The most active and conspicuous officer of the parish or township was the constable, or petty constable, as he is often called, to distinguish him from the high-constable of the hundred. He was appointed by the court-leet, where this was still held; in other cases by the steward of the lord of the manor, the vestry of the parish, or, as a part of their residuary duties, by the justices of the peace. The regular form of oath of the constable may be quoted in some fulness to show the nature of his duties. "You shall swear that you shall well and truly serve our sovereign lord, the king, in the office of a constable. You shall see and cause his majesty's peace to be well and duly 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 majesty's peace. You shall do your best endeavor to apprehend all felons, barrators, and rioters, or persons riotously assembled; and if any such offenders shall make resistance you shall levy hue and cry and shall pursue them until they be taken. You shall do your best endeavors that the watch in and about your town be duly kept for the apprehending of rogues, vagabonds, nightwalkers, eavesdroppers, and other suspected persons, and of such as go armed and the like. … 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. In time of hay or corn harvest you shall cause all meet persons to serve by the day for the mowing, reaping, and 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. … And you shall well and duly, according to your knowledge, power, and ability, do and execute all things belonging to the office of a constable so long as you shall continue in this office. So help you God." [Footnote: Dalton, The Country Justice, chap. clxxiv.]
The constable, among the other duties prescribed by his oath, had to "raise the hue and cry" when it was demanded—that is to say, if any one were assaulted or robbed and appealed to the constable of the parish in which the injury occurred, the constable must summon out his neighbors, whether it were by day or by night, to seek the culprit. If not successful he must give notice to the constables of the adjacent parishes, who were similarly to raise the hue and cry in their neighborhoods. If the offender was not then discovered the person who suffered the loss might bring suit for its recovery from the whole hundred in which the attack occurred. [Footnote: Ibid., chap. lxxxiv,]
In practice hue and cry was a very ineffective method of capturing ill- doers. Harrison says: "I have known by my own experience felons being taken to have escaped out of the stocks, being rescued by others for want of watch and guard, that thieves have been let pass, because the covetous and greedy parishioners would neither take the pains nor be at the charge to carry them to prison, if it were far off; that when hue and cry have been made even to the faces of some constables, they have said: 'God restore your loss! I have other business at this time.'" [Footnote: Harrison, Description of England (Camelot ed.), 247.] To prosecute petty offenders, to force laborers to serve during harvest- time, to sign their testimonials when they wished to leave the parish, and to see that innkeepers refused no travellers, gave the constable considerable duties of local supervision.
The constable must, with the advice of the minister and of one other inhabitant of the parish, whip any rogue, vagabond, or sturdy beggar who appeared in the parish, and then send him, with a testimonial to the fact of the whipping, back to his native parish. The word rogue was a comprehensive term as used in the laws of Elizabeth, including wandering sailors, fortune-tellers, collectors of money for charities, fencers, bearwards, minstrels, common players of interludes, jugglers, tinkers, peddlers, and many others, and adequate whipping of them and starting them in the direct route homeward must have been no sinecure. [Footnote: Lambarde, Duties of Constables, S 45.]
A contemporary testimonial with which such a person was provided may not be without interest as an illustration of the manners of the time. "A. B., a sturdy rogue of tall stature, red-haired and bearded, about the age of thirty years, and having a wart neere under his right eie, born (as he confesseth) at East Tilberie, in Essex, was taken begging at Shorne in this county of Kent, the tenth of March, 1598, and was then and there lawfully whipped therefor, and hee is appointed to goe to East Tilberie aforesaid, the direct way by Gravesend, over the river of Thamise; for which hee is allowed one whole day, and no more at his peril; subscribed and sealed the day and yeare aforesaid. By us" (signed by the minister, the constable, and a parishioner). [Footnote: Lambarde, Duties of Constables, S 45.] It is no wonder that constables are advised "in every corner to have a readie hand and whip."
The constable was also the warden of such arms and armor as each parish kept, or was supposed to keep, in obedience to the militia requirements. A writer of Elizabeth's time says: "The said armour and munition likewise is kept in one several place of every town, appointed by the consent of the whole parish, where it is always ready to be had and worn within an hour's warning. … Certes there is almost no village so poor … that hath not sufficient furniture in a readiness to set forth three or four soldiers, as one archer, one gunner, one pike, and a billman." [Footnote: Harrison, Description of England (Camelot ed.), 224.]
An account of the armor kept in a parish in Middlesex is entered in the vestry accounts of the year 1583. "Note of the armour for the parish of Fulham: first, a corslet, with a pyke, sworde, and daiger, furnished in all points, a gyrdle only excepted. Item, two hargobushes, with flaskes and touch-boxes to the same; two morryons; two swords, and two daigers, which are all for Fulham side only. All which armore are, and do remayne in the possession and appointment of John Palton, of Northend, being constable of Fulhamsyde the yere above wrytten." [Footnote: Toulmin Smith, The Parish, 473.] One may easily imagine the nature and value of such accoutrements, and of the villagers who were occasionally pressed into the service to wear them. Mouldy and Bullcalf, Wart, Shadow, and Feeble, and Falstaff's whole company of "cankers of a calm world and a long peace" may readily enough have been drawn from the life.
These duties the constable must fulfil at his own initiation or upon the recurrence of the occasion for them. But the great part of his duties were those imposed upon him from above in special cases—that is to say, in carrying out the warrants and precepts of the justices of the peace, or occasionally of the coroner, sheriff, lord-lieutenant, or still higher officials. If the justice of the peace was the man-of-all- work, as has been said, of the government of the time, the constable was the tool and instrument with which he worked. The constable was required to arrest all persons who were to be bound over by the justices to keep the peace, and all felons and other ill-doers for whom a warrant had been issued, and to bring them before the justices into jail. And woe be to him if he allowed such a prisoner to escape. The justices might construe his inactivity as participation in the crime of the prisoner, or he might be fined to the extent of all his property. [Footnote: Lambarde, Duties of Constables, S 15]
The constable must carry out the lesser sentences of the justices, inflicting the punishment ordered and collecting the fines imposed. For instance, when a certain poor woman, Elizabeth Armistead, was convicted of petty larceny at the West Riding Sessions, in 1598, it was ordered by the justices that "she shall nowe be delivered to the constable of Keerbie, and he to cause her to be stripped naked from the middle upward and soundly whipped thorowe the said town of Keerbie, and by hym delivered to the constable of Kirkby and he to see like execution within his town, and the next markett att Weatherbie to delyver her to the constables of Weatherbie, and they to see like punishment of her executed thorow their towns." [Footnote: West Riding Sessions Rolls, 58] In assessing and collecting taxes and in obtaining information the constables were at the command of county and hundred authorities. They were used as the active or at least the most available intermediaries between the justices of the peace and the individuals whom it was desirable to reach. [Footnote: Hist. MSS. Commission, Report XIV., App, pt. iv, 28, 67.] They were by no means ideal instruments; many were extremely ignorant—as, for instance, the constable of Collingbourne Ducis, who in 1650 prays to be relieved from his office because he can neither read nor write, and is obliged to go to the minister and divers others to get his warrants read. [Footnote: Hist. MSS. Commission, Report I., 121] They were constantly being fined by the justices for neglect of their duties or for inefficiency. [Footnote: Middlesex County Records, II., 36, 41, 139.]
The most important remaining ancient parochial officers were the church-wardens. Their position and functions were not so purely ecclesiastical as the name would suggest. Their duties included, it is true, the care of the parish church and the provision of other material requirements for religious services. But they also included many things which were quite clearly temporal or civil in their nature. Coke says of their position, "The office is mere temporal." [Footnote: Lambarde, Duties of Constables, SS 57-60.] That is to say, the church-wardens represented the parishioners, not the minister or the ecclesiastical authorities. They formed a quasi-corporation for the holding of the personal property that belonged to the parish, and could sue and be sued as trustees for the parish. [Footnote: Lambarde, Duties of Church- wardens, S 1.]