A History of Police in England

by W. L. Melville Lee

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.