And those that fled they banisht as the king’s felons.”
The phrase trail‐baston is, in old French, “draw the staff.” The use and intent of it in the present case has been learnedly discussed by various writers; but it appears to be beyond a doubt that, as Sir Francis Palgrave remarks, “it designates the offender and the offence, not the court or tribunal.” In the “Chronicle of Rochester,” already referred to—on the margin of which we find various pictorial illustrations—the representation here given is of two men fighting with bludgeons. And it is evident that the real object of this special commission was to put down, in a resolute and summary manner, what in modern phrase would be styled “club‐law.” These commissions seem to have been so useful and efficient, as to be continued for about eighty years, or until the middle of the reign of Richard II. Stowe speaks of them as holding special sessions, occasionally, in the metropolis; mentioning particularly “at the stone‐cross near the Strand, over against the bishop of Coventry’s house;” and sometimes within that prelate’s mansion.
Calling to mind the terrible example made of the judges in the seventeenth year of Edward’s reign, and combining with it this special and vigorous suppression of provincial disorders, we cannot fail to be reminded of the portrait sketched by the laureate in his recent Idylls; or avoid a question, whether the poet had not this sovereign in his memory when he drew such a portrait:—
“The blameless king went forth and cast his eyes
On whom his father Uther left in charge
Long since to guard the justice of the king.
He looked, and found them wanting; and as now
Men weed the white horse on the Berkshire hills,
To keep him bright and clean as heretofore,
He rooted out the slothful officer