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.:—