weighed lightly on the people hitherto, were now harshly administered by the conquerors, whose officials, unaccustomed to the system, and indifferent to the susceptibilities of the native population, arbitrarily exacted the police fines, and did so in a manner that whilst proper investigation was rare, violence was common.

Of these officials the worst offender was the "vicecomes," the successor to the shire-reeve (i.e. sheriff), who under the Anglo-Saxon régime had controlled the police administration of the county.[21] The Vicecomes went on circuit each Michaelmas, to hold an ambulatory police court, called the Court of the Tourn, to deal with petty offences in the provinces, to bring capital crimes to the cognisance of the superior courts, and to make an annual revision of the frankpledge, i.e. an inspection of the police societies, with the object of ensuring that all the tythings were full. The visit of the Norman sheriff generally resolved itself into a demand for the payment of heavy fines, that might, or might not, be legally due, and which too often were heavier than the people could bear, for whereas the English shilling had been worth about fivepence, the Norman shilling was equivalent to twelve pence, and yet amercements were still calculated on the old scale without any allowance being made for the change in the value of the coin. Even in the rare cases where extortion was not practised the local character of the police administration, which had always been one of its most prominent features, was to a certain extent destroyed by the interference of the alien Tourn.

The object of the Vicecomes being to collect as many fines as possible, and to return to the king with some substantial evidence of his zeal, he was not over particular as to details, but fined a whole township or borough, and left the community to settle the incidence of the burden amongst the individuals composing it.

A representative and well-known example of the harsh control that then obtained, may be instanced; an enactment of William the Conqueror ordained that any hundred within whose boundaries a Norman was found murdered, should pay forty-six marks[22] unless the murderer was delivered up within five days; and the sheriffs threw the burden of proof of the victim's nationality on the hundred; in other words, the corpse was assumed to be Norman and had to be paid as such, unless the contrary was proved to their satisfaction; it is almost unnecessary to add that in nine cases out of ten, acceptable proof could not be produced in the specified period of time.

Another unpopular institution was that of Curfew Bell, introduced by the Conqueror ostensibly as a protection against fire, but in reality intended as a check upon the Saxons, to prevent them from meeting after dark, and discussing the shortcomings of their oppressors, or for other political purposes. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle gives a pathetic account of the severity and injustice meted out by the Normans. "A.D. 1124. This same year after St Andrew's Mass, and before Christmas, held Ralph Basset and the King's thanes a 'géwitenemote' in Leicestershire, at Huncothoe, and there hanged more thieves than ever were known before, that is, in a little while, four and forty men altogether: and despoiled six men of their eyes and mutilated them. Many true men said that there were several who suffered very unjustly; but our Lord God Almighty, who seeth and knoweth every secret, seeth also that the wretched people are oppressed with all unrighteousness. First they are bereaved of their property and then they are slain. Full heavy year was this." And again, "then was corn dear, and cheese, and butter, for there was none in the land: wretched men starved with hunger: some lived on alms who had been erewhile rich: some fled the country, never was there more misery, and never heathen acted worse than these. The earth bare no corn, you might as well have tilled the sea, for the land was all ruined by such deeds."

If we may accept this as a true version of the condition of England and the English, it is abundantly clear that the system of police by decennary societies was inevitably doomed to failure after the Conquest. The two nations, who had little in common, who were in fact animated by bitter racial animosity, could not combine for any common purpose; and it is obvious that the "mutual security" plan can only be successful amongst a community bound together by the ties of family or friendship.

The sheriff's court never won the confidence of the people, and gradually certain neighbourhoods, or, more correctly speaking, certain lords more favoured than the rest, obtained the royal consent to the substitution of local police courts, under a steward nominated by the Lord of the Manor. These "courts of the leet" not only had the power to "inquire of and punish all things that may hurt or grieve the people in general, in their health, quiet, and welfare," but were authorised to abate or remove public nuisances.[23]

Courts Leet became so popular, and proved so successful, that we soon find them established, not merely in a few privileged places, but all over the country; before long the Sheriff's Tourn became the exception and the Court Leet the rule, the struggle for survival only coming to an end when the sheriff altogether ceased to trouble the village communities with his annual visit of inspection.

The rise of the Court Leet marks an important stage in the development of English police. The decennary system could only be of value as long as its strictly local character could be preserved, and the power of interference possessed by the Vicecomes was foreign to the national idea of police administration. Although the creation of the sheriff's court must only be considered as an ill-advised and novel attempt at centralisation, and its discontinuance a return to first principles, it was not to be expected that the Tourn, when once established, would be allowed to disappear until there was an alternative institution ready and able to take its place. On this account the appearance of the Court Leet was well timed, for the moment and indispensable for the future, to act as a link between ancient principles and modern practice.

When Henry II. returned from the Continent in 1170 he found it necessary to investigate the complaints that were persistently made against the sheriffs, who were said to have been guilty of oppression and extortion. The charges were well founded, and the result of his inquiry was that several were dismissed from their office, whilst a few years later the Assize of Northampton considerably reduced the authority of the remainder. In the years that follow we find evidence, over and over again, of the abuse of their power by the sheriffs, whose importance steadily declined in consequence; the decay of their office was gradual at first, but proceeded more rapidly, as we shall see, after the institution of "Conservators of the Peace" by Richard I. At the Council of Northampton provision was also made for holding assizes in the different counties of England. For this purpose the kingdom was divided into six circuits, and three judges, subsequently known under the title of "justices itinerant," were assigned to each circuit.

Notwithstanding the recent friction between the two nationalities (now happily on the wane), and all the evils which had accompanied it, hundreds and tythings continued to perform their executive functions as best they could, and not altogether without success; but the levying of amercements, which was essential to the system, was so liable to abuse at the hands of royal officers, and the fines grew so out of proportion to the offences for which they were exacted, that advantage was very properly taken of King John's humiliation in 1215 to insist that they should only be enforced in future "on oath being made by the worthy men of the district," and steps were taken to confine amercements to their proper limits. By Magna Carta police fines were henceforward to correspond in amount to the magnitude of the crime for which they were incurred, and might not be enforced except with beneficium competentiæ i.e. every man had a right to his bare living, the merchant to his merchandise, and the villein to his agricultural implements.[24]

In the following reign an attempt was made to put fresh life into the police administration that for more than a hundred years had been deteriorating; it was therefore ordained[25] that a view of frankpledge should be made every Michaelmas, and tything be kept as in the old days; the effort, however, was not a success, and before long the prestige of the institution was irrevocably damaged by the relief granted to the Baronage and Clergy by the Statute of Marlborough, which excused them from attendance at the Court, unless they received special orders to be present. In any case a return to the past was impossible, the country had outgrown the method of control that had once been efficacious, and altered conditions had completed the wreck of the decennary system that racial differences had commenced. From this time onwards, when frankpledge is spoken of, it must be understood to mean only the general principle that was the basis of the indigenous system; that is to say, a recognition of the bounden responsibility of every citizen to take his part in the duty of maintaining peace in the state; or, in other words, the liability that all men share to render police services when called upon to do so.

CHAPTER II
WATCH AND WARD

The intimate bond which linked together the Kingly Office and the general police organisation invested the latter with a certain concrete dignity that was beneficial. The people were impressed by the fact that police was the special province of the highest personage in the land, at a time when they were incapable of appreciating the abstract importance of the subject. The responsibility for peace-maintenance was in this way definitely fixed on the one individual, who besides being best able to enforce compliance with his commands, had also the greatest stake in the continued preservation of the public peace; a kingdom without order being a kingdom in name only. This was so well recognised that, overbearing or indifferent as too many of our English sovereigns proved themselves, not one of them ever repudiated this responsibility, or failed to lay claim to be considered as the champion of order.

The benefits that resulted from this royal pre-eminence were, it must be confessed, often counter-balanced and sometimes outweighed by corresponding disadvantages—good kings were rare—the hand of a king who was inclined to oppress his people became the more grievous by reason of his police supremacy—whilst under a weak king the burden of oppression grew intolerable on account of the numberless oppressors who immediately arose to take advantage of his supineness. The reign of Henry III., externally brilliant, internally miserable, is a case in point; for fifty-six long years peace gave place to chaos—the king robbed, and the barons plundered, whenever and whomsoever they could—shoals of needy foreigners invaded England—the clergy swindled their congregations first on one pretext then on another, and remitted the bulk of their spoil to the pope's nominees in far-off Italy—"crimes," we are told, "escaped with impunity because the ministers themselves were in confederacy with the robbers." Men had cause to be dissatisfied and an excuse for taking the law into their own hands, with the result that violence from above was answered by violence from below. The lawlessness which followed took several forms and infected all classes of the community—the half-starved peasantry, hitherto patient, now scoured the country, and regained by force a portion of the spoil amassed at their expense by foreigners and others who had traded on the ignorant superstitions of the native English. The outbreak which at first was directed against the Italian clergy soon degenerated into a general campaign of license, until, as we learn, "men were never secure in their houses, and whole villages were often plundered by bands of robbers."[26] The king adopted a capricious policy of repression, but his action, never vigorous, came too late to be effectual, and failed to pacify the disturbed districts.

The obvious, if still unconfessed, inability of Henry III. to cope with the disorders which infested the realm served as a pretext to the barons to usurp the royal functions of peace-maintenance, and keeping the king a virtual prisoner in their hands, they caused the so-called Mad Parliament holden at Oxford in 1258 to create a Committee of Reform armed with authority to formulate new regulations for the preservation of the peace. This committee appointed that four knights should be chosen by the freeholders of each county with power to inquire into and present to Parliament the police shortcomings of their respective shires, enacting as a further safeguard that the freeholders concerned should annually elect a new sheriff, and that the sheriff should be called upon to render to Parliament an account of his stewardship on relinquishing office.

These regulations, which formed part of the "Provisions of Oxford," were well conceived, and for the moment proved extremely popular. But they left little permanent impress on the future life of the nation because they were fraudulently put forth by the barons, who, as it soon appeared, were only scheming to win the populace over to their side in the struggle for power, and who were far more anxious for their own aggrandisement than they were for any object connected with the mitigation of the troubles that afflicted the people. The whole attitude of the nobles was so lawless, supporting, as they did, bands of adherents to prey on each other's lands and on the chattels of the defenceless commonalty, that no lasting good could be expected to follow upon their most specious actions, their very gifts were presumptive evidence of premeditated guilt, and their evil disposition was a matter of common knowledge. "Knights and Esquires," says the Dictum of Kenilworth,[27] "who were robbers, if they have no land, shall pay the half of their goods, and find sufficient security to keep henceforth the peace of the kingdom." Well might Hume exclaim, "Such were the manners of the times!"

The practical disappearance of the decennary societies, followed by the failure of the Provisions of Oxford to restore peace to the State, necessitated the creation of some more effectual agency for the re-establishment of good order. Such a substitute was fortunately provided by the famous Statute of Winchester, which was passed in the thirteenth year of Edward I., of whom it has been said that he did more for the preservation of the peace in the first thirteen years of his reign than was collectively accomplished by the thirteen monarchs next succeeding.

This Winchester statute is especially important to our inquiry, because it sums up and gives permanency to those expedients introduced in former reigns, which were considered worthy of retention for the protection of society; and because it presents to us a complete picture of that police system of the middle ages which continued with but little alteration for more than five hundred years, and which even now, though greatly changed in its outward appearance, is still the foundation upon which our present police structure is built.

The Statute of Winchester is not here presented as a brand-new system of police extemporised in the year 1285, but rather as the definite product of a long series of experiments all tending in the same direction. Legislation hastily conceived seldom survives; and however the case may stand in other lands, or in other departments of government, every police measure which has won a permanent place in English history has had a gradual growth, now retarded, now accelerated—here something removed as old fallacies were exposed, there something added as new knowledge was acquired. A few well-known and representative examples of the process at this stage of its development may be enumerated.

First in importance comes the "Assize of Clarendon," issued in 1166, which describes how notorious and reputed felons are to be 'presented' to the Courts of the Justices or to the sheriffs, which commands one sheriff to assist another in the pursuit and capture of fugitives, and which deals with the restrictions to be enforced against the entertainers of strangers and the harbourers of vagabonds. The Assize of Northampton, which was issued three years after the rebellion of 1173, prescribes severer punishments, provides for the registration of outlaws, and reduces the powers of sheriffs. A writ for the conservation of the peace issued in 1233 is referred to by Dr Stubbs in these words: "This is a valuable illustration of the permanence of the old English regulations for the security of peace in the country.... The principle thus expanded is here developed into a separate system of Watch and Ward, which a few years later is brought into conjunction with the Assize of Arms, and completed by Edward I. in the Statute of Winchester, and by the assignment of Justices of the Peace under Edward III." Finally, Writs for enforcing Watch and Ward and the Assize of Arms, issued in 1252 and in 1253, may be instanced as the immediate precursors of the Statute of Winchester.

Few legislative measures have stood so long or so prominently as this Act of 1285. Its vitality has been remarkable; we find it periodically referred to, and its provisions re-enforced whenever an increase of lawlessness afflicted the State, as the universal and proper remedy to apply to all distempers of the sort; we find it cited as the standard authority on Watch and Ward, even in the eighteenth century, when two Acts of Parliament[28] quote it to prove that the protection of a district is a constitutional duty compulsorily incumbent on its inhabitants; nor was it until 1793, in which year a Committee of the House of Commons appointed to inquire into the state of the nightly watch of the city of Westminster stated that "the Statute of Winchester being very obsolete is a very improper regulation," that people began to talk of it as old-fashioned.

After stating that, "robberies, murders, burnings and thefts, be more often used than heretofore," the statute confirms the ancient responsibility of the hundred for offences committed within its boundaries, "so that the whole hundred, where the robbery shall be done, with the franchises being within the precinct of the same hundred, shall be answerable for the robberies," and ordains that "cries shall be made in all counties, markets, hundreds, fairs and all other places, where great resort of people is, so that none shall excuse himself by ignorance."

Another paragraph defines the law with regard to "Watch and Ward"—the gates of walled towns are to be shut between sunset and daybreak, men are forbidden to live in the suburbs, except under the guarantee of a responsible householder, and it is enacted that in every city "from the day of the Ascension until the day of St Michael," a watch of six men is to be stationed at each gate: every borough has to provide a watch of twelve persons, whilst the number of watchmen insisted upon by law for the protection of the smaller towns, varies from four to six, according to the number of inhabitants in each. Strangers must not pass the gates during the hours of darkness, any attempting to do so are to be arrested by the Watch, and detained until morning, when, "if they find cause of suspicion, they shall forthwith deliver him to the sheriff," but if no such cause is found, "he shall go quit." The affiliated institutions "Hue and Cry" and the "Assize of Arms" are next considered. Both had previously existed in some form or other, but had been allowed to fall into disuse, so it is now laid down afresh that in case strangers do not obey the arrest of the Watch, "hue and cry shall be levied upon them, and such as keep the watch shall follow with hue and cry, with all the towns near." Sheriffs are reminded that it is their duty to follow the cry with the country-side, in pursuit of law-breakers: and that if they are neglectful, a report will be made by the constables to the judges, who will inform the king of the default.

The clauses relating to the Assize of Arms command every male between the ages of fifteen and sixty to have harness in his house, "for to keep the peace"; the nature of the arms to be provided depends upon the man's rank, and on the value of his property, and varies from "an hauberke, an helme of iron, a sword, a knife and a horse" for a knight, down to bows and arrows, which were the only weapons that the poorest class had to furnish. In each hundred two constables were appointed to make a half-yearly inspection of arms, and "such defaults as they may find" shall be notified through the judges to the king, and the king "shall find remedy therein."

The Assize of Arms was something more than a mere police regulation. Sheriffs and constables were royal officers, and the powers entrusted to them, which included the liberty to make domiciliary visits for the purpose of viewing the armour, together with the general supervision they exercised over an armed population, placed at the king's disposal a force that could on occasion be employed for political ends unconnected with the professed motive of the Assize, that of peace maintenance.

The only other part of the statute that need now be noticed deals with the regulating of highways: it is directed that roads leading from one market town to another "shall be enlarged so that there be neither dyke, tree nor bush whereby a man may lurk to do hurt, within two hundred foot on the one side and two hundred foot on the other side of the way": this, however, is not to apply to oaks or great trees, but if a park march with the roadway, the lord must "minish his park the space of two hundred foot from the highways, as before is said, or that he make such a wall, dyke or hedge, that offenders may not pass, nor return to do evil."

The declared object of the Statute of Winchester, was, in the words of the preamble, "for to abate the power of felons," and the highway clause is said to have been designed against the depredations of bands of robbers called Drawlatches and Roberdsmen, who, concealing themselves in the thick undergrowth by the roadside, had been a terror to travellers for the last hundred years or more.

If the law could have been enforced in this particular, so as to leave a clear two hundred feet both sides of the road, the result would have been admirable, but the regulation was framed on too ambitious a scale, with the result that it was generally disregarded, or at the best only partially carried out, and it is extremely unlikely that many lords minished their parks as they were ordered.

It was, of course, extremely difficult to give effect to the new police system throughout England; conditions and customs varied in different districts; before the introduction of newspapers ideas spread but slowly; and people did not readily comprehend strange institutions, nor accept them, when understood, without protest. This was especially the case in the north-westerly provinces; the men of Cheshire, amongst others, were dissatisfied with the new arrangements, and petitioned the king to relieve them of the burden of maintaining so many peace officers; but Edward was not to be influenced against his judgment, by these entreaties, and answered in an abrupt manner that he would not change the law, nor revoke his statutes. The men of Shropshire and Westmoreland also, who, as it appears, had successfully evaded their obligations under the decennary system, now took it upon themselves to ignore the provisions of the Statute of Winchester; with the result that some fifteen years later, on it being brought to his notice that the regulations which he had laid down were not being properly carried out, the king ordained that "the same statute be sent again into every county to be read and proclaimed four times a year, and kept in every particular as strictly as the great charters, upon pain of incurring the penalties therein limited."

It is worthy of notice, that as early as the thirteenth century, the police of the capital city was placed on a different footing from that of the rest of the kingdom, a distinction which, to some extent, has been retained until the present day. The Statute of Winchester did not apply to London, but in its stead a local Act[29] was passed in the same year, having special reference to the government of the metropolis. From this and from other sources, a comprehensive reconstruction might be made of the police arrangements that controlled London at the time of Edward I., the principal features of which may here be briefly indicated.

The city was divided into twenty-four wards, and in each ward there were six watchmen supervised by an alderman, who was expected to acquaint himself with the personal characters of the residents of his ward, and was ordered to secure any malefactors that he might find; the aldermen, therefore, were executive as well as judicial officers, and might have to adjudicate in the morning upon the evidence they themselves had collected overnight.

In addition to the ward-watchmen there was a separate force called the "marching watch" (the germ of the patrols of later days), whose duty it was to exercise a general vigilance for the maintenance of peace in the city, and to give their assistance to the stationary watchmen as occasion demanded. Foreigners, who were not freemen of the city, might not be innkeepers, and lepers were forbidden to leave their houses under the severest penalties; regulations were made against the rearing of oxen or swine within the city walls, and against the establishment of schools of arms where fencing with the buckler was taught. By day the gates were open, but even then care was taken to exclude undesirable visitors, for two sergeants "skillful men and fluent of speech" were placed at each gate to scrutinise all those who passed in or out.

One hour after sunset, curfew was rung simultaneously from the Church of St Martin's Le Grand and in the other parishes, the gates were then shut, taverns were closed, and men might not go about the streets armed till the morning, "unless he be a great man, or other lawful person of good repute, or their certain messengers, having their warrants to go from one to another with lanthorn in hand."

The peace officers were authorised to arrest anyone who broke these regulations, and to bring him the following day before the Warden, Mayor, or Aldermen of the city, for punishment; officers were secured against all penalties for acts done in the execution of their office, and no complaints were permitted to be made against them with regard to the imprisonment or punishment of offenders, "unless it be that an officer should do so of open malice, and for his own revenge, or for the revenge of another that maliciously procureth the same, and not for the keeping of the peace."

It will be observed that the intention both of the Statute of Winchester and of these regulations for the government of London is in the main a preventive one, that whilst every care is taken to place obstructions in the way of transgressors, and every caution exercised to render a criminal career difficult, we hear but little of the penalties that follow upon detection. This tendency is in marked contrast to the custom of subsequent legislation, which increasingly insisted on the infliction of punishment as the only effectual means of diminishing crime. The earliest English police known to us, relied almost entirely, as has already been pointed out, on the efficacy of the preventive principle. The system inaugurated by the Statute of Winchester which took the place of the ancient institutions, may be considered as the connecting link between the two extreme conceptions of police functions, between the policy of prevention and the policy of repression. Watch and Ward was the civil equivalent of the sentry who, in time of war is posted outside the camp, and whose functions are purely preventive, whilst Hue and Cry was partly preventive and partly repressive. Although the main object of the latter institution was the apprehension of offenders, quite half its value depended on the effect produced on the minds of intending criminals by the fear that any illegal act on their part might raise the whole county in arms against them, and by the knowledge that escape was well-nigh impossible.

The law against vagrancy was conceived in the same spirit, the Statute in question requiring Bailiffs of towns to make enquiry every week of all persons lodging in the suburbs, in order that neither vagrants, nor "people against the peace" might find shelter, a regulation designed on the lines of the universal police maxim "Allow the thief no rest." The custom was to make the householder responsible for the deeds of those whom he harboured, and to punish the indiscriminate giver of alms.[30]

This method was not only more humane, but it also proved more effectual than the everlasting imprisonment, whipping, and branding of vagrants, that Tudor legislation enjoined.

Neglect of the Hue and Cry, failure to make "fresh and quick pursuit," and sometimes want of success when pursuit was duly made, were visited by the imposition of fines upon the neglectful or unfortunate inhabitants as the case might be: many examples of this are on record, e.g. (Exchequer Rolls, vol. i. sect. 14).

"Item. The citizens of Lincoln fined fifty marks for suffering a robber to escape, etc.: and the men of Colchester for the like.

Item. (Sussex: 16 Edward I.) Homicide committed in a fray: the offender who had stabbed his adversary, a butcher, takes refuge in the Church of Crawley and abjures the realm: townships of Crawley and Hurst amerced because they did not make suit.

Item. A quarrel in an alehouse at Hodley, in which a man is struck on the head and dies four days afterwards. The offender escapes, and all the persons present in the alehouse amerced, because they did not secure him."[31]

When Hue and Cry had been raised against a fugitive, every man had to lay aside his work and join in the pursuit to the best of his ability, anyone failing to do so, or withdrawing himself without permission, was considered to have taken the part of the person who was fleeing from justice, and the two might be hunted down together, and when apprehended, delivered to the Sheriffs, "not to be set at liberty, but by the King, or by his chief justice."[32] Once levied, Hue and Cry recognised no boundaries, the pursuit spread from hundred to hundred, and from county to county, "till they come to the seaside," or until the man surrendered himself. "The life of Hue and Cry," says Coke, "is fresh suit," and in order that valuable time should not be lost in preliminary enquiries, no liability for malfeasance attached to those who followed the chase; if therefore an innocent man was hunted down, he had no remedy against his pursuers, but, to obtain satisfaction, had first to discover the author of the false report. If the fugitive sought refuge in a house, and refused to open the door, the peace officer might break it open, and in the event of a man grievously wounding another, it was held that killing was no murder, provided that Hue and Cry had been duly levied, and provided also, that the offender could not otherwise be taken.[33]

The best, and as a rule, the only practicable chance of escape open to the pursued, lay in the possibility of his reaching a sanctuary before the hunters came up with him. If a man took sanctuary, his life was safe, but he remained a close prisoner within the precincts of the asylum in which he had found refuge until he received the King's pardon, or until he purchased his freedom by "abjuring the realm," an undertaking which entailed upon him perpetual banishment, besides the forfeiture of all his belongings.

These sacred asylums, within whose precincts the law was powerless, were often made use of in a manner never contemplated when the privilege of affording protection to fugitives was first extended to them. If an offender was unpopular his chance of reaching sanctuary was very remote, it was easy enough to head him off, or to surround the place in such a manner that approach meant certain capture; on the other hand, if the country folk were disposed to favour the escape of the hunted man, there was little difficulty in managing the pursuit in such a way that he should reach his goal in safety. Hue and Cry was therefore not as effectual as it ought to have been, especially against men who for one reason or another enjoyed the goodwill of their neighbours, and its efficacy was still further reduced by the freedom with which Charters of Pardon were granted by the King to powerful nobles and others, who were prepared to pay for the concession.[34]

In addition to the Statute of Winchester upon which his reputation as a police reformer mainly rests, Edward I. was the author of other valuable measures designed to produce and conserve a state of public tranquillity. Under former rulers Sheriffs had been allowed a dangerous amount of freedom, which they had abused for their own advantage, both by improperly admitting to bail offenders who ought not to have been permitted to remain at large, and by exacting bail from others on trivial or trumped-up charges. This practice Edward combated, and forbade sheriffs, under severe penalties, to hold to bail any who were not strictly bailable. Mindful also of the disturbances wrought by idle rumour, he set himself to put a stop to the dissemination of scandal by irresponsible tale-bearers, and decreed that henceforth those "who be so hardy as to tell or publish any false news or tales whereby discord may arise" should be "taken and kept in prison until he is brought into the Court which was the first author of the tale."[35]

Of greater practical value, however, were his enactments dealing with Coroners[36] (so-called because they were principally concerned with pleas of the Crown). With the intention that these most important officers should stand high in the estimation of all men, Edward, in 1275, ordained that no one under the degree of knight should be chosen to the office, and in the year following he defined the powers of Coroners, setting forth what steps they were called upon to take for the better preservation of the peace, and in what manner their functions ought to be carried out. It was enacted[37] that, in the event of any person meeting with an unnatural or violent death, the township concerned had to immediately give notice to the nearest Coroner, who was thereupon bound to issue a precept to the constables of the neighbouring vills, requiring them to cause to appear before him a competent number of good and lawful men in order that the matter might forthwith be investigated at the place where the corpse had been found. If, upon inquiry, and upon the oath of the jurymen, it should appear that foul play had been the cause of death, the Coroner was, by the same statute, further instructed to use his best endeavour to discover the guilty party, and if the murderer was known, the Coroner was authorised to deliver him to the Sheriff and to proceed to his house, and there to cause a valuation of all his belongings to be made, the amount thereof being notified and secured to the township or hundred, which was then answerable to the judges for any amercement that might subsequently be imposed. Nor was the business of holding inquisitions in cases of sudden death the only duty of the Coroner; he was also expected to make enquiry, in like manner, of every reported case of housebreaking, and was required to keep a watchful eye on any of the King's subjects who seemed to live riotously, haunting taverns and the like, and to attach them by four or more pledges on the not unreasonable suspicion that the funds which supported such extravagances proceeded either from some illegal practice, or from a secret store of treasure trove. Though answerable to the King, Coroners were chosen by the county, and sworn by the sheriff; any holder of the office concealing felonies, or failing in his duty through favour to the misdoers, was liable to be fined at the King's pleasure and to be imprisoned for a year.

Much of the good work done for the internal peace of the kingdom by Edward I. was undone by his successor, whose predilection for evil counsellors led to much Baronial resistance, and threw the country back into that state of lawlessness from which it had been delivered by the wise police regulations of the Statute of Winchester.

Organised bands of robbers harried the country, setting at defiance sheriffs, judges, and even the King himself, who was stopped near Norwich by a freebooting knight called Sir Gosseline Denville, and stripped of his money and other valuables. With such an example of reckless disregard of the King's peace before them, it is not wonderful that the lower orders of the people ignored the restrictions that the law imposed; the weak had no protectors, so the hand that was strong enough to take and to hold fast was seldom empty. These predatory rovers waxed so powerful, and grew so numerous as the result of the impunity they enjoyed, that nothing short of a regular military campaign sufficed to free the land from their ravages. The end of this same Denville illustrates the extensive nature of these operations. After years spent in successful plundering, and after an unprecedented reward had been put on his head, he was at length brought to bay by the sheriff of Yorkshire, who, with five hundred men surrounded the inn where the robber slept, and in the course of the desperate fight which followed between the posse comitatus of the peace officer and the banditti, it is said that two hundred men were killed before the knight and his brother were captured.[38]

Indolent and incapable as Edward II. proved, his police administration was not altogether without merit, and an important Statute passed in the eighteenth year of his reign is worthy of more than passing notice. In order that the value of this Act may be fully appreciated a few words of preliminary explanation are necessary. One of the principal functions of the Norman Sheriff at his annual visit of inspection or Tourn, was to inform himself (by making inquiry from the chief frankpledges) as to the nature and extent of the crime existing in his district, and to make a report thereof to the King, if, in his opinion, any particular offence or class of offences was unduly prevalent. The exercise of this function, which was known as "presentment," to some extent secured the trial and punishment of criminals, by bringing their offences to the knowledge of the central authority, and the officer who made the report may, in a sense, be considered to have acted the part of a public prosecutor. When the Court Leet took the place of the Sheriff's Tourn this function was partially lost, and the object of the Statute in question was to increase the value of the Court Leet as a preventive agency, by reaffirming and clearly defining its responsibility with regard to the important duty of presentment, which it had inherited along with the other functions of the Sheriff's Tourn. To this end Courts Leet were now (1325) ordered to certify that all the chief-pledges were present at the sitting of the Court to which they were summoned, and that they duly brought to the notice of the same Court all offences committed within their knowledge. For their guidance a list of the matters which concerned them, arranged under thirty-four headings, was added, of which the most important were the following:—

• (a) Of damages done to walls, houses, ditches and hedges set up or beaten down to annoyance.
• (b) Of Bounds withdrawn or taken away.
• (c) Of breakers of houses.
• (d) Of petty larrons, and their receivers (i.e. harbourers).
• (e) Of such as go messages for thieves.
• (f) Of cries levied and not pursued.
• (g) Of bloodshed and of frays made.
• (h) Of escape of thieves and felons.
• (i) Of clippers and forgers of money.
• (j) Of persons outlawed returned, not having the King's warrant.
• (k) Of women ravished not presented before the Coroner.
• (l) Of false balances, measures, and weights.
• (m) Of such as continually haunt taverns, and no man knoweth whereon they do live.
• (n) Of such as sleep by day, and watch by night, and eat and drink well, and have nothing.
• (o) Of persons imprisoned and let go without mainprize.
• (p) Of the Assize of Ale and Bread broken.

A glance at the subjects enumerated in this schedule is sufficient to illustrate the comprehensive nature of the part assigned to Courts Leet in the general scheme of peace maintenance, and to show how in addition to their primary duty of bringing to light all breaches of the peace, these local police courts were furthermore charged with the supervision of everything that tends to promote good order and good citizenship, such as, for example, the regulating of weights and measures and the abatement of public nuisances.

This Statute is entitled "A Statute for View of Frankpledge," but it was not put forward with any intention of reverting to the old system of police by decennary societies, nor with any idea of superseding or even modifying the Statute of Winchester, but rather as an auxiliary measure to enlarge the sphere of usefulness of that Statute, and to render its administration more effectual, by ensuring that no violations of its provisions should go undetected and unpunished.

CHAPTER III
JUSTICE AND CONSTABLE

The accession of Edward III. marked the beginning of a new police era, that of the petty constable acting under the direction of the Justice of the Peace. The Statute of Winchester continued to be the guide in matters of police, but the executive which carried out its provisions underwent a change.

Any attempt to follow in detail the history of the Justices of the Peace, and the powers resident in them, is beyond the scope of the present work; this task has already been often and ably performed.[39] It is impossible, however, to divorce the functions of the Justice from those of the Constable; the story of the evolution of the latter is so dovetailed into the history of the former, the two are so closely allied in their mutual relationship of master and servant, that some reference must here and elsewhere be made to the office of the Justice, a functionary who claims a considerable share of attention in any enquiry that deals with police in the full interpretation of the word, because the executive power vested in a Justice as Peace Officer is antecedent to, and on the whole more important than, the judicial authority attaching to him as Magistrate: in other words, he must be considered as a policeman first, and as a judge afterwards.

The origin of the Justice's office is by no means obscure. Towards the close of the twelfth century (1195), by a proclamation of Richard I.,[40] Knights were appointed to see that all males over the age of fifteen years were "sworn to the King" by taking a solemn oath to maintain the peace: after fifty years or so had elapsed (1253) these Knights had become Peace Wardens or Conservators, who again, continually undergoing a process of development as the importance of the Sheriffs dwindled, were eventually invested with judicial powers, and were then known as Justices of the Peace.

When the office of Justice was first created, it was not intended that the Sheriff should be altogether superseded, but rather that the new officer should become an auxiliary agent for the preservation of the peace, to co-operate, as the Conservator had formerly done, with the Sheriff, who still retained the primary responsibility for the policing of his shire. It would appear that the supremacy of the royal officer in matters of police was generally recognised throughout the thirteenth century; for when, in 1285, Edward I. had occasion to rebuke the men of Kent for the prevalence of crime in their county, he made no mention of the Conservator, but ordered the inhabitants to afford in future every assistance in their power to the Sheriff, whose especial province it was (so the King declared) to keep the peace, not only by his own power, but also by means of the "posse comitatus," or power of the county.[41] On the other hand, even at this time, the Sheriff was not always given a free hand. In Warwickshire, for example, all arrangements for the preservation of the peace had first to be submitted to the Conservator for his approval;[42] it cannot, however, be supposed that the supervision exercised by the Conservators over the police administration was more than nominal, because, as a rule, they were great noblemen, holding a plurality of offices, and because the districts within their wardenship were usually too large to be effectively controlled by any one man. We learn, for instance, that in 1281 the Earl of Cornwall was Peace Warden for the counties of Middlesex, Essex, Herts, Cambs, Hunts, Norfolk, Suffolk, Kent, Surrey, Oxon, Beds, Bucks, Berks, Northants, Lincoln, and Rutland.

When both population and trade increased, and when offenders and offences grew more varied and numerous, it became necessary to augment to a proportionate degree the staff of officers answerable to the King for the internal peace of the kingdom: it was no good making more Sheriffs, who had seldom proved a success in the past (whose misconduct, in fact, had led to the restricting of their power to do harm on more than one occasion), and so it came about that the Justice gradually superseded the Conservator, and in the end not only deprived the Sheriff of his judicial powers, but to a large extent took his place as director of the police also.

The Sheriff did not submit to this curtailment of his authority without a struggle. After he was no longer allowed to act in his old capacity, he sometimes managed to get made a Justice, and to hold both offices in the same county at one time, to the great oppression of the people, who bitterly complained of the heavy fines that were inflicted, and of the outrageous bail that was exacted by these pluralists, until in 1378, at the request of Parliament, Richard II. put an end to such practices. Nevertheless, the Sheriff still remained the responsible person for the levying of Hue and Cry, for the pursuit and apprehension of felons, for the due execution of the sentences pronounced by the law-courts, and was answerable for the persons of prisoners handed over to him for punishment. He also had to perform various duties connected with elections, and until the reign of Edward VI. retained certain military functions.

Before 1328, the so-called justices were executive officers only, "they were little more than constables on a large scale";[43] but in this year, Edward the Third, who had recently come to the throne, considerably extended their powers by entrusting to them the examination and punishment of law-breakers.

The King reserved to himself the right of nominating those who should hold the office, and, throughout his long reign, continued to take the liveliest interest in his Justices of the Peace. He ordered that they should be connected with the county for which they were appointed, by holding therein a certain amount of landed property, a qualification which has been retained for many centuries. He made it a condition that they should be bons gentz et loiaulx; and for fear lest the granting of judicial powers to local officials should open the door to extortion on the one hand, and to ignorant maladministration on the other, was very careful as to the class of man he selected. For this reason, the pleadings of Parliament notwithstanding, he could not be induced to give up the privilege of appointing his own nominees, and even the democratic tendencies of modern times have left the appointment of Justices of the Peace in the hands of the Crown. Another Statute[44] (also passed in 1328) ordained that no man should "go offensively" or "ride armed" before the new magistrates—a wise enactment designed to protect them from being brow-beaten and intimidated by those great nobles who sought to obtain their own ends through the awe inspired by the display of a large armed retinue.

In 1333[45] Edward informed the Commons that one of his principal reasons for calling them together was to take counsel with them concerning the means that should be adopted for preserving the peace, and to this end charged them to assist him to the best of their ability. The Commons readily accepted the invitation, and subsequently lost no opportunity of expressing the interest they took in the Justices of the Peace, whose office was the constant theme of suggestions and petitions, which, however, the King, who preferred to take his own line, usually disregarded.

Of the several Statutes that were successively passed dealing with the office in question, the most important became law in 1360.[46] "In every county in England, there shall be assigned for the keeping of the peace, one lord, and with him three or four of the most worthy men in the county, together with some learned in the law, and they shall have power to restrain offenders, rioters, and other barretors, and to pursue, arrest, take, and chastise them, according to their trespass or offence; and to cause them to be arrested and duly punished according to the law and custom of the realm, and according to that which to them shall seem best to do by their discretions and good advisement; ... and to take of all them that be not of good fame, where they shall be found, sufficient surety and mainprise of their good behaviour toward the King and his people ... and also to hear and determine at the King's suit all manner of felonies and trespasses done in the same county according to the laws and customs aforesaid."

Two years after the Statute above quoted had been enacted, the Justices were empowered to sit quarterly for the transaction of business,[47] and before long Quarter Sessions absorbed the major portion of the executive and administrative government of the county.[48]

When Richard II. ascended the throne, the Justice of the Peace was thus firmly established as one of the permanent institutions of the kingdom. Since that time, the office has passed through many vicissitudes, experiencing many a rise and many a fall; but through all these changes, the Statute quoted above, which first defined his position, has always been referred to when any doubt arose as to the powers a Justice may exercise by virtue of his commission, and its meaning has been stretched and extended by degrees until, as Burn says, "there is scarcely any other Statute which hath received such a largeness of interpretation."[49]

It will be observed that in addition to the powers given to Justices for the punishment of offences against the peace, express authority was also conferred upon them by the same instrument for the prevention of such offences, for they were specially ordered to "take sufficient surety and mainprise of all them that be not of good fame." We have seen how under the decennary or tything system, all freemen were bound to find sureties for the preservation of the peace, and we have watched the decay of that system after the Norman invasion; in the provisions of this Act of Parliament, however, we may discover at least a partial revival of the ancient plan of demanding guarantees against any contingent infraction of the public peace, and of associating in a joint pecuniary responsibility the actual or potential peacebreaker with his immediate neighbours.[50] The "sufficient security" which Justices were authorised to take might be of two kinds—"Surety of the Good Behaviour" and "Surety of the Peace," and the security might be by Bail or by Mainprise, the difference between the two being "that mainpernors are only surety, but bail is a custody; and therefore the bail may retake the prisoner, if they doubt he may fly, and detain him."[51] ... Sureties of the Good Behaviour and Sureties of the Peace were granted on suspicion or on the flimsiest sort of evidence; for instance, "any suspected person who lives idly, and yet fares well, or is well apparelled, having nothing whereon to live," any common gamester, or the reputed father of a bastard child, or an eaves-dropper even, might be called upon to find mainpernors or bail; and so great discretion was required on the part of the Justices, who had to decide such knotty points; it was consequently of the highest importance that these officers should be familiar with the districts in which their duties were performed, and legal erudition was a consideration subordinate to personal character and local knowledge. When the Law was young evidence was received for what it was held to be worth, without distinction as to whether it might be hearsay, circumstantial, or direct; the word of a thane would prevail against the evidence of six ceorls; in fact the credibility of every witness was appraised in proportion to his social position, just as a man's life had formerly been estimated at a distinct valuation, and scheduled according to a recognised scale.[52]

The feudal system had taught the retainer to look to the Lord of the Manor for the redress of any grievance that he might have against his neighbour. To the tribunal of the Manor, also, he was wont to bring family differences for settlement; here the father would recount the follies of his son, and the wife complain of the habits of her husband: for, just as the priest was the spiritual adviser to his congregation, so, in many instances, was the Lord of the Manor the lay-counsellor to the dwellers on his estate. It was essential, therefore, that the Justice, who had to perform many of the duties formerly attaching to the feudal lord, should be a local man and a man of position; people would have nothing to do with a stranger, or with one who, in their opinion, was a man of no account, however great a lawyer he might be.

The status of the Justice of the Peace at the time of Edward IV. was not very different from that held by the same functionary at the present day. His powers and duties are not now quite the same as they once were, but the history of the office has been remarkable for its steady persistence in one groove: the Justices of five hundred years ago might be defined as a select number of country gentlemen deriving their authority from the Crown, primarily responsible to the Crown for the preservation of the peace, and exercising judicial functions of a simple kind within the limits of the county for which they were appointed—and such a definition would still apply.

The rise of the Justice of the Peace at the expense of his rivals was due to some extent to political causes. Sovereigns were favourable to the growing importance of an estate that promised to act as a counterpoise to the arrogant claims of the nobles, and although Parliament had nothing to do with the appointment of the new magistrates it was generally in sympathy with them, because they did not abuse their powers as the sheriffs had done, nor neglect their duties like the conservators; and also because the House of Commons, which was almost entirely composed of country gentlemen, recognised in the Justices, members of the same social class to which they themselves belonged. The mass of the people, too, were inclined to view them with favour, choosing to place themselves and their fortunes in the hands of men they knew something about, who were on the spot and likely to execute justice speedily, rather than in the hands of strange judges whose visits were few and far between, and who, when they came, were likely to be deficient in local knowledge.

The first Justices therefore were in the enviable position of enjoying at one and the same time the hearty support of King, Commons, and People; but unfortunately such a healthy state was not destined to be permanent, and before long the symptoms of internal disease presented themselves.

As the attractions of town life increased it became more and more difficult to obtain the services of the best kind of country gentlemen for a post that was often arduous, that brought no emolument to the holder, and that was incompatible with absenteeism. An inferior type of man was glad enough to take the place for the sake of the patronage and the social position he thereby acquired, and a corresponding depreciation in the police administration was at once apparent. Richard II. endeavoured to counteract this tendency by ordaining that Justices should be possessed of property in their own county of a minimum annual value of twenty pounds, and at the same time relieved them of some of their routine duties by appointing Clerks of the Peace to assist them. He fixed the number of Justices for each county at eight, two of whom only had to be in attendance at each Sessions.

These remedial measures served their purpose for the time, but in after years we find the danger resulting from the admission of inferior men into the ranks of the Justices constantly recurring, necessitating a more rigid enforcement of the property qualification.

In the city of London the duties that in the country would have fallen to the Justices of the Peace were performed instead by the Mayor and Aldermen, a custom that has been continued ever since, and with good results.[53]

All that remains to be said on the subject of Justices of the Peace in this place must be compressed into a few lines. Various Statutes, passed between 1389 and 1399, multiplied their powers exceedingly by giving them authority to settle the wages of labourers and servants, to punish unlawful huntings, false weights in the staple, and the unlawful wearing of liveries. In the reign of Henry IV. they were directed by statute to suppress riots with the help of the Sheriff and his "posse," and Henry V. ordained that, in future, Justices should only be appointed from "the most sufficient men of the counties, resident respectively therein," and that they should thenceforward be nominated by the King's Council.[54]

The Yorkist period saw Justices of the Peace at the zenith of their power; for, although the importance of the office tended to increase rather than to diminish, Tudor sovereigns, always masters in their own house, refused to allow them the same measure of independence that they had before enjoyed—in fact, one of the first acts of Henry VII.[55] was to rate them soundly for their past negligence, and to threaten unpleasant consequences if an improvement was not quickly manifest.

Subordinate to the Justices were the petty constables; "the lowe and lay ministers of the peace" as Lambard calls them; these officers were appointed annually by the jury of the Court Leet, but their control was vested almost entirely in the hands of the magistrates who swore them in, and who afterwards directed their actions.

Careful investigation into the origin and precise nature of the petty constable's office has failed to set finally at rest the many discussions that have arisen from time to time, and has left some minor points still obscure; the essentials, however, are sufficiently clear for the purposes of the present inquiry.

The word "constable" was imported by the Normans, but its etymology is not quite certain; formerly it was said to be derived from "Conning," a king,[56] and "Stapel," a stay or prop, and to signify "the king's right-hand man," but this is an unlikely solution, because the invaders despised the Anglo-Saxon language, and would not use a word which was partly derived from that tongue. Latterly the derivation "Comes-stabuli," meaning an Equerry or Master of the Horse, has been generally accepted as correct. In England the title has been applied to a variety of functionaries, some high and some low, who had little in common beyond the fact that they all owed their authority to the Crown.

The first mention of petty constables occurs in 1252, in a writ of Henry III. for enforcing watch and ward. This writ provides for the employment of these officers in parish and township, but it is more than likely that the office was not then a new one, because the word "constable" is there used without any explanation being added, and it may therefore be assumed that its meaning was a matter of common knowledge.

The Statute of Winchester, it will be remembered, ordained that there should be two constables in each hundred, to carry out the inspection of arms; these officers were probably connected with the Militia, and were closely allied to, if not identical with, the High Constables of later date; in any case they must not be confused with the petty constables, who, according to Blackstone, were so called when they added the duties of assistants to the High Constable, to their ancient business of keeping the peace, and who, as Lambard explains, were modified tythingmen; "when there be many tythingmen in one parish, there only one of them is a constable for the king, and the rest do serve but as the ancient tythingmen did."

The transition from the Anglo-Saxon tythingman to the petty constable, that is to say, from the chief frankpledge to the Justice's assistant was very gradual, and it is impossible to determine a rigid boundary line between the two. All we can say is that the term "constable" was introduced as early as the year 1252, and that the term "tything man" continued to be occasionally made use of down to the beginning of the nineteenth century: that first and last the offices were in effect the same does not admit of doubt, both were primarily ex officio guardians of the peace, and when the tything man came to be commonly called "constable," it does not follow that the change marked the creation of a new office.

The Normans naturally substituted French or Latin names for Anglo-Saxon ones; headborough became præpositus, and shire-reeve or sheriff became vicecomes. Of these foreign titles, the former is now never used, and the latter[57] has acquired a new meaning totally distinct from its original sense. "Constable," on the other hand, survived, although at first it was used only by the Normans, and in official documents, the people continuing to employ the native words according to the custom of the different parts of the country; thus in Middlesex there were Headboroughs, in Kent Borsholders, and in the West of England tythingmen.

It is not necessary to pursue the matter further except to say, that when the Justices of the Peace, owing to the increased amount of work thrown upon them, were in want of subordinate officers, advantage was taken of the staff of tythingmen already existing, some of whom were given new functions, e.g. the execution of the Justices' warrants and the service of summonses, but without prejudice to their duties in connection with peace-maintenance; in short, the titles of tythingman, petty-constable, parish-constable, and finally police-constable, are the various names applied to the same office from the time of Alfred the Great to that of King Edward the Seventh.

We do not know enough about the social distinctions of the period to say what the precise status of the early constable was. His position was without doubt an honourable one, superior in every way to that of the parish constable of later years, who only served because he could not help it, or because he was poor enough to bear another man's burden for a paltry pecuniary consideration.

The local competence of the officer has always been insisted upon, and his incapacity to exercise any powers outside a particular area was one of the causes that contributed to make him the useless nonentity that he at one time became. So close was the connection between constable and parish that the Court of King's Bench decided, in 1734, that a place that did not employ one constable at least must be considered merely as a hamlet, and was not entitled to the privileges that belonged to an independent township; and whenever similar questions arose, the decision invariably turned on the existence or the non-existence of a parish constable.

The qualifications that a constable ought to possess are thus tabulated by Coke:—

• i. Honesty: to execute his office truly without malice, affection, or partiality.
• ii. Knowledge: to understand his duty, what he ought to do.
• iii. Ability: as well in estate as in body, that so he may attend and execute his office diligently, and not neglect the same through want or impotency.[58]

It would be tedious to recount the multifarious duties that from time to time have fallen to the constable, especially as many of the most important are noticed in subsequent chapters; it will here be sufficient to state, in a general way, a few of the main directions by which he was expected to act: these may shortly be summarized as follows:—

• i. His duties with regard to watch and ward were, to keep a roster of the watchmen, to see that they were vigilant and alert during the hours of watching, to receive into custody any guilty or reasonably suspected person handed over to him by the watch, and to keep such person in safety, until he should give bail or be brought before a Justice of the Peace.
• ii. With regard to Hue and Cry, and generally with regard to the pursuit and arrest of felons, peacebreakers and suspected persons, his duty was to obey the sheriff, to follow with the Hue and Cry, and to keep in safe custody any prisoner delivered to him, until relieved of further responsibility by the orders of Justice or Sheriff.
• iii. With regard to inquiring into, and prosecuting offences: he was bound to make presentment at the assizes, sessions of the peace or leet, and in some cases before the coroner, "of all bloodsheddings, affrays, outcries, rescues, and other offences committed or done against the King's Majesty's Peace."
• iv. Finally he had to serve precepts, warrants and summonses, and obey all the lawful commands of the High Constable and Justice of the Peace.

The subordination of petty constables to Justices was from the first generally understood and acted upon, but the custom did not receive definite official sanction until the seventeenth century, when it was tardily recognised by statute.[59] The true relationship between the two has found apt expression in an old simile which likens constables to the eyes and hands of the Justices, "eyes to see through the medium of presentments, and hands to act by virtue of warrants or process."

CHAPTER IV
FOREST POLICE AND POLICE IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY

Just as the state of public tranquillity brought about by the wise government of Edward I. had been disturbed by the irresponsible and childish behaviour of his pleasure-loving successor, so was the admirable domestic policy of Edward III. robbed of its due reward by the lack of judgment and the want of administrative capacity exhibited by Richard II., whose unhappy reign is thus described by Froissart. "The State generally of all men in England began to murmur and to rise one against another, and ministering of justice was clear stopped up in all courts of England, whereof the valiant men and prelates, who loved rest and peace, and were glad to pay their duties, were greatly abashed; for there rose in the realm companies in divers routs, keeping the fields and highways, so that merchants durst not ride abroad to exercise their merchandise for doubt of robbing; and no man knew to whom to complain to do them right, reason, and justice; which things were right prejudicial and displeasant to the good people of England, for it was contrary to their accustomable usage."

It would be unjust, however, to attribute the state of affairs as above portrayed solely to Richard's incapacity: he was still a minor when his grandfather died, and many circumstances conspired to render his task an extremely difficult one. A latent discontent had smouldered amongst the peasantry ever since the oppressive Statute of Labourers had been passed some thirty years before, and the universal poll-tax of one shilling a head, imposed in 1379 to meet the expenses incurred in the interminable wars with France and Scotland, suddenly caused the flame of rebellion to blaze forth with unexampled violence. It has been said that if anything like an adequate police force had been available in 1381, Wat Tyler's movement might have been arrested before the riots in the Southern Counties had attained the dimensions of a general insurrection. Such may, or may not, be true of this particular rising; but happily for English liberty there has never existed in this country any police force at the disposal of the central government, powerful enough to coerce the nation at large. Our national police has always been of the people and for the people, and obviously at no time could long be used to oppress those from whom its strength was derived, provided only that one and the same sentiment pervaded a majority of the oppressed.

The attack on villenage was too reasonable to be fruitless, and resistance to the popular demands could be but temporary. The death of Tyler, and the consequent suppression of the insurrectionary movement which he led, caused the concessions wrung from the King to be revoked, and so delayed the cause of agrarian freedom; but the ultimate triumph of free tenure and labour was already assured from the moment that unanimity was achieved.

The constitution of the general police of the country being of such a nature that it was powerless to enforce any universally unpopular measure, a distinct and separate organisation was required to administer the well-hated code of law which had to do with the royal prerogative of hunting. The whole subject of forest law and forest police is of sufficient interest and importance to warrant an account of its main characteristics in some detail.

The King's Peace, as we have already seen, was of two kinds—there was the public peace of the realm, and there was the royal or private peace, enjoyed by the Sovereign, and by those closely connected with him. If we examine further these main divisions, we shall find that each is composed of certain sub-divisions, with their own particular laws and customs: thus under the general heading of public peace must be included—(1) the peace and privacy to which every man is entitled at his own fireside, securing him against all intrusion as long as he commits no felonious action—(2) the "peace of the church" as kept by the Ecclesiastical Courts—and (3) the "peace of the sea" with its court (afterwards known as the Court of Admiralty) "to maintain peace and justice amongst the people of every nation passing through the sea of England."[60]

The private peace of the King, besides protecting his person and the precincts of his palaces, extended also over all the Royal Forest land, that is to say, over about a third part of the whole area of England: Canute's law was "I will that every man be entitled to his hunting in wood and field, on his own possession. And let everyone forego my hunting";[61] but there is no evidence to prove that the Danish King enforced his forest law otherwise than by the ordinary law of the land. The system of game preservation that grew up under the Normans, however, was so rigid that it necessitated the creation of special laws, special courts of law, and a special police for the prevention and punishment of illegal hunting. The Norman code was modified somewhat by Magna Carta,[62] and again in 1217; but it continued to oppress the nation through many generations, for wherever the peace of the forest was well maintained, there did the peace of the people suffer.

The amount of afforested land varied considerably from time to time. Henry II. possessed 68 forests, 13 chaces and 781 parks,[63] but it was not necessarily those monarchs who were particularly devoted to sport that were the most exacting, a strict enforcement of the forest laws brought much money to the royal exchequer in the shape of fines levied on trespassers and others who were tempted to offend against the arbitrary restrictions imposed.

"A Forest," says Manwood,[64] "is a certain territory of woody grounds and fruitful pastures, privileged for wild beasts and fowls of forest, chase and warren to rest, and abide there in the safe protection of the King, for his delight and pleasure: which territory of ground so privileged is mered and bounded with irremovable marks, meres and boundaries, either known by matter of record or by prescription: and also replenished with wild beasts of venery and chase, and with great coverts of vert, for the succour of the said beasts (to have their abode in): for the continuance and preservation of the said place, together with the vert and venison,[65] there are particular officers, laws and privileges belonging to the same, requisite for the purpose, and proper only to a Forest and no other place."

In connection with every forest there were four Courts, called respectively the Woodmote Court, the Court of Regard, the Court of Swanimote, and the Court of the Justice Seat. Of these the first was only competent to inquire of offences, and could not proceed to conviction. The Verderers, as the judicial officers of this Court were called, met once in every forty days, and could acquit accused persons, or hold them to bail—in the latter case the attachment had to be by the goods of the offender, unless he was "taken with the Mayneer," i.e. in flagrante delicto,[66] when the attachment might be by his body. "If any Forester shall find any man attachable for Vert in the Forest, first he shall attach him by two pledges, if they be to be found: and if he be afterwards found, he shall attach him by four pledges: and if the third time, he shall be presented before the Verderers, and be put by eight pledges: after the third attachment, his body shall be attached and retained, that he may remember what thing Vert is."[67]

Coke tells us that there were four degrees of "Mayneer," viz.:—

• (i.) Dog-draw, or tracking a wounded deer.
• (ii.) Stable-Stand, that is, standing ready to shoot or course, with weapon in hand, or greyhounds in leash.
• (iii.) Back-bear, or carrying away the venison; and
• (iv.) Bloody-Hand, or being found in the forest stained with blood.[68]

The second Court, that of "Regard," was held once in three years, and had for its object the prevention of unlawful hunting. For this purpose all dogs belonging to dwellers near the forest were registered and divided into three classes; that is to say (1) greyhounds, including spaniels and lurchers; (2) mastiffs, including the various kinds of large dogs; and (3) dogs of the smaller breeds. No restriction was placed on the possession of the last-mentioned class, but whilst greyhounds were not allowed on any pretence, mastiffs might be kept by a man for his own protection, provided that he had them mutilated in such a way that they could not pursue and pull down the game. This operation, called "lawing" or "expeditation," consisted in removing the claws of the fore-feet, and was performed in the following manner—One of the dog's fore-feet was placed upon a piece of wood eight inches thick and twelve inches square, and then the three claws were struck off at one blow with a two-inch chisel; if a mastiff was found "unlawed" near a forest, a fine of five shillings was imposed on its reputed master.

The "Court of Swanimote" met three times a year, and had the power not only of inquiring into all alleged offences against the forest laws, but, unlike the Woodmote, might also convict. Finally, judgment was given and sentences passed by the chief Justice of the Forest, at the triennial meeting of the Court of the Justice Seat.[69]

Each forest was surrounded by its "purlieu," or belt of pasturage, for the deer to graze in. The jurisdiction of the Courts above enumerated extended over both forest and purlieu, and since the two together covered a third part of the kingdom, it will be seen that the police regulations that secured the peace of the forest profoundly affected the daily life of the nation. Many of these regulations pressed very hardly on the people, especially on folk who had the misfortune to live in the purlieu: for instance, a man found trespassing by night could be imprisoned, even if he was only in search of strayed cattle, and his beasts might be confiscated. In times of drought, or when grazing was scarce, foresters might lop trees and cut fodder for their charges on the land of any man, whilst tanners and dealers in horn were not permitted to live anywhere in the neighbourhood of a forest, for fear lest their trade should tempt them to become receivers of stolen property.

When an offence had been committed Hue and Cry might be made by any of the King's ministers of the forest, but the pursuit had to be "fresh"; that is to say, the offender had to be detected in the act, and the fugitive kept always in sight. Pursuit, on suspicion, was illegal, and Hue and Cry was applicable to Trespass in Venison only, not to Trespass in Vert. If any township or village failed to follow the Hue and Cry they were liable to be amerced at the Justice Seat for the default.[70]

From the "Carta de foresta"[71] we learn that the officers originally appointed to each forest were fifty-two in number, and consisted of four Primarii or Chiefs of the forest, sixteen Mediocres homines, or Yoongmen, and thirty-two Minuti homines, or Tine-men. This organization did not long continue, however, and was quite extinct at the accession of Henry II. The four Primarii were superseded by four Verderers; the sixteen Yoongmen gave place to twelve Regarders; and instead of thirty-two Tine-men we find a staff of Foresters, with their underlings, called Walkers or Rangers.[72] The number of Foresters and Rangers employed was not arbitrarily fixed, but varied with the size of the forest, and in accordance with the exigencies of time and place. The ministers of the forest appear to have been very numerous in the days of the Plantagenets, and the functions of the different grades were clearly defined: thus, the Verderers were judicial officers, roughly corresponding to Justices of the Peace; the Agisters were officers whose business it was to look after the pasturage of the purlieu; the Regarders were responsible for the lawing of dogs; whilst the Foresters and Rangers were sworn to preserve the wild beasts and timber respectively in their several bailiwicks. The precautions taken to preserve the peace of the forest were doubled during the Month of Fence, or breeding season, at which time the officers were ordered to be more than usually vigilant, and offences were punished with increased severity.

In the last chapter reference was made to the oath which every male over fifteen years of age had to take in furtherance of the general scheme of peace-maintenance. Similarly, under forest law, an oath was required from all the inhabitants of the forest, that they would not disturb the peace of the wild beasts therein. Manwood says that this oath was anciently administered in doggerel verse, in some such words as these:

"You shall true Liege-man be,

Unto the King's Majestie:

Unto the beasts of the Forest you shall no hurt do,

Nor anything that doth belong thereunto:

The offences of others you shall not conceal,

But to the utmost of your power you shall them reveal,

Unto the officers of the Forest,

Or to them who may see them redrest:

All these things you shall see done,

So help you GOD at his Holy Doom."[73]

Such then in brief were the salient features of the police arrangements by which the prerogative of hunting was secured to the Sovereign, arrangements which, it will be seen, were closely allied to the general scheme of peace maintenance then in vogue throughout the realm. A fuller description of Forest Law, together with an interesting map of the Forest lands, may be found in Mr Inderwick's "The King's Peace": the present enquiry, however, must not extend beyond this slight survey of the machinery by which the laws in question were enforced, and may conclude with a glance at the influence that such legislation exerted over the country at large. The severity of the law coupled with the inadequacy of the executive government produced their natural result. The people resented the harsh treatment they were subjected to, and broke the unpopular regulations or evaded the irksome restrictions whenever they could, which was not seldom. Many who under a wiser régime would have remained good citizens became outlaws merely out of a spirit of opposition, and in consequence, these huge tracts of forest, whose recesses were hardly ever visited even by the forest officers, and whose boundaries were hardly known to anyone else, became the stronghold of the lawless and disaffected, as well as the refuge of the unfortunate.[74]

In the opinion of many, our existing game laws, are harsh and tyrannical: it is often said that all men have an inalienable right to chase or snare any animal that is not domesticated, because, in the nature of things, a wild beast cannot have an owner. All this may be perfectly true, but if such a common right existed, it has not been enjoyed for a very long time, not since the days, perhaps, when our forefathers performed their Druidical rites at the monoliths of Stonehenge, apparelled only in woad and mistletoe. It is unprofitable to argue about the rights of prehistoric man: what was best for him is not always applicable to a twentieth century community, and we may be thankful that whilst a few beasts of warren and chase still remain to us, we are no longer oppressed, as men used to be, by a relentless "lex foresta" for their protection.

To return, however, from the digression into which the consideration of forest law has led, to the more general theme of the police system of the Statute of Winchester, it is to be observed that the terms "Watch" and "Ward," though commonly used in conjunction to express a single idea, are not really synonymous. Blackstone says that the ward was set by day, and the watch by night, and that the one begins only when the other ends. Without making too much of the distinction between the two, we must remember that the population was almost entirely an agricultural one, and was occupied throughout the day in the fields; consequently every man could protect his own property and, if necessary, raise the hue and cry against any who came to despoil him. Household belongings were few, and apparently of such little account that not only were they always left unprotected in the daytime, but it was even thought unnecessary to employ a nightly police except during the summer and autumn months, when the crops were ripening in the fields, the Statute only requiring the watch to be set "from the day of the Ascension until the day of St Michael."

The method of setting the watch was by house-row, that is to say, a list of the dwellings in every parish and township was prepared, and as his turn came round each householder or some one lodging under his roof was required to keep a watch: if any such "contemptuously refused" to obey the summons of the constable, that officer might set him in the stocks for his contempt. The liability to watch by roster attached equally to all the male inhabitants; when, however, it happened that it came to a woman's turn, she was allowed to find a substitute, but there is no evidence to show whether the substituted service was rendered gratuitously or whether she had to pay for the accommodation. Watchmen were expected to be able-bodied and sufficiently armed, a pitchfork was not held to be an adequate weapon,[75] but within reasonable limits a man might arm and accoutre himself as he pleased, and it was not until comparatively recent times that the watch were provided with arms at the parish expense.

Generally speaking, the house-row arrangement worked smoothly enough, but that friction occasionally arose, when the constables came to call upon unwilling citizens to perform the police duties incumbent on them, the following extract from "Town Life in the Fifteenth Century" bears witness: "In Aylesbury" according to the constables' report, "one Reygg kept a house all the year until the watch time came, and when he was summoned to the watch there came Edward Chalkyll 'fasesying' and said he would not watch for no man and thus bare him up, and that caused the other to be bolder for to bar the King's watch.... He said and threatened us with his master," add the constables, "and thus we be over crakyd' that we dare not go, for when they be 'mayten' they be the bolder. John Bossey said the same wise that he would not watch for us, and three others lacked each of them a night."[76]

The police regulations for the government of London, as introduced in 1285, had become very minute and exacting by the latter half of the fifteenth century, many restrictions being placed on the enjoyment of personal liberty. The use of coal was prohibited, Sunday trading was forbidden, and, amongst other rules for the control of the wheeled traffic, a maximum width between wheels for vehicles was laid down which might on no account be exceeded. Ordinances also were promulgated against tradesmen who should attempt to advertise their callings in an objectionable manner, such as, for instance, the display of a basin of blood by barbers anxious to let people know that phlebotomy was included in the list of their accomplishments. The provisions of the before-quoted Statuta Civitatis (London), touching the control of leprous persons continued in force, and about this time special officers were appointed to prevent such as were infected with the plague from associating with those who were whole.

The employment of a "police des mœurs" was a novel feature of the administration. A register containing the names of all women of ill-fame was kept by the police, and such women were not allowed to reside within the city walls; a certain promenade, known as the "Stews of Southwark," was assigned to them, where they were kept under the vigilant eyes of the City Sergeants, who, in consideration of the extra work thus thrown upon them, might confiscate and retain as a perquisite any "minever fur or cendale silk" that a courtesan might presume to wear. The inhabitants of the Surrey suburb were probably not consulted as to the desirability or otherwise of this arrangement, Edward III. having granted the town and borough of Southwark in perpetuo to the citizens of London. This he did in answer to their complaint that the peace of the city was continually being placed in jeopardy by the facility with which thieves and felons could make good their escape over the river and take refuge in Southwark, a place with no recognised privilege of sheltering runaways. The official sanctuaries were of course on a different footing, and in the fifteenth century were rendered less dangerous to society, than had formerly been the case, by an ordinance which required those who lived hard by the sanctuary to watch all avenues of escape by day and night until the refugee surrendered himself, a fine of five pounds being levied against the responsible ward if he succeeded in getting away.

The general scope of the responsibilities and powers proper to these old-time city constables is clearly defined in the oath that they were required to take before entering upon the duties of their office. "You shall swear, that you shall keep the Peace of our Lord the King well and lawfully according to your power, and shall arrest all those who shall make any contest, riot, debate or affray, in breaking of the said peace, and shall bring them unto the house or Compter of one of the Sheriffs. And if you shall be withstood by strength of such misdoers, you shall raise upon them hue and cry (and) shall follow them from street to street, and from ward to ward until they are arrested. And also you shall search at all times when you shall be required by Scavenger or Bedel, for the common nuisances of the ward; until they are arrested. And also if there be anything done within your bailiwick contrary to the Ordinances of the City. And the faults you shall find, you shall present them unto the Mayor and to the Officers of the said City. And if you should be withstood by any person, or persons, that you cannot duly do your office, you shall certify unto the Mayor and Council of the said City the name and names of such person or persons who trouble you. And this you shall not fail to do. So God you help and the Saints."[77]

When the decennary societies ceased to exist, the connection between the peace officer and the particular group which he represented underwent a change, but the alteration was one of degree rather than one of kind. The fifteenth century constable was taught to look for the support of his fellow-citizens in case of need, though not to the same extent, perhaps, as the headborough was wont to rely on the members of his tything. The great principle of mutual responsibility remained, and was kept alive by insisting that all freemen should enter into a solemn obligation to keep the peace, a compact which, modified to suit more modern requirements, had its origin in the ancient oath of allegiance. The form of oath varied in different places; in London it was as follows—"You shall swear that you shall be good and true unto the King of England and to his heirs, Kings and the King's Peace you shall keep; and unto the Officers of the city you shall be obedient, and at all times that shall be needful, you shall be ready to aid the officers in arresting misdoers, and those disobedient to the King's Peace, as well denizens as strangers. And you shall be ready, at the warning of the Constables and Bedels, to make the watches and (to bear) the other charges for the safeguard of the peace, and all the points in this wardmote shown, according to your power you shall well and lawfully keep—and if you know any evil covin within the ward or the city, you shall withstand the same, or to your alderman make it known. So help you God and the Saints."[78]

An examination of the oaths administered to constables and freemen respectively reveals to us in a concise form the motives which directed the mediæval machinery for maintaining the peace. We see how a compromise was arrived at between the ancient system of frankpledge and the more modern plan of employing a professional class of peace officers, and how, by means of the combined action of police and public, domestic tranquillity was assured. Had it been possible to have made this co-operation complete and thorough, the resulting security would have left little to be desired; but, as was only to be expected, discord not infrequently took the place of harmony, and freemen sometimes forgot what was due to the oath they had taken. Let the events of a certain night in Canterbury serve as an illustration. Some watchmen, it appears, challenged a man whom they found abroad "out of due time" and inquired his business, but (to continue the story verbatim) "the suspect person gave none answer, but ran from thence into St Austin's liberty, and before the door of one John Short they took him. And the same John Short came out of his house with other misknown persons and took from the said watchmen their weapons, and there menaced them for to beat, contrary to the oath of a true and faithful freeman."[79]

According to the strict letter of the law it was a constable's duty, immediately after making an arrest, to deliver his prisoner to the sheriff; but, as a matter of fact, this was seldom done, and the sheriff had little or nothing to do with accused persons until after their conviction. In the absence of proper lock-ups the village stocks were commonly used by the parish constable to secure his man until he could conveniently bring him before a magistrate but, as time went on, confinement in the stocks became the normal mode of punishment for minor offences, and it was no rare thing for a constable to keep a troublesome parishioner in this uncomfortable custody for a space, on his own initiative and responsibility.

Prisons had existed in some form or other from the earliest times. The first dungeon was doubtless coeval with the first fortress, and London's great jail at Newgate dated back to the twelfth century. But it was not then a penal establishment in our sense of the term, in so far that imprisonment was hardly as yet the recognised punishment for the ordinary run of criminals; such places were rather convenient strongholds in which to confine debtors till they paid their dues, suspected persons till they confessed their crimes, Jews till they disgorged their wealth, and generally for the safe-guarding of political opponents or private enemies whom it was desirable to keep under lock and key. It was not until the fifteenth century that we find a regularly graduated connection between punishment by imprisonment and punishment by fine; the penalty for drawing a sword in the City of London, for example, was then half a mark or fifteen days, for inflicting a wound with the same, twenty shillings or forty days, and so on.

The pillory was a more serious affair, and its pains were beyond the power of a constable to inflict; it was generally resorted to in cases where the offender had been guilty of practices which rendered him particularly obnoxious to the people, so that the punishment he received at their hands was nicely proportioned to the degree of unpopularity he had earned for himself. The baker who gave short weight, or the dairyman who watered his milk, received such a lesson at the hands of his customers that he was little likely to repeat his offence. It was customary, moreover, in sentencing a man to the pillory, to make the punishment fit the crime as much as possible, and to compel the culprit to advertise his guilt in some personally unpleasant fashion; thus, the man who had stolen a cart was forced to pull it through the streets to the place of punishment, and an offending vintner had to drink a full draught of the sour wine that had disagreed with the frequenters of his shop.

Englishmen are proverbially interested in what they eat and drink, and this public concern for good victualling explains why, when life and property were as yet but moderately secure, safeguards against the adulteration of human food were notably complete. The chief legislative authority upon which police action, directed against dishonest purveyors, rested, was the "Judicium Pillorie," or, as it is commonly called, "The Statute of the Pillory and Tumbrel."[80] This Act belonged to the same period as the Statute of Winchester (both dating from the latter half of the thirteenth century), and like its more famous contemporary had a long career of practical usefulness in the public service. From 1266, the year of its enactment, until 1710, the date of its repeal, the Judicium Pillorie did much for English food, by maintaining a high standard in the quality of our meat and bread, and in the soundness of our ale. The Statute requires that "they have in the town a pillory of convenient strength as appertaineth to the liberty of their market, which they may use (if need be) without bodily peril either of man or woman." Provision is made for the sending of six "lawful men" to collect all the measures of the town, care being taken that the owner's name is legibly inscribed on each measure, "after which thing done" a jury of twelve lawful men have to make oath that they will truly answer concerning such things as may be demanded of them on the King's behalf, "and such things as be secret, they shall utter secretly and answer privately," also, "if any butcher do sell contagious flesh, or that died of the murren, or flesh that hath been kept so long that it loseth its natural wholesomeness, or meat bought from Jews and then sold to Christians"—for these and similar offences the penalty is the same, viz.: "If a baker or a brewer be convict ... then he shall suffer punishment of the body—that is to wit—a baker to the pillory and a brewer to the tumbrel."

From "Liber Albus" we get a more detailed account of the fashion in which these exemplary punishments were carried out in London, we learn that "if any default be found in the bread of a baker in the city, the first time, let him be drawn upon a hurdle from the Guildhall to his own house through the great street where there be most people assembled, and through the great streets which are most dirty, with the faulty loaf hanging from his neck: if a second time he shall be found committing the same offence, let him be drawn from the Guildhall through the great street of Cheepe, in the manner aforesaid, to the pillory, and let him be put upon the pillory, and remain there at least one hour in the day; and the third time that such default shall be found, he shall be drawn, and the oven shall be pulled down, and the baker made to forswear the trade in the city for ever."

Before leaving this part of the subject, it may be worth mentioning, that as long ago as the year 1318[81] all public officers in city and borough were debarred from selling wine or victual during their term of office, a prohibition which some people think might with advantage be applied at the present day to such modern officials as the members of Borough Watch Committees.[82]

CHAPTER V
COMMERCIAL POLICE AND POLICE UNDER THE TUDORS

The growth of the royal power that was so well defined a characteristic of the sixteenth century was accompanied by a general re-establishment of good order throughout the kingdom. As long as the reins of government were slackly held by feeble monarchs, the king's peace was reckoned of but little account, and in the words of the Anglo-Saxon writer already quoted, "every man that could, forthwith robbed another." Nobles surrounded by their retainers, broke the peace whenever they chose, and laid their hands on any property that they felt strong enough to hold. As long as punishment overtook the man who had offended against a great noble with more precision and with greater celerity than it did the offender who had broken the law of the land, guardians of the peace were despised, whilst peace-breakers were admired by the multitude, if not respected.

When Henry VII. came to the throne he resolutely set himself to put an end to this state of affairs, and to re-assert the personal ascendancy of the sovereign, especially with regard to the maintenance of the peace. He was obviously unable to achieve this object single-handed, for he had no army with which to enforce his commands, and the mass of the people were not yet thoroughly emancipated. Something of course might be done by dividing the nobles into separate factions, and then pitting one faction against another, and these tactics he pursued with some success; the class however to which in the end the king had to look for assistance was the middle-class, which was chiefly occupied with money-making, which was inclined to resent any interference with a pursuit at once so novel and so absorbing, and which, at the same time, was beginning to cry out for increased protection for its newly acquired wealth. As it seemed worth while to purchase the goodwill of the spokesmen of this powerful class, at the cost of complying with their not unreasonable requirements, the king was ready to meet them halfway, and the police administration was modified accordingly.

The compulsory duty of serving as a constable, argued the middle-class, was not only unprofitable but a wicked waste of good time that might be devoted to objects that paid better; and so the system of deputy constable crept in. Hue and cry was all very well, they said, for the agriculturist or the villein; he could lay down his spade to join in the pursuit with little detriment to himself; but it was different in the case of the weaver or the merchant, the former could not afford to leave his loom nor the latter to lose a bargain; and so hue and cry fell into desuetude. When property consisted only of timber, cattle, and land, difficult things for a thief to remove, little protection was demanded, but when valuable articles, all more or less portable, became common, and when many kinds of fraud, all more or less subtle, menaced both consumer and producer, a better guarantee for security was asked: and so the old-established trade-guilds adapted themselves to the changed conditions, and introduced new protective measures. These modifications must now be examined in more detail.

It is doubtful at what date the custom first arose of discharging the office of constable by proxy, but certain it is that, in the Tudor period, instead of one headborough responsible to the Crown for the maintenance of the peace in Tything and Hundred, which, as we have seen, was anciently the system, we find two or more constables answerable to the Justices, nominally employed by the year, but practically as permanent deputies, performing duties delegated to them in parish and township, and their services paid for, not by the public at large, but by the individuals whose deputies they were.

In some respects the change, which in all probability was a gradual one, contributed to the deterioration of the police administration, because unfortunately a very indifferent sort of man was almost invariably selected as deputy. Speaking of constables, Bacon says they are "of inferior, yea, of base condition, which is a mere abuse or degenerating from the first institution, for the petty constables in towns ought to be the better sort of residents in the same, save that they be not aged or sickly, but of able bodies in respect of their keeping watch and toil of their place"; and Blackstone says that considering the class of man that commonly acts as constable, it is just as well that he should remain in ignorance of the powers that are entrusted to him by law.

Despite the fact that the employment of deputies was mischievous in its immediate consequences, the rise of the custom marked a distinct stage in the development that resulted in the freedom from personal liability which, without prejudice to the police administration, we now enjoy; it began to be felt that the onerous and thankless position of constable deserved remuneration, and that it was more economical to delegate constabulary duties to experts, than that every man should be compelled to serve his turn in an office that interfered with his normal activity, and for which, perhaps, he had no special aptitude. England, as we have seen, was rapidly becoming a commercial country, and all were eager to take advantage of every chance of money-making that offered itself, and finding that the duties of citizenship absorbed more of their time than they were willing to spare, peace-officers were no sooner elected than they hastened to hire any proxies whom they could persuade to undertake the burden of office. This reluctance of busy men to devote their valuable time to an unpaid public service was reasonable enough, and the practice of employing substitutes was winked at by the authorities; yet centuries passed before a way was found to organize with intelligence, and officially recognize a system, that whilst freeing the mass of the people from an unnecessary conscription, should yet retain the essential principle that every man shares in, and cannot divest himself of, a definite responsibility for the maintenance of good order in the commonwealth.

The decay of the feudal system and the gradual abolition of villenage went hand in hand, as we have seen, with the rise of the merchant and the artisan; as trade increased and as the skilled workman became a recognized power in the state, the police horizon widened, new interests needed protection, new laws and regulations had to be made and enforced. The supreme direction of commercial police rested with the Crown; and, as long as the sovereign's prerogative was confined to the control of fairs and ports, to the granting or withholding of monopolies, and to the regulating of weights and measures, the services of the Justices of the Peace, assisted by their constables, had been found sufficient for all practical purposes. But when questions arose, touching our trade with foreign merchants or demanding a technical knowledge of native manufactures, it became necessary to submit these difficult problems to some more expert authority than the ordinary executive officer. This want was supplied, to a great extent, by the above-mentioned police development of the Trade-Guilds or Livery Companies, which, recently deprived of much of their former political influence, now for the first time seriously began to devote themselves to the special interests of their several trades, by properly confining their energies to channels more legitimate than state-craft, such as the protection and control of the various markets, manufactures, and handicrafts.

In the early stages of its development in this country, commerce stood on a very different footing from that upon which it rests to-day: skilled artizans came and settled in England from all parts of the continent, bringing their laws and customs with them; arrived here, they not only competed with the native manufacturer, but beat him at all points of the game. In the absence of any preventive police worth mentioning, the position of these aliens would have been an impossible one, except for two considerations; in the first place they thoroughly recognised the value of combination and acted upon it, and in the second place the very considerable revenue that their activities brought to the royal coffers, secured for them the king's protection and support.[83]

This incursion of foreigners was not without its effect on our craftsmen, who saw, that to command success, they too must combine, organize, and regulate. The result was that nearly every trade and industry soon had its guild organized on the continental model, the object of which (unlike the modern trades-unions that exist mainly to prevent the power of the capitalist over his employées from becoming absolute), was to create a monopoly, and hedge it round so that no outsider could enter the exclusive circle without being properly initiated and regularly admitted to craft-membership.

The Livery Company punished the fraudulent workman, corrected the idle apprentice, and also prosecuted the would-be interloper who attempted to infringe upon its rights and privileges.

We are indebted to these trade-guilds for introducing to our shores in the first instance, many mechanical arts which, greatly to our advantage, subsequently became naturalized, and afterwards for keeping them alive through times of difficulty and danger, when the central government was not strong enough to afford much protection; the high character that English goods have earned throughout the world's markets is, to a great extent, owing to this system of commercial police, which compelled every workman to serve a long apprenticeship in a technical school, and which punished the producer of fraudulent and worthless articles. On the other hand whole fields of industry were arbitrarily closed to honest and capable folk by the absurd restrictions imposed for the sole benefit of corporations, which, when full allowance has been made for the good they did, and when full credit has been given for the service they rendered by standing in the breach at the critical moment, were, after all, thoroughly reactionary in their tendency, bent, as they were, upon stifling healthy competition whenever possible, and inclined to look upon any new invention as a crime against their craft mysteries.

A serious defect in the constitution of our mediæval police consisted in the numerous privileges enjoyed by favoured communities. No police regulation was of universal application; we have seen how in Anglo-Saxon times the king's peace afforded especial protection to certain classes, and how various limitations were imposed according to locality and according to season; subsequently charters were freely given to monasteries, guilds, boroughs and cities, carrying rights and conferring favours that were not shared by the nation at large. The consequence was that every rule bristled with exceptions, and legislation grew proportionally more complicated and difficult of application than would have been the case had all men been equal in the eye of the law. Many a useful measure was rendered largely inoperative by reason of the numbers of persons who could plead privilege against its enforcement in their particular case. Hue and Cry could avail nothing against the baron who had bought a charter of pardon for felonies committed in the past or contemplated in the future, and the pursuit of the sheriff was stayed when the fugitive took refuge in sanctuary. First the clergy, and afterwards persons not in orders who could prove their ability to read a word or two in the Gothic character,[84] were entitled to plead "benefit of clergy," and thereby escape perhaps well-merited punishment. In the reign of Henry VII. this privilege was wisely restricted, by ordaining that those who had pleaded "clergy" once, should be branded on the brawn of the thumb with a hot iron (M for a Murderer, T for a Thief), so as to prevent their cheating justice a second time by means of the same plea. Gradually benefit of clergy was taken away from one offence after another, until at last[85] no serious crime was left to which this exemption from punishment attached. Again, the scholars of Oxford and Cambridge were not subject to many regulations that applied elsewhere, the members of these universities being allowed to beg, under certain restrictions, without incurring the penalties that ordinary "vagabonds and sturdy beggars" were liable to; on the other hand Jews and gypsies were subject to pains that did not attach to the native population.

The confusion of the illiterate constable, called upon to act when confronted with a medley of contradictory charters, passports and privileges, can well be imagined, and, needless to say, personation and forged certificates were largely resorted to both by the habitual criminal and by the professional beggar.

A very necessary reform introduced in this reign was that which, in cases of homicide, made the trial of the accused follow immediately upon the discovery of the offence. By long-established usage, originating from the time when the blood-feud was the recognised agency for avenging murder, the custom had arisen of postponing royal interference until the relatives or friends of the deceased had been allowed ample time in which to bring the criminal to justice, and, by ancient consent, those parties who were interested acted the rôle that our police detectives are now charged with, and, so to speak, had to "get up" the case against the alleged offender. An "Appeal," as it was called, was then made before the Coroner and by him publicly declared at five consecutive county-courts. It had been laid down in 1277,[86] that homicides should not be proceeded against at the King's suit until a year and a day had elapsed since the commission of the murder, and in 1482,[87] twelve months was declared to be the privileged period in which appellors alone might formulate an accusation. The natural result (to quote the Statute,[88] which did away with these out-of-date restrictions) was, that "the party is oftentimes slow, and also agreed with, and by the end of the year all is forgotten, which is another occasion of murder."

The anxiety to make money that pervaded all classes, but which was especially observable in the middle class, besides influencing the status of the constable and making the guild such a prominent feature of the time, was to a large extent responsible for the increasing rigour of the criminal law. The claims of property were urged to the uttermost, and people who had anything to lose pressed for the infliction of exemplary punishment in all cases where the rights of ownership were threatened. The result of this attitude was, that the war of extermination against those who had no visible means of subsistence was waged more relentlessly than ever before. The dissolution of the religious houses, following upon the civil commotions of the previous century, had multiplied the number of vagrants until the country was full of homeless and starving wanderers, many of whom, needless to say, maintained themselves by robbery. Bad government first created this dangerous class, and then attempted to exterminate it by wholesale hanging: it is said that more than 70,000 persons were put to death during the thirty-eight years of Henry the Eighth's reign; from this number a considerable reduction may be made for exaggeration, and of the remainder a large proportion suffered on religious and political grounds. But the general government was rigorous in the extreme, and, the value of human life being but little accounted of, a penal system grew up which exacted the death penalty for offences of a comparatively trivial nature, thus laying the foundations of the barbarous code which continued to disgrace our Statute book for centuries, vainly endeavouring to supply the place of preventive police by repressive measures that were expected to deter by virtue of their extreme severity. Sir Thomas More saw the uselessness of such a policy, and pointed out in his "Utopia," that as robbers often killed their victims on the principle that dead men tell no tales, it would be desirable, therefore, to reduce the punishment for theft in order to check the frequency with which murders were committed.

Wales and the Welsh borderland had long been the refuge of the outlaw, and the fastness of the robber; for whilst the natural features of the country favoured the escape of the fugitive from justice, the division of the principality into independent lordships, from which the king's writ was excluded, still further increased the difficulty of arrest. At one time there were 141 of these lordships, under as many petty chieftains known as Lords-Marchers, who indiscriminately sold charters, and harboured any lawbreaker who would pay for his footing. This kind of home-rule in Wales was incompatible with the maintenance of order in the West of England, and the counties near the border suffered severely for their proximity to this Alsatia. Accordingly in 1536 it was decided to extinguish the separate jurisdiction of the Lords-Marchers, and the whole of Wales was incorporated into England by an Act passed in the 27th year of Henry the Eighth, which provided Justices-of-the-Peace, Justices-of-the-Quorum, and Justices-of-Gaol-delivery for the Welsh counties, armed with the same power and authority that the corresponding Justices in England were possessed of; shortly afterwards (1543)[89] these newly-appointed Justices of the Peace were authorised to select two "substantiall gentlemen, or yeomen, to be chiefe constables of the hundred wherein they inhabite, which two constables in every hundred shall haue a speciall regard to the conseruation of the King's Peace."

A somewhat similar state of unrest existed in the neighbourhood of the Scottish border. Here the simple expedient of incorporation by Act of Parliament was of course impossible, so in the following year Henry instituted a Court, called the President and the Council of the North, and empowered it to preserve the peace, in that part of the realm, in the king's name; so that "his true subjects ... have undelayed justice daily administered."

Nearer home, Thomas Cromwell, acting for the king, overhauled the administration of police, and amongst other improvements established parochial registers of births, marriages and deaths,[90] but he was too fond of thrusting petty and vexatious regulations down the throats of a people, who, recently freed from their old bondage, were now for the first time beginning to think for themselves; his whole system moreover was vitiated by the frequency with which he employed spies and informers, a method of police control always peculiarly abhorrent to the English.

The law against vagrancy, which, as we have seen, was extremely severe during the preceding reigns, reached its most barbarous stage soon after the accession of Edward the Sixth. It is the irony of circumstance which associates the name of so mild a prince with one of the most atrocious measures ever imposed upon Englishmen, for Edward was but a child when the Statute in question was passed, and can have had no hand either in the inception or application of its provisions.[91] The responsibility belongs to the Protector, Somerset, yet it will always remain a mystery how he could sanction such a measure, for he is well known to have felt much sympathy for the masses of his countrymen, and was ever anxious to please. After remarking in the preamble that "idle and vagabond persons are worthy of death, whipping, imprisonment, and other corporal pain," the Statute proceeds to enact that "the offender there described to be an idle person shall be taken before a Justice of the Peace, who shall cause him to be marked with a hot iron in the breast, the mark "V," and adjudge him to be a slave to the person presenting him for two years, to be fed with bread and water, and be put to work (how vile soever it be) by beating, chaining, etc.: and if he runs away, the Justice, on conviction, shall cause such slave to be marked on the forehead or ball of the cheek with the sign of an "S," and shall further adjudge him to be his master's slave for ever:[92] and if he again run away, he shall suffer death as a felon."[93] No record tells how many unfortunates suffered the pains above recited, but the number is not likely to have been considerable, because vagabondage was by no means stamped out: the conclusion is forced upon one, however, that whilst law-making of such a type was in vogue, the infirmity of the police, whose business it was to enforce its enactments, cannot be considered as an unmitigated evil.

The grandmotherly domestic policy of the time, which told people what they were to eat, how they were to dress, and the number of hours they must labour, resulted, as all such attempts to interfere with the natural laws of supply and demand must result, in serious conflict between the authorities and the people, who sooner or later are sure to resent coercion, and have recourse to violent resistance to obtain economic freedom for themselves and their descendants. Dissatisfaction had long been dormant, but matters came to a head early in the reign of Edward VI.; popular risings took place simultaneously all over the country, the most serious outbreaks occurring in counties as far remote from each other as Cornwall in the West, and Norfolk in the East. There was no machinery in existence for the suppression of riots, no standing army, and no civil power in any way adequate to meet force with force: the executive was well-nigh powerless. Under these circumstances a penal statute[94] against unlawful assemblies was passed, much of which survives in our present Riot Act now in force. It became high treason for twelve or more persons, being assembled together, to attempt to alter any laws, etc., or to continue together for the space of an hour after being commanded by a Justice of the Peace to depart. It was made felony for twelve or more persons to "practice to destroy a park, conduit, or dovehouse," to pull down houses, barns, or mills, to burn any stack of corn, or to abate the price of victuals; or being assembled, to continue together an hour, after being ordered in like manner to depart.

To make this statute effectual, it was necessary to devise some new executive to enforce its provisions; accordingly in each county a high official called the Lord-Lieutenant was appointed, who was authorized to levy men and lead them against the enemies of the king, to which category rioters, as being guilty of High Treason, were now specifically declared to belong. With the appointment of Lords-Lieutenant, the last of the military functions exercised by the Sheriff passed out of his hands into those of the new official, who to this day retains a remnant of authority over the regiments of Yeomanry and Militia of his county.[95]

Until the middle of the sixteenth century any person so inclined[96] could keep an alehouse—there were no licensing laws and no excise-duty leviable on alcoholic beverages, which indeed, remained untaxed until 1643. Police control was therefore both difficult and unpopular. A first attempt to grapple seriously with this rapidly increasing mischief was made in 1552,[97] when Justices of the Peace and Constables were given powers, which, it was hoped, would do something to "remedy the intolerable hurt and trouble to the Commonwealth of the Realm" by "common alehouses and other houses called Tipling-houses." To this end Justices were authorized "to remove and put away ... the common selling of Ale and Beer" as they might see fit. Henceforward only houses "admitted and allowed in the open Sessions of the Peace" were to be used for the sale of liquor, and Justices were furthermore instructed to take bond and surety of the occupiers; "for which recognizance, the party so bound shall pay but 12 pence." Alehouse keepers who should fail to comply with these conditions might be committed to gaol by the Justices of the Peace.

CHAPTER VI
ECCLESIASTICAL POLICE AND POLICE UNDER JAMES I

The accession of Queen Elizabeth inaugurated a period of great activity for the police departments. Her rule was masterful and her control maternal. Magistrates and constables were kept busy in administering the statutes dealing with apprentices, wages, disputes in service, hours of labour, the regulation of industrial trades, laws for the suppression of rogues and vagabonds, and other enactments too numerous to mention, which followed each other in quick succession. Of the many statutes, public and private, passed in this reign, having for their object the enforcement of government by police, amongst the most important were those which referred to the City and Borough of Westminster, "for the suppressing and rooting out of vice there used." The police administration of the city had from time immemorial rested with the ecclesiastical authorities, and in 1559 the Queen gave a charter to the Dean and Chapter, carrying the same privileges, immunities and powers, that the Abbot and Convent used to enjoy. The Dean and Chapter delegated their authority to a functionary called the High Steward, and made him responsible for the preservation of the peace, but they conferred upon him no power of levying money on the inhabitants for that purpose, and made no provision for the appointing of assistants to help him in his duties. The result of this policy was continued disorder, and after twenty-five years of failure, a change of system was decided upon. In 1584[98] Westminster was divided into twelve wards, each under a Burgess, who was nominated by the Dean or High Steward, and these twelve Burgesses, as well as the superior officers, were authorized to punish "incontinences, common scolds, inmates, and common annoyances" in accordance with the laws and the customs of London. They had the power, also, to commit to prison peace-breakers, but they were bound to give notice of such committals to a Justice of the Peace for Middlesex within twenty-four hours. It was hereby further enacted that "if any person or persons, after he or they shall happen to be punished and banished from this city for any incontinency of life or such like, and shall return again to the city or borough, to the intent there to inhabit and dwell, that then every such person and persons shall be whipped naked at the cart's tayle throughout the said city, for every time so offending, contrary to this order."[98]

Lord Burleigh was the first High Steward appointed under this Act, and on his initiative certain ordinances[99] for the better government of the people of Westminster were added in the course of the same year. These regulations were as minute as they were varied. Not more than one hundred ale-houses were allowed, which taverns were bound to display a lantern with candle complete at their street-doors "every night, nightly (except those nights as the moon shall then and at that time shine and give light) upon paine to forfeit and pay for every time offending herein fourpence." Fourpence was in like manner the fine imposed on those burgesses and their assistants who failed to attend Divine Service at the Abbey on Sunday, but the owner of any hogs found wandering in Tuthill were mulcted in the sum of twelve pence. It would be interesting to learn the basis of these computations, and why a wandering hog cost the owner as much as three absences from morning prayer. More valuable, however, were the regulations introduced with the object of preventing the sale of bad and unwholesome food. Special officers, called Searchers, "discreet men having a knowledge of the trade," were appointed to look after the butchers, poulterers, and provision purveyors, with power to seize and burn bad meat, and to commit the owners (or their agents exposing food unfit for consumption), to prison, for a period of twenty-four hours. The licensing of ale-houses still rested with Justices of the Peace, and constables who neglected to apprehend "sturdy beggars" were liable to a fine of six shillings and eightpence.

In addition to the extra work thrown on their shoulders in connection with the Acts above mentioned, the jurisdiction of the Justice of the Peace was extended so as to encroach upon territory that had hitherto been the province of the Justice of Assize. Courts Leet, moreover, having by this time become quite unimportant, the appointment and control of the constabulary was centred almost entirely in the hands of the county magistrates. They held office under the Crown direct, and on their Commission took an oath to do equal right between rich and poor, to accept nothing beyond the customary fees for the performance of their duties, and to pay all fines inflicted by them into the Queen's Exchequer without embezzlement or delay. "The Justices of the Peace," writes Sir Thomas Smith, "be those in whom, at this time, for the repressing of robbers, thieves, and vagabonds, of privy complots and conspiracies, of riots and violences and all other misdemeanours in the commonwealth, the prince putteth his special trust ... and generally, as I have said, for the good government of the shire, the prince putteth his confidence in them."[100]

Amongst the duties laid upon the rural police for the control of agriculture, we find that before a labourer "retained in husbandry" could leave his parish or township, he had to obtain a testimonial from the constable, and to get two householders to declare his lawful departure.[101] This system of passports for the suppression of vagrancy never worked smoothly, and its development in later times as enforced against beggars by parish constables, led to serious abuses that will demand our attention further on.[102] The 15th section of the same Act empowered Justices and constables, upon request being made during harvest time, to compel labourers to work on farms where labour was scarce, and to put those who obstinately refused in the stocks for two days and one night.

The treatment served out to rogues, vagabonds, and sturdy beggars was more severe. Persons taken begging or "misordering themselves" were to be committed to the common gaol, and if convicted of the offence at the next sessions of the peace or gaol-delivery—"grievously whipped, and burnt through the gristle of the right ear with a hot iron of the compass of an inch about."[103] The burning was repealed, and open whipping "until his or her body be bloody" was afterwards substituted.[104] Although the severity of the punishment was thus mitigated, it was now apparently inflicted in a more summary fashion, for offenders were no longer to be committed to gaol, but were to be whipped on apprehension, probably by the constables at the instance of a Justice.

Up to this point the history of the constable is one long record of new duties undertaken, and fresh responsibilities incurred (though perhaps unwillingly), by that officer. This tendency, as we shall see, becomes more pronounced as time goes on, though in one particular, the contrary may be noticed. In 1601, the famous Poor Law of Elizabeth[105] sensibly relieved the parish officer of much irksome responsibility by associating with him churchwardens to help in assessing the poor-rate, and to assist in the general duty of supervising the needy. From this date until 1849 (when the Essex Rural Constabulary were first employed as assistant relieving officers for casuals) the care of the impotent poor was entrusted to overseers specially appointed for the purpose, with the result that constables had more leisure to make things unpleasant for the vagrant man and the sturdy beggar.

Hue and Cry remained the only practical agency for the pursuit and capture of delinquents. The method of its application, by whom it was to be made, and the penalties that followed upon its neglect, are fully dealt with in an Act passed during the 27th year of this reign,[106] which declares that Hue and Cry is to be deemed lawful only when made by Horsemen and Footmen, "any usage or custom to the contrary notwithstanding." It is not clear what is meant by this restriction, but it is probable that the prohibition of man-hunting with the aid of dogs was intended. In cases where the fugitive was not apprehended, and where the inhabitants responsible for the capture refused to pay the amercement, the constables and headboroughs were authorised to distrain upon the goods and chattels of the obstinate parishioners, and to hand over the money realized by the sale thereof to the Justices.[106]

The system pressed hardly on certain Hundreds, which owing to their situation and local circumstances, were unable to apprehend all the peace-breakers of the neighbourhood, and which were often so poor that a heavy fine meant ruin to one or more families in the group. We find in consequence that petitions against amercements were not uncommon: in 1597, for instance, the poor inhabitants of Benhurst in Berkshire had to appeal to the clemency of the Queen on account of the constant penalties imposed on them, some at least of which they thought should be borne by the neighbouring town of Maidenhead. The language in which this appeal is couched is so quaint and pitiful that their own words are given. "That whereas the said Hundred doth consist only of five small villages and three small Quillets or Hamlets, and hath lying through it two great highways: the one leading from London to Henley-on-Thames and the other from London to Reading: and either of them at the least three miles in length within the Great Woody Ground called the 'Thicket'—and no-one of the same villages standeth upon or adjoining to either of the said ways, but lie dispersedly far from the same: neither have the inhabitants of the same Hundred any open or common fields, either arable or other, adjoining or lying near to such parts of the same ways (within the said Thicket) as are most apt for robberies to be done, whereby they may have their servants or workmen labouring within the view of the said ways, to take notice of the robberies done: and therefore the said inhabitants cannot well have any speedy notice or intelligence of any robbery which shall be there committed unless the Party or Parties robbed should give the same unto them."[107] It is to the Queen's credit that the inhabitants of Benhurst in Berkshire did not appeal in vain to the royal clemency.

When in 1595 the civil arm was found insufficient to put down the riotous proceedings that disturbed the peace of the Home Counties, its shortcomings were made good by the supplemental employment of the military power. Elizabeth has been accused of proclaiming Martial Law when its application was not warranted by the exigencies of the case.[108] It is difficult for us at the present day to determine how grave were the disturbances that induced the Proclamation in question, or how far the ordinary methods of control had been tried and found wanting; but it is certain that no adequate police existed to quell anything in the nature of a serious riot. It was no doubt discreditable to the Government that such should be the case, but it was a discredit that it shared with all preceding Governments, and one that attached with a greater degree of culpableness to all subsequent Governments down to the year 1829. Given an unlawful and violent assembly of riotous persons, and the lack of any civil force strong enough to disperse them, it is difficult to see the practicability of any alternative measure to that of calling out the troops. The Commission given to Sir Thomas Willford in 1595 did not amount to Martial Law in the usual acceptation of the term, that is to say, the ordinary Law was not to be entirely superseded, the Provost Marshal was only to "speedily execute" those offenders whom the Justices of the Peace signified as deserving of death, and such sentence was to be carried out in the presence of the Justices who had had judicial cognisance of the offence. The only additional powers granted to Sir Thomas Willford were those by which he was authorized to "repair with a convenient company," and "calling to your assistance some convenient number of our justices and constables abiding about the said places, to apprehend all such vagrant and suspected persons, and them to deliver to the said justices, by them to be committed,"[109] etc., etc. The powers, in fact, given to the soldiers on this occasion were solely executive; no one was to be tried by Court-Martial; the verdict lay with the civil power; and only the carrying out of the sentence rested with the military authorities.

At no time of our history have the duties of the Justice and the tasks of the constable been more varied and onerous than they were at the period we are considering. The jurisdiction and control of these officers reached to the furthest corners of the social edifice; they had to see that the labourers rose betimes and did not take too long over their meals, nor might the country parson marry without "the advice and allowance"[110] of two Justices of the shire. All these multifarious duties they performed for the most part without pecuniary reward, the only fee to which they were entitled being the sum of five shillings for each day they sat in the execution of the Statute of Labourers. On the whole it must be allowed that they carried out the duties entrusted to them both with credit to themselves, and to the public advantage; for whilst Sheriffs, Under-Sheriffs, and Bailiffs were for ever giving cause for complaint on account of their "misdemeanour and evil behaviour," it was a rare occurrence for a Justice to be accused of extortion or injustice, and crime was far less common at this time than it afterwards became. Contemporary writers, however, criticise the county magistracy with some severity. Freak, the Bishop of Worcester, for example, writes to the Lord Treasurer in 1587, giving his opinion of the Justices of the Peace: "I do observe some weakness in that number: divers of them being but superficial, either for advice or for execution of any weighty affaires of the county," whilst Shakespeare is very hard upon all police functionaries as he knew them. Mr Justice Shallow, representing the Bench, Dogberry and Verges of the Watch, as well as Elbow and Dull of the Constabulary, are all treated with good-humoured contempt. The dramatist's account of the interview between Escalus and Elbow is of particular interest because it illustrates the evils of the system of deputy which clung to the office of parish-constable until forty or fifty years ago.[111]

The sort of difficulties that magistrates had to contend with, owing to the slackness of the constabulary, are graphically described in a letter dated 1596 in the course of which, Mr Hext, then a Justice of the Peace for Somersetshire, complains officially to the Lord Treasurer that thieves and robbers had grown so cunning, through having often been in gaol, that these old hands could seldom be laid hold of. "Others," he writes, "are delivered to simple constables and tything-men, that sometimes wilfully, and other times negligently suffer them to escape." After suggesting that steps should be taken to punish all keepers of ale-houses who harbour suspicious persons, and all constables and tything-men who suffer them to be at large, he goes on to explain how difficult it is to get the country people to prosecute in cases of theft, "for most commonly the most simple country man and woman, looking no further than to the loss of their own goods, are of opinion, that they would not procure any man's death for all the goods in the world." This same reluctance to prosecute, as we shall see, hindered the administration of justice for many generations, and the question of how best to remove it, is to this day a police problem, that has only been partially solved by the comparatively recent institution of the office of Public Prosecutor. Mr Hext was either very credulous, or thieves' appetites must have been prodigious in the sixteenth century, for in the same letter he describes how "within this three months I took a thief, that was executed this last assizes, that confessed unto me, that he and two more lay in an ale-house three weeks: in which time they eat twenty fat sheep: whereof they stole every night one." Finally he gives a woeful account of the Egyptians (i.e. Gypsies) that infested his county. "The inhabitants," declares the magistrate, "being wonderfully grieved by their rapines, made complaint at our Easter Sessions, after my Lord Chief Justice's departure: precepts were made to the tythings adjoining for the apprehending of them. They made answer, but (the Gypsies) were so strong that they durst not adventure of them: whereupon precepts were made to the constables of the shire: but not apprehended, for they have intelligence of all things intended against them.... And they grow the more dangerous in that they find they have bred that fear in Justices, and other inferior officers, that no man dares call them in question."[112]

From all this it is clear that the police organization left much to be desired. The country, in fact, was not yet ripe for a good police. With the central government corrupt, the superior courts venal, the upper classes of society prone to violence, and the masses for the most part unacquainted with justice, the sixteenth century would have found a good police force according to our standard, about as useful and as easy of comprehension as they would an Edison's phonograph or a modern treatise on the Spectrum Analysis.

The police administration of the seventeenth century differed but little from that which had gone before, no real advance being discoverable either in the theory or practice of peace-maintenance. Certain changes were indeed taking place from year to year, as old customs fell into disuse and as ancient words acquired new meanings; but, on the whole, growth and decay were almost evenly balanced. If it is admitted that the duties of a constable, and the matters that fell within his province, were now more clearly defined than heretofore, it must also be confessed that he was permitted to shirk his work more than ever. This slackness of performance may be clearly demonstrated by a comparison between the oaths taken by High and Petty Constables respectively, on their appointment, and the copious evidences of neglect that are everywhere apparent. Before his admission to office an oath was administered to the High-Constable-elect in these words:—"You shall swear, That you shall well and truly serve our Sovereign Lord the King in the Office of Constable. You shall see and cause His Majestie's Peace to be well and truly kept and preserved according to your power. You shall arrest all such persons as in your sight and presence shall ride or go armed offensively, or shall commit or make any Riot, Affray, or other Breach of His Majestie's Peace. You shall do your best endeavour (upon complaint to you made) to apprehend all Felons, Barretors, and Rioters, or persons riotously assembled: and if any such offenders shall make resistance (with force) you shall levy Hue and Cry, and shall pursue them until they be taken. You shall do your best endeavour that the watch in and about your Hundred be duly kept, for the Apprehending of Rogues, Vagabonds, night-walkers, Evesdroppers, Scouts, and other suspected persons, and of such as go armed, and the like: and that Hue and Cry be duly raised and pursued according to the Statute of Winchester, against Murderers, Thieves, and other felons: and that the Statutes made for the punishment of Rogues and Vagabonds, and such other idle persons as come within your bounds and limits be duly put in execution. You shall have a watchful eye to such persons as shall maintain or keep any common house or place, where any unlawful game is or shall be used: as also to such as shall frequent or use such places, or shall use or exercise any unlawful games there or elsewhere, contrary to the Statutes.

"At your Assizes, Sessions of the Peace, or Leet, you shall present all and every the offences done contrary to the Statutes made 1 Jacobi, 4 Jacobi, and 21 Jacobi Regis, to restrain the inordinate haunting and tippling in Inns, Alehouses, and other Victually Houses, and for repressing of drunkeness: you shall there likewise true presentment make of all Bloudsheddings, affrays, outcries, Rescous, and other offences committed or done against the King's Majestie's Peace within your limits: You shall once every year during your office present at the Quarter Sessions all Popish Recusants within your liberty, and their Children above 9, and their servants, (scil their monthly absence from the Church).[113] You shall well and duly execute all precepts and Warrants to you directed, from the Justices of the Peace of the County or higher Officers: you shall be aiding to your neighbours against unlawful purveyances: in time of Hay or Corn Harvest, upon request, you shall cause all persons meet to serve by the day for the mowing, reaping, or getting in of Corn or Hay: You shall in Easter week cause your Parishioners to chuse Surveyors for the mending of the Highways in your parish or Liberty; and you shall well and duly, according to your Knowledge, Power, and Ability, do and execute all other things belonging to the Office of Constable, so long as you continue in the said Office. So help you God."

If the obligations here enumerated had been effectually carried out, the King's Peace might have been a reality instead of the meaningless formula it had become; but High Constables were not professional police-officers like our Chief Constables, nor were they county magnates like the High Constables who once had superintended the police of the shire. The status of the office had steadily declined: instead of the great noblemen who, as we have seen, occupied similar posts under the Plantagenet Kings, and instead of the "Yeomen of the better class" spoken of by Lord Bacon, we find ale-house keepers and petty tradesmen, hardly less ignorant than the petty constables they were supposed to instruct, undertaking the office for the sake of profit, without any special aptitude, knowledge, or experience of their important duties, and without any serious intention of learning their work; for as no inducement or encouragement was held out to tempt or stimulate them to exertion, they were as inefficient when they relinquished their task as they were when they undertook it.

The form of oath required of petty constables, or Tything men, as they were still called, was as follows—"You shall swear that you shall well and truly execute the office of a Tythingman of the Tything of H. (or headborough, etc.). His Majestie's Peace in your own person you shall keep, and see it kept in all others, as much as in you lieth. In the presence of the High Constable you shall be aiding and assisting unto him: and in his absence you shall execute his office, and do all other things belonging to your office, according to your knowledge and Power, untill another be chosen in your room, or you shall be legally discharged thereof.—So help you God."

It is immaterial whether these police officers deliberately took the required oath, meaning not to be bound by it, or whether they were so ignorant as not to understand the nature of a solemn affirmation; but be this as it may, High Constables neglected their oath and their office, and petty constables followed suit, rarely acting at all except under compulsion, or unless an opportunity offered for some petty tyranny or extortion, whilst anything like professional activity was quite unknown. Nor was the prevailing stagnation the worst feature of the times. The moral character, as well as the social position of peace officers, Justice and constable alike, deteriorated under Stuart misgovernment. The King of course remained ex officio the "highest maintainer of the peace," and his weaknesses, illegalities, and extortions were not only repeated but multiplied in the descending links of the chain of responsibility.

It was in the reign of James I. that corrupt magistrates first earned for themselves the nickname of "Basket Justices," as the predecessors of the "Trading Justices" of later days were called; and even the higher judges were not altogether above suspicion. With such a degenerate personnel to carry out its provisions, small wonder that the law frequently became a dead letter. Let one instance suffice. During this reign the right of sanctuary was abolished by law; but custom, which was far more powerful than the police, having decided that sanctuaries should continue, not only was no attempt made to deprive these asylums of their ancient privileges, but certain of them, notably Whitefriars, secured for themselves additional immunities. The country, in fact, too often had to witness the ridiculous spectacle of a Legislature solemnly filling the Statute Book with elaborate enactments, whilst the constables whose duty it was to see the law enforced, were quietly going about their own business, following the plough, or minding the shop. English police was in truth at a low ebb, and the inevitable consequences of such a feeble executive quickly followed; bullies and blackguards of every kind overran the realm, and the weak had no rights except such as the strong chose to leave them. "Private quarrels were nourished" (writes the historian of the period) "... and duels in every street maintained: divers sects and peculiar titles passed unpunished and unregarded, as the sect of the Roaring Boys, Bonaventors, Bravadors, Quarterors, and such like, being persons prodigal, and of great expense, who, having run themselves into debt, were constrained to run next into factions, to defend themselves from danger of the law. These received countenance from divers of nobility: and the citizens, through lasciviousness consuming their estates, it was like that the number (of these desperadoes) would rather increase than diminish: and under these pretences, they entered into many desperate enterprises, and scarce any durst walk in the Street after nine at night.... Alehouses, dicing houses, taverns and places of iniquity, beyond manner abounding in most places."[114]

Slack as the police were in other directions, the campaign against vagrants continued to be conducted with vigour. All men, whatever their station, were ordered to apprehend such rogues or vagabonds as they might see begging, and to convey them to the nearest constable or tythingman, at whose hands they were liable to be branded with the letter "R," should they be found incorrigible.[115] Nor was this all. Justices of the Peace were instructed to summon the constables together some four or five days before the half-yearly sessions, and to command them "to make a general privy search one night for the finding out of such rogues and idle persons, and such as they find they shall bring to the Justices, and if for punishment (cause them to be) conveyed to the house of correction, there to be set to labour."[116] In order, moreover, that this privy search might be the more effectual, constables were empowered to claim the assistance of as many neighbours as they might find sufficient for their purpose.

Such persistent persecution of the vagrant class does not argue that the police were efficient, for if the vagrants had been organized or able to stand up for themselves, there is little doubt that they would have been left alone just as the Roaring Boys and the Bonaventors were. This is also true, to some extent, of those unfortunate persons who were suspected of being afflicted with the plague, and who were, in consequence, treated with as little consideration as are pariah dogs in an Indian cantonment. Fear of the plague aroused an unwonted display of energy amongst police officers, and caused extraordinary powers to be given to the Justices, who were authorised to appoint Searchers, Watchmen, Examiners, and others to see that no person suspected of being infected left their houses. If any such person, having been duly warned, "contemptuously went abroad," the Watchmen might, with violence, enforce him to keep his house, but if he was caught in the public streets having any infectious sore upon him uncured, he was adjudged "ipso facto" guilty of felony, and might be sentenced to death. Furthermore, if any man was discovered abroad "conversing with company" after being cautioned to keep house, even if there was no sore found about him, it was ordained that he should be punished as a vagabond, and be subject to all penalties for vagabondage (including whipping) besides being bound to his good behaviour for the space of one year.[117] In remote country districts similar powers were conferred, not only on Justices of the Peace, but also on constables and headboroughs.[118]

The following police regulations, which were in force during an outbreak of the plague in the City of Oxford, are from a Proclamation by Charles I. in the year 1644, and are far milder and more reasonable than those considered necessary in the previous reign, as a few extracts will shew. It is ordained—"That a Watchman (be) set at the Fore door of the house, to keep in the persons within the house, and also to fetch them such necessaries as they want, to be delivered to them so discretely and warily as may not endanger themselves, or those to whom they may resort.

"That when a house shall be known to be infected with the plague, forthwith a Red Crosse be set on the outward doore of the house, with an inscription in Capital Letters, with these words LORD HAVE MERCY UPON US.

"That every such Watchman, when he sitteth or goeth in the streets, carry a white stick in his hand, so that others may be admonished not to presse too neare into his company.

"That all burialls of persons dying of the plague be in the night-time, after tenne of the clock at the soonest, and without concourse of people, and that the Corpse be laid at least foure foot deep under the ground.

"That all Dogs and Cats in the Towne be forthwith sent away out of the Towne, or such as are found in the Streets, or Courts of the Colledges, to be knockt on the head, and their carcasses carryed away and buried without the Works at a convenient distance."[119]

It is not to be wondered at if during the troubles which befell the nation in King Charles' reign, police suffered in common with all other institutions. Internal peace was not likely to thrive during those eleven years whilst no Parliament was summoned, whilst Wentworth was devoting his energies towards the creation of a standing army that was to make the Crown absolute, whilst soldiers were billeted broadcast on unwilling inhabitants, and as long as in many districts martial law continued to supersede the ancient judicial system.

The keynote of Charles' policy was, from the first, a determination to raise money by hook or by crook, wherever the cost might fall, and to this end, one field of trickery after another was exploited. One device (1626) was to make Sheriffs of those of his opponents whom the King feared, so as to secure their detention in their own counties; another was an attempt (1640) to reintroduce the forest laws, by determining afresh the boundaries of the royal forests,[120] and re-insisting on their old-time privileges for the sake of the revenues accruing therefrom. Amercements were collected with an energy that was not content until the uttermost farthing had been gleaned: offences against the licensing laws were usually punished by fines, and the income arising from this source was not small, so it was enacted,[121] that if offenders did not pay up within six days, they were to be delivered to the constable to be whipped, and if the constable failed to execute his warrant, he was to be committed to prison by the Justice until he should induce someone else to do it for him.

Before approaching the subject of the Civil War and its after-consequences, it will, perhaps, not be out of place to pause for a moment, and looking back on the history of the past, to enquire, how much of the ancient police system of England survived at this period, how much of it was dormant, and what portions had altogether disappeared.

The Tything could no longer be said to exist: the increase of population, the growth of trade, and the improved facilities for moving from one part of the country to another, having rendered the retention of such a small sub-division impracticable. The parish took the place of the tything, and the parish-constable filled, to some extent, the position once held by the tythingman. We have seen how the office of constable, which theoretically ought to fall to all the inhabitants in rotation ("Religious Persons, Knights, Clerkes and Women" only excepted) came to be generally executed by paid, and practically permanent substitutes; but it must not be forgotten that the liability of the principal was not at an end, nor the appointment of the substitute valid, unless the transfer was approved by the inhabitants, and until it was duly confirmed by the proper authority.

The decay of frank-pledge, as a practical system, had long been complete, but the general principle remained, and now and again we come across attempts at revival and other indications, which prove that the Saxon régime was not entirely forgotten. In his "Customs of the City of London," published in 1642, Sir Henry Colthrop quotes from Liber Albus: "A large Charter is granted for the liberties of Southwark, and for correction of offences there, with a view of Franck-pledge with arrests, and to bring the offenders to Newgate."[122]

Writing in the first half of the seventeenth century, Minsheu says that "Inlaugh signifieth him that is in some Franke-pledge," and goes on to remark that "Decennier is not now used for the Chiefe man of a Dozen, but for him that is sworn to the King's Peace ... and that no man ordinarily giveth other securities for the keeping of the King's Peace, but his owne oath, and that therefore none answereth for another's transgression, but every man for himself—and for the generall ground this may suffice."[123] The exceptions here implied, refer no doubt to the custom of binding over an offender to keep the peace. "Inlaugh" is obviously the antithesis of the more familiar "Outlaw," whilst "Dozen" is used in its original sense of "Ten," and has nothing to do with the number "Twelve."

The liability of the Hundred to compensate the sufferers for the damages done therein still held good,[124] and constables had never been relieved, by Statute or otherwise, of their constitutional duty of presenting offences at the court of the Hundred or Leet. The High Constable was the chief executive officer of the Hundred, but as the scope of his office has been fully set forth in the form of oath already quoted, his exact position need not be further enlarged on, except to say that his disciplinary powers over the petty-constables seem to have been very limited. The Justices decided what the petty-constables were to do, and how they were to do it, despite the fact that the High Constable was the man who was responsible for the due conservation of the peace in his district: he had, in short, most of the responsibilities of a modern Chief Constable, with no power of appointing, dismissing, or controlling his assistants.

The obligation of all to bear arms had been re-enforced by Statute as recently as the year 1557,[125] and this liability remained the law of the land, at least nominally so, until the eighteenth century.

The Statute of Winchester defined the law as to Watch and Ward as heretofore, and although of course its precise regulations were no longer adhered to in detail, but modified continually with the changing circumstances of the times, no fresh authoritative declaration was issued on the subject.

Hue and Cry, also, had undergone little change and in 1626 is thus defined by Minsheu: "Hue and Cry—This signifieth a pursuit of one having committed felonie by the highway, for if the partie robbed, or any in the companie of one murdered or robbed, come to the Constable of the Next Towne, and will him to raise Hiew & Crie, or to make pursuit after the offendour, describing the partie, and shewing, as neere as he can, which way hee is gone: the Constable ought forthwith to call upon the Parish, for aid in seeking the felon: and if he be not found there, then to giue the next constable warning, and he the next, untill the offender be apprehended, or at the least untill he be thus pursued to the sea-side."

This brief survey of the police system of the early Stuart period not only shews how little progress had been made during the last five hundred years, but partly explains the rash haste with which all classes decided to appeal to the sword for the settlement of the differences that divided Crown and Commons. For some time back, in the absence of that restraining influence which an efficient police force might have afforded, people had readily run into factions; and, with arms in their hands, had supported their particular opinions by force, in defiance of all authority, and with a degree of violence that would never have been tolerated for a moment in any community where the value of peace-maintenance was duly appraised and properly insisted upon.

CHAPTER VII
MILITARY POLICE AND POLICE UNDER CHARLES II

If the feebleness of the police was in some degree responsible for the ready appeal to arms in 1642, the lawlessness that was so widespread at the close of the century, was largely the outcome of the disorganization of the national police system, which was the natural accompaniment of the Revolution. Civil War is invariably attended by an outbreak of crime that has no connection with the main quarrel, but which arises in the day of trouble because the powerlessness of the executive is the opportunity of the criminal. No longer is any one power supreme (crimes committed in one camp being generally condoned in the other), and a mania of insubordination drives ordinarily well-disposed persons to throw off the old restraints to which they instinctively submit in times of peace. When Civil War begins, the "King's Peace" is at an end, the Law is forgotten or despised, the whole body politic is in a state of fever, and the usual functions of orderly government are suspended.

If the Revolution in England produced less serious consequences than might have been expected, this result was due to the puritan zeal of the Parliamentary Army, which had no sympathy with any acts of violence that were not directed against those whom it held to be the enemies of liberty and religion, and which at least permitted no riotous licence amongst its adherents. Yet in spite of this desire of the popular party to maintain order, the whole civil machinery of the country was dislocated and out of gear as long as the war lasted; even the circuit of the Justice of Assize was discontinued; and marriages, no longer solemnised with the customary religious ceremony, were performed by Justices of the Peace, and in such a casual manner that few records were kept.

As soon as Cromwell's victory was complete he at once set to work to establish an orderly government, only to find that the old implements that had served his predecessors were now broken and well-nigh useless. In London, the Parliamentary stronghold, the re-establishment of order presented no insuperable difficulties, but in the rural districts the case was different. There the gentry, to which class both Justices of the Peace and grand jury-men belonged, were in the main royalists—whilst constables, tythingmen and petty jurymen were usually Roundheads. The resulting friction hampered the Protector's administration from the first; so that, much as he would have preferred to have made use of the constitutional machinery for peace-maintenance, he was often compelled to resort to novel expedients to police the new commonwealth. If it was denied to Oliver Cromwell to govern on constitutional lines, he held, nevertheless, the supreme command of a large and powerful army, such as no sovereign in England had previously had the control of, and inevitably therefore, he fell back upon the military forces that had served him so well in the past, hoping by their aid to restore, if not to improve upon, the state of security that had been wrecked by the war.

An attempt to reform the county magistracy by the creation of a new commission of the peace in the year 1651 having ended in failure, the Protector had no choice but to hand over to the Army those police functions which no alternative organization was competent to undertake, and so for the first time in English history, the civil power was subordinated to a military dictatorship, and for a while the sword supplanted the baton.

In the course of the year 1655 the whole of England and Wales was divided for administrative purposes into twelve police districts, viz.:—

To each of these districts a military officer was assigned, and largely endowed with inquisitorial and penal powers. Though holding for the most part no higher army rank than that of colonel or major, these functionaries (who were appointed by Cromwell himself, and who remained under his personal supervision) were styled Major-Generals,[126] and under this title exercised an office which for the moment overawed the constitutional ministers of the peace. At first it was not intended that the ordinary magistrates should be superseded, for the Major-Generals were instructed to co-operate with "the other Justices of the Peace," and if in practice this co-operation degenerated into flat coercion, such a result must be attributed to the exigencies of the occasion, or to the misinterpretation of their orders by the Protector's agents, rather than to the deliberate design of Cromwell himself.

The programme in front of the military reformers was a sufficiently extensive one, comprising, as it did, measures "for the security of the peace of the nation, the suppressing of vice, and the encouragement of virtue."[127] To enable them to grapple with their herculean task, they were assisted by a special force of militia, 6420 strong, all but two hundred of whom were mounted, and the expense of the new administration was met by the imposition of a tax of ten per cent. on the estates of Royalists, on the old English principle that those responsible for disturbances should pay for the re-establishment of order. As was only to be expected, political considerations suggested many of the police regulations now enforced—travellers from foreign parts were not free to remain on English soil till they had communicated to the Major-General of the district, their names, their destination, and their business, nor were they allowed to move from shire to shire without previously advising the Justices; whilst ex-cavaliers and other persons of known royalist sympathies were bound to notify every change of address to the soldier-magistrates, who were also empowered to disarm rebels and to distribute the confiscated weapons amongst supporters of the parliamentary cause. For the guidance of the Major-Generals a document was circulated, containing twenty-one headings, under which was set out a scheme for the better government of the people—horse-racing, cock-fighting, and bear-baiting were forbidden, drunkenness, blasphemy and sabbath-breaking were to be severely punished, and alehouses, not absolutely necessary for the refreshment of travellers, were to be suppressed.[128] The vigour with which this crusade against popular sports was pushed is well illustrated by the activity displayed by Colonel Barkstead, who with his own hand killed all the bears in Westminster, and ordered his men to wring the neck of every game-cock that they could find.

Under the military régime espionage was encouraged, and the new functionaries received special instructions to watch carefully such persons as appeared to live beyond their means. At the same time better protection for the public highways was provided, sheriffs being ordered to apprehend vagrants, robbers and highwaymen throughout their respective districts, with the assistance, if necessary, of the military police; in this way the vagrant nuisance was considerably abated, if not for long, and in one neighbourhood at least complete success would seem to have been attained, for Whalley was able to boast, "This I may truly say, you may ride all over Nottinghamshire, and not see a beggar or a wandering rogue."

Although the meshes of what the Protector called his "little poor invention" were calculated to entangle petty sinners amongst his opponents whilst admitting of the escape of more dangerous offenders amongst his adherents, it would be unjust to suppose that Cromwell's police system was only a pretext for the exercise of political tyranny. Many of the pains suffered by royalists were directly attributable to their own faults, and, without deserting their cause, they might with ordinary care have avoided many of the penalties they incurred. Generally speaking, the code was especially severe against moral as contrasted with criminal offences; gambling and profane swearing being punishable by heavy fines and imprisonment, whilst dissolute living rendered the offender liable "to be sent out of the Commonwealth," as transportation to Barbadoes was euphemistically termed. In addition to their already too numerous duties, the Major-Generals were expected to exercise a general supervision over the religious habits of the people, the regulations of weights and measures and the control of certain trades also falling to their lot. In London and Westminster, where the Puritans had a preponderating majority, and where Major-General Skippon and Colonel Barkstead respectively held command, the police control grew particularly irksome and irritating, puritan zeal being carried to such a pitch that fiddlers found themselves in the stocks for no worse offence than playing a jig, and even the ordinary Christmas festivities were sternly repressed. Search was frequently made in the taverns and alehouses, and any servant or apprentice found there after 8 P.M. was seized and taken before a Justice of the Peace for punishment. The Commissioners of Customs also were instructed to cause their officers to make similar visits in order to prevent tippling amongst watermen,[129] whilst stage-plays and places of public amusement were vigorously proceeded against.[130]

The régime associated with the Major-Generals was short; these functionaries were practically extinct before the end of 1657, and all traces of their rule were quickly obliterated after the restoration of the Monarchy. But the episode is none the less interesting as being the only example in England of an almost unqualified military police ascendancy, such as has been common elsewhere.

In estimating the results produced by this system, it must be borne in mind that the circumstances under which it was instituted were quite exceptional. The army which undertook the policing of the country was composed neither of foreigners nor of mercenaries; on the contrary, its members were the pick of the middle classes of England, and their object was the maintenance of liberty and religion, as they understood those terms, not conquest, nor oppression for oppression's sake.

Cromwell's lieutenants did their work with honesty and diligence, and, according to their lights, they held the balance of justice level between man and man. If their discretion had equalled their impartiality, posterity would be able to look upon their administration with unqualified approval, but the admonishing, meddling, and eavesdropping tactics that they saw fit to pursue only invited the reaction that so quickly followed on the heels of their employment.

As long as a strict military discipline remained in force, disorders were kept in check, but as soon as it was relaxed, the havoc caused by the war soon became apparent, and at no time in our history has there been such a need of a strong and capable police force as there was at the time of the Restoration. The country was overrun by vagrants and disbanded soldiery, numbers of people had suddenly been reduced to poverty, and numbers had as suddenly been raised to affluence; the revulsion of feeling that followed upon the downfall of the puritan party led to excesses of every kind, and licence and violence thrived in the general confusion; nor was it till Charles II. had been king for several years that any attempt was made to grapple with the state of chaos to which the internal security of the kingdom had been reduced, and even then the matter was not faced with any resolution.

London was in a disgraceful condition. Few towns in Europe were at once so inadequately policed, so badly lighted, and in such an insanitary state as the capital city of England; proof of the lack of proper sanitation, and its unfailing result, was brought home to people in convincing form at the time when the nightly procession of dead-carts, filled with victims of the plague, was the only traffic to be seen in the streets; but although the great fire of 1666 improved out of existence some of the most pestilential quarters, London remained a city of squalor and darkness. Most of the thoroughfares were without pavements of any kind, and such as existed were so sunken and broken that they were a source of danger to those who stumbled along them; rubbish was shot out of upper windows into the street beneath, and the public squares were used as receptacles for all the filth of the neighbourhood. After nightfall the certainty of having to encounter drunken bullies and highway robbers confined to their houses those citizens whom urgent business did not compel to walk abroad; even in daylight there were districts where the peace officers dared not venture, and Macaulay tells us that within the sanctuary of Whitefriars "even the warrant of the Chief Justice of England could not be executed without the help of a company of musketeers."[131]

All this time the legislature was mute: throughout the reign of Charles II. hardly a single Act of Parliament was passed dealing with the policing of the twin cities that make up the metropolis. The municipal authorities did what they could, and by an Act of Common Council provided a force of about one thousand Bellmen, afterwards called Charlies, in memory of the monarch in whose reign they were first instituted. Unfortunately these watchmen were allowed to shirk their duties and were well known to be altogether inefficient, so much so, that when rowdy apprentices and other unruly assemblages gave trouble, as they too often did, no one thought of looking to such weak-kneed officials for the safety of the town. On such occasions companies of soldiers were requisitioned to protect the main thoroughfares, and, as a further precaution, chains were stretched from one side of the street to the other to prevent the free movement of the riotous bands.

Before the end of the reign, however, some advance was made towards rendering London a fit place to live in. Several squares were enclosed and planted; new and wider streets were built; but the greatest improvements of the time were due, not to the efforts of municipal authorities, but to the recently-formed Royal Society, which investigated the question of sanitary police, and offered suggestions that to some extent were acted upon, with the result that England has since been free from the plague, so fatal in former years. Commissioners of Sewers were appointed, and the duties of scavengers and rakers, with regard to the cleansing of the metropolis, were formulated.

In other departments also, progress was manifest, especially in the lighting arrangements. By an act passed in 1672[132] it had been ordered that a certain number of candles should be displayed every night between Michaelmas and Lady Day; but in 1685 private enterprise was responsible for placing a light before every tenth door from dusk till midnight. The effect cannot have been dazzling, but even this moderate amount of illumination was more effectual in preventing crime than any number of the watchmen of the period were likely to be. About the same time regulations for the control of hackney carriages plying for hire were first published.[133]

In the rural districts peace-maintenance was, if possible, at a lower ebb than in London—the roads were almost impassable throughout the winter months, and highwaymen were as frequent as mile-stones. Peace officers were practically non-existent: Justices were careless and apathetic, and Lords of the Manor had neglected to hold Courts-Leet for the annual election of Constables. A statute of 1673[134] complains of the lack of constables, and authorises two Justices of the Peace in each district to fill up the vacancies immediately. This was the first occasion on which the power of appointing petty constables had been by Act of Parliament conferred on the magistrates, and official sanction extended to what had for years been the almost invariable custom. For the better policing of highways, turnpikes were established,[135] and those who used the roads made to subscribe towards the necessary repairs, instead of the whole burden being thrown on the rural population, which, partly by forced labour exacted by law (the Corvée of Feudal times), and partly by a parochial rate, had been compelled to mend the roads that traversed their neighbourhood. It is to be feared that this long-delayed act of justice was attributable rather to the vile condition of the highways than to any tender consideration for the rural population.

The system of passports, which had been introduced some centuries before for the purpose of checking vagrancy, continued to find favour, and was believed in as a panacea for the prevention of all kinds of crime. It was thought, not without reason, that a thief could not long pursue his vocation undetected amongst neighbours, who were acquainted with his circumstances, and who saw how he occupied his time and how he spent his money, whilst a stranger who came to-day and was gone to-morrow, might rob from one end of England to the other with impunity. The police were therefore instructed to enforce the regulations against vagrants with increased vigour, and in the following manner. After a vagrant beggar had been whipped he was entitled to a testimonial signed by the minister of the parish and countersigned by the constable or tythingman, setting forth the date and place of his punishment, something after this form. "W. W., a sturdy vagrant beggar (aged about forty years) tall of stature, red-haired, and long lean-visaged, and squint-eyed, was this 24th day of A in the 22nd year of the reign of Our Gracious Sovereign Lord King Charles the Second, etc., openly whipped at T in the County of G; according to the law, for a wandering rogue; and is assigned to pass forthwith from parish to parish by the officers thereof the next streight way to W in the county of B, where he confesseth he was born: and he is limited to be at W aforesaid within twelve days now next ensuing at his peril. Given under the hands and seals of C. W. minister of T. aforesaid, and of J. G. constable there, the day and year aforesaid."[136] Any vagrant found by a constable, and unable to produce such a testimonial, was straightway to be arrested, and became liable to more whipping, or if found incorrigible[137] to transportation "to any of the English plantations beyond the sea" by the order of a majority of Justices at Quarter Sessions. Although we no longer look upon vagrancy as "The Mother and Root of all Evil" as our forefathers did, and have relaxed the stringency of the laws against vagabondage, the tramp is still an object of legitimate suspicion, and a watchful eye is kept by the Convict Supervision Office over all convicts at large, who are bound to produce their licenses when called upon by a police officer to do so, and are only allowed to travel from district to district under certain restrictions.

Among the many difficulties that those responsible for the preservation of the peace had to contend with, one of the most complicated was how best to deal with the lawless aggression of the Lowland Scots without involving the two nationalities in actual war. Henry VIII. endeavoured to solve the problem by the creation of a special local authority called "The Council of the North," but this was only a temporary measure, and not very successful, nor were the expedients adopted by Elizabeth any more effectual. Throughout the whole of the seventeenth century, the northern counties were continually overrun by predatory bands, called Moss-troopers, who taking advantage of the almost perennial hostility existing between the English and the Scots, harried the country-side, murdering, marauding, and lifting cattle: in case of pursuit, or after an unusually successful expedition, they had only to cross the border to avoid capture. According to Fuller,[138] their numbers amounted at one time to some thousands of men, who scoured the country in troops and exacted an annual tribute from the inhabitants of the valleys between the Solent and the North Sea. Although Fuller's was assuredly an exaggerated estimate, these enterprising freebooters were without question a most formidable fraternity. The Union of the Crowns of England and Scotland deprived them, it is true, of the international pretext they had traded upon in the past, but their depredations continued just the same as before. With the hope of putting an end to these raids, a local police force was established in 1672,[139] and afterwards kept alive by successive Acts of Parliament. The Justices of the Peace for the northern counties were empowered by virtue of this Statute to make a charge of £500 against Northumberland, and of £200 against Cumberland, for the payment and support of a body of men, forty-two strong (viz., thirty Northumbrians and twelve Cumbrians), whose duty it was to "search out, discover, pursue, apprehend, and bring to trial by law,"—the raiders. In strict justice, the task of suppressing the Moss-troopers should not have been left to a local force, but the political relations between the two countries were already strained almost to breaking point, and the employment of troops on the borderland might, and probably would, have induced a rupture. Under the circumstances, therefore, the government of the day was probably justified in the course pursued, but on no account should the whole expense have been borne by the very counties which had already principally suffered through the inroads of the raiders.

Contemporary literature shews how lamentably insecure life and property had become in the days of the later Stuarts, and during the early Georgian period. Luttrell's diary is one long catalogue of crimes of violence, and he remarks, from his own experience, that "footpads are very troublesome in the evening on all the roads leading to the city, which renders them very unsafe." In his history of England, Smollet declares that "thieves and robbers are now become more desperate and savage than they had ever appeared since mankind was civilized."

No thoroughfare was free from the tyranny of the fraternity of highwaymen, who were allowed to terrorize whole districts, and who enjoyed an almost unlimited freedom from interference. As their depredations grew more extensive, their insolence increased. Evelyn describes how a gang of robbers succeeded in appropriating the taxes that had been collected in the northern counties, as the bags containing the money were being escorted through Hertfordshire, on their way to London: the highwaymen first stopped and secured all travellers in the immediate neighbourhood, placed them under guard in a field, and after killing the horses of their captives to prevent pursuit, attacked the escort, put them to flight, and captured the treasure. The authors of this outrage were never caught.