When fish was wanted at Rochester, the tenants of the four hydes of Hedenham and Cuddington, near Aylesbury, were called out; two of the hydes brought the fish from Gloucester into Buckinghamshire, and the other two hydes carried it on to Rochester: it is likely that they were sent to fetch the dainty lamprey, still sought for at Gloucester. The langerodes, or long journeys, were very troublesome to the tenants, but could not be dispensed with while there were no regular mails, and no public conveyances. A person undertaking a langerode either received some remuneration or worked out his rent by serving as a carrier; in general he was not inclined to leave his home and farm, and found it more convenient to pay the price of the service, which enabled the lord to find another carrier. No services were more frequently commuted than the duties of arriage and carriage, and a body of professional carriers was gradually formed by the habit of constant commutation.
WATCH AND WARD.—THE BEADLE.
The wardmen of ancient times were a kind of rural police, whose duty of ward-keeping was connected with their tenure. They were, probably, maintained on the north side of London until the institution of a general system of police in the time of Edward the First. By the statute of Winton, it was ordered that a watch should be kept by six men at each gate of a city, by twelve men in every borough, and by six men or four men in each rural township, every night, from the Feast of the Ascension of our Lord to the Feast of St. Nicholas. The watchmen could detain any one unknown to them; any one who would not stand and declare himself, was pursued with hue and cry—with horn and voice—
"Swarming at his back the country cried."
We suppose that St. Nicholas became the patron of highwaymen, because the watch was intermitted on the day dedicated to St. Nicholas. The wardmen were occasionally noticed in the Domesday of St. Paul's. The survey of 1279 states, that at Sutton, in Middlesex, each tenant who had cattle on the lord's lands to the value of thirty pence, paid a penny at Martinmas, called ward-penny; but this tax was not due from the watchmen of the ward, who waited at night in the King's highway, and received the ward-staff:—
"They wared and they waked,
And the Ward so kept,
That the king was harmless,
And the country scatheless."
In Essex, the ward-keeper had a rope with a bell, or more than one bell, attached to it: the rope may have been used to stop the way. The ward-staff was a type of authority, cut and carried with peculiar ceremony, and treated with great reverence.
The duties of the beadle (Saxon, bydel or bædel), in ancient times, lay more on the farm than in the law-court, the state procession, or in the parochial duties of punishing petty offenders, as in the present day.[58] In many places, the bedelry and the haywardship were held together by one person. The beadle was the verger of the manorial court; he likewise overlooked the reapers and carried his rod into the harvest-field. At Darent, near Rochester, the beadle held five acres as beadle, shepherd, and hayward; he had eighteen sheep and two cows in the lord's pasture; against Christmas he had a crone—an old sheep—a lamb with a fleece, and some other allowances. At Ickham, in the same county, the beadle's office was hereditary: the beadle had five acres with a cottage for his service, and made all the citations of the court, and, if he went on horseback into the Weald of Kent, he was allowed provender for his horse; he had pasture for five hogs, five head of cattle, and a horse; he attended in the fields to regulate the labours of the harvest. And such had been the tenure of his father, grandfather, and great-grandfather.
Old English gentlemen were anciently very much afraid of theft and peculation; they believed that "Treste lokes maketh trewe hewen,"—or, to change their maxim into current English, they believed that "firm locks made faithful servants." The barns were to be well closed after August, and no servant was to open them until threshing-time, without the special direction of the landlord or the steward. The strictest accounts were kept. Every person, in any situation of the slightest trust or responsibility, was required to render an account of every penny and every article passing through his hands, to the receiver, or bailiff, whose accounts were revised once a year by auditors, who went round from manor to manor.