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The English Village Constable, 1580-1642: The Nature and Dilemmas of the Office

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 January 2014

Joan Kent
Joan Kent*
Affiliation:
Sweet Briar College
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Extract

Dogberry: This is your charge: you shall comprehend all vagrom men; you are to bid any man stand, in the prince's name.

Watch: How if a' will not stand?

Dogberry: Why, then take no note of him, but let him go; and presently call the rest of the watch together, and thank God you are rid of a knave.

(Much Ado About Nothing, Act III, Scene iii)

Modern historians who have described the English village constable of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries have largely accepted Shakespeare's Dogberry as an accurate portrayal of this official. They are almost unanimous in regarding the constable as an incompetent agent of royal authority, and like many of his seventeenth-century critics they depict him as uneducated, unprofessional, lazy, and disobedient. A recent study has also revealed that some of the men chosen as constable had “criminal” records. In one Essex village a number of these officials had previously been “in trouble with the courts,” sometimes having broken laws that it would be their duty to enforce when they became constables. Both historians and seventeenth-century commentators frequently attribute such failings to the social unsuitability of the men selected for the office. They claim that the substantial inhabitants of the village sought to avoid such a lowly position, and that it was thus filled by the “meaner sort” of residents who were attracted by its perquisites or were too poor to hire substitutes. Such men, it is contended, were not only ignorant and unable to spare time for their duties but also so lacking in social status that they were easily intimidated and commanded little respect.

Several studies of county government do suggest alternative approaches to understanding the constable's alleged incompetence. T.G. Barnes and A. Hassell Smith, for example, attribute the constable's weaknesses not only to the personal and social defects of the men selected for the position; they also suggest that divided allegiances often rendered such officials incapable of action.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of British Studies , Volume 20 , Issue 2 , Spring 1981 , pp. 26 - 49
Copyright
Copyright © North American Conference of British Studies 1981

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References

The research for this article was initially made possible by a Canada Council grant and later supported by grants from Sweet Briar College. I wish to express special appreciation to Miss Margaret Henderson, Chief Archivist at St. Helen's, for her many kindnesses during my visits to the Hereford and Worcester Record Office, to the Reverend C.J.L. Waters for making available to me the Pattingham Constables' Accounts; to F.B. Stitt and the members of his staff at the Staffordshire Record Office for their cooperation and helpfulness over many years; to the Reverend Peter Bradshaw for making it possible for me to examine the Shelton Constables' Accounts; and to the Reverend A.C.C. Heigham for allowing me to examine materials in Bunwell and Carleton Rode.

1 Official documents of the seventeenth century often implied, if they did not directly state, that constables were being chosen from the “meaner sort” of inhabitants who were incapable of fulfilling the duties of the office; see, for example, British Library (hereafter B.L.), Add. MS. 12496, f. 287v.; Staffordshire Record Office (hereafter Staffs. R.O.) Quarter Sessions Order Book, V, f. 47. Also see Lambard, William, The Dueties of Constables, Borsholders, Tythingmen, and such other lowe and Lay Ministers of the Peace. (London, 1599)Google Scholar, Preface, pp. 3-4; Bacon, Francis, “The Answers to Questions Touching the Office of Constable” (1608)Google Scholar, in Spedding, J.et al, eds., The Works of Francis Bacon VII (London, 1859), p. 751Google Scholar; Dalton, Michael, The Countrey Justice (London, 1635), p. 47Google Scholar; Sheppard, William, The Offices and Duties of Constables, Borsholders, Tything-men, Treasurers of the County-Stock, Overseers of the Poore and other lay-Ministers (London, 1641), pp. A3-A3v., 16–17Google Scholar; G[ardiner], R[obert], The Compleat Constable (2nd ed., London, 1700), p. 7Google Scholar; W., E., The Exact Constable: with his Original and Power in the Offices of Church wardens, Overseers of the Poor, Surveyors of the Highways, Treasurers of the County Stock, and other inferior officers as they are established, both by the Common Laws and Statutes of this Realm (2nd ed., London, 1660), pp. 8–10Google Scholar; Read, Conyers, ed., William Lambarde and Local Government (Folger Documents of Tudor and Stuart Civilization, Ithaca, 1962), pp. 107, 115, 141Google Scholar. Sharpe, J.A., “Crime and Delinquency in an Essex Parish, 1600-1640,” in Cockburn, J.S., ed., Crime in England, 1550–1800 (Princeton, 1977), pp. 90–109Google Scholar discusses the “criminal” records of some constables. Despite their records of wrongdoing, however, Sharpe argues that they were men “of middling fortune,” of some “economic and social standing.” The modern characterization of the constable is based largely on Cheyney, Edward P., A History of England from the Defeat of the Armada to the Death of Elizabeth (New York, 1926), II, p. 408Google Scholar; Tait, W.E., The Parish Chest (3rd ed., Cambridge, 1969), p. 187Google Scholar; Critchley, T.A., A History of Police in England and Wales (rev. ed., London, 1978), pp. 10–11Google Scholar; , Sidney and Webb, Beatrice, English Local Government from the Revolution to the Municipal Corporations Act: The Parish and the County (London, 1906), pp. 18–19Google Scholar; Hurstfield, Joel, “County Government: Wiltshire c. 1530—c. 1660,” in Freedom Corruption and Government in Elizabethan England (Cambridge, Mass., 1973), p. 283Google Scholar [first published in Pugh, R.B. and Critall, Elizabeth, eds., Victoria History of the Counties of England: Wiltshire, V (1957)Google Scholar]; Barnes, T.G., Somerset, 1625-40 (London, 1961), pp. 76–77Google Scholar; Smith, A. Hassell, County and Court: Government and Politics in Norfolk, 1558-1603 (Oxford, 1974), pp. 112–13Google Scholar; Fletcher, Anthony, A County Community in Peace and War: Sussex, 1600-1660 (London, 1975), pp. 226–27Google Scholar; Willcox, William B., Gloucestershire, A Study in Local Government, 1590-1640 (New Haven, 1940), pp. 50, 54–55Google Scholar. However, Fletcher concludes (p. 223) that “negligence and inefficiency” were “the exception rather than the rule” amongst local officials, while Willcox (p. 55) suggests that the constable is deserving of greater sympathy than he has received. Samaha, Joel, Law and Order in Historical Perspective (New York, 1974), pp. 84–88Google Scholar regards the constable as an effective law enforcement officer, and suggests that these officials were of higher social status than earlier writers had assumed. More positive evaluations of the constable are also found in two other brief treatments of the office, Trotter, Eleanor, Seventeenth Century Life in the Country Parish (Cambridge, 1919)Google Scholar, ch. 5, and Campbell, Mildred, The English Yeoman under Elizabeth and the Early Stuarts (New Haven, 1942), pp. 318–25Google Scholar, while Hoskins, W.G., The Midland Peasant (London, 1957), p. 208Google Scholar, claims that constables of Wigston Magna, Leicestershire, were drawn from “the leading yeomen, husbandmen and craftsmen of the village.”

2 Barnes, , Somerset, p. 77, 222, 230Google Scholar; Smith, Hassell, County and Court, pp. 112–13Google Scholarfrom which the quotation is taken. Also see Cheyney, , History of England, II, pp. 415–16Google Scholar; Morrill, J. S., The Cheshire Grand Jury, 1625-59 (Leicester, 1976), pp. 30-32, 46Google Scholar.

3 For a description of the nature and location of the local records, and other sources consulted, see the Bibliographical Note in the Appendix.

4 See Evans, Hugh C., “Comic Constables-Fictional and Historical,” Shakespeare Quarterly, XX (1969), pp. 427–33CrossRefGoogle Scholar for some comparisons of literary and historical officers.

5 The nature and extent of the constable's duties will be discussed more fully in a monograph on the constable.

6 The Pattingham evidence is derived from constables' and churchwardens' accounts, local tax lists, and other parish documents included with the accounts, jury lists, land transfers, and other materials in the Pattingham Court Rolls (see Appendix for location of these materials), lay subsidy rolls in the Public Record Office (hereafter P.R.O.), E. 179/nos. 178/225, 178/248, 178/280, 178/284, 178/292, 179/299, 179/305, 179/308, 241/343, and a few surviving wills and inventories in the Staff. Joint Record Office in Lichfield. Parish registers were used to try to reconstitute village families. The economic and social structure of villages varied considerably so it is difficult to generalize, in absolute terms, about the status of constables. However, relative to their own communities, constables were usually drawn from the leading yeomen, husbandmen, and craftsmen. The status and qualifications of constables will be explored more fully in a monograph on the constable.

7 The discussion of the origin of the constable's office is based on Lambard, , Dueties of Constables, pp. 6–9Google Scholar; Bacon, , “Answers to Questions,” pp. 749–50Google Scholar; Dalton, , Countrey Justice, pp. 46–47Google Scholar; Sheppard, , Offices and Duties of Constables, pp. 11-13, 26–32Google Scholar; Gardiner, , Compleat Constable, pp. 1–5Google Scholar; W., E., Exact Constable, pp. 4–6Google Scholar; Coke, Edward, The Fourth Part of the Institutes of the Laws of England (London, 1671), p. 265Google Scholar; Maitland, F.W., The Constitutional History of England (Paper ed., Cambridge, 1961), pp. 47-52, 276Google Scholar; Homans, George C., English Villagers in the Thirteenth Century (Harper Torchbook, New York, 1970), pp. 297, 324-26, 333–37Google Scholar; Cam, Helen M., The Hundred and the Hundred Rolls (New York, 1930), pp. 19, 189, 192–93Google Scholar; Jewell, Helen, English Local Administration in the Middle Ages (New York, 1972), pp. 60-61, 129-33, 158–69Google Scholar; Critchley, , History of Police, pp. 1–8Google Scholar. Also see Simpson, H. B., “The Office of Constable,” English Historical Review, X (1895), pp. 625–36CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Holdsworth, W.S., A History of English Law, IV (London, 1924), p. 123Google Scholar.

8 The position of village headmen in various parts of Europe, including England, receives brief treatment in Blum, Jerome, “The Internal Structure and Polity of the European Village Community from the Fifteenth to the Nineteenth Century,” Journal of Modern History, XLIII (1971), pp. 556-62, 568–69Google Scholar.

9 The approach to the constable's position developed in this article owes much to the work of anthropologists on village headmen in nonwestern societies, particularly in central and southern Africa, and to Max Gluckman's formulation of the concept of the “interhierarchical role.” See Gluckman, , “Interhierarchical Roles: Professional and Party Ethics in Tribal Areas in South and Central Africa,” in Swartz, Marc J., ed., Local-Level Politics (Chicago, 1968), pp. 70–72Google Scholar; Custom and Conflict in Africa (rep. Oxford, 1970), esp. pp. 34-37, 51–52Google Scholar; Politics, Law and Ritual in Tribal Society (Oxford, 1965), pp. 165–66Google Scholar; Barnes, J.A., Mitchell, J.C. and Gluckman, Max, “The Village Headman in British Central Africa,” in Gluckman, , Order and Rebellion in Tribal Africa (London, 1963), pp. 146–70Google Scholar. Similar approaches are found in Barnes, J.A., Politics in a Changing Society (rep. Manchester, 1967)Google Scholar and Mitchell, J.C., The Yao Village (Manchester, 1956)Google Scholar. Also see Colson, Elizabeth, “Modern Political Organization of the Plateau Tonga,” African Studies, VII (1948), pp. 85–98CrossRefGoogle Scholar. A somewhat different perspective is employed in studying similar positions in Fallers, Lloyd, “The Predicament of the Modern African Chief: An Instance from Uganda,” American Anthropologist, LVII (1955), pp. 290–302CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and in his Bantu Bureaucracy (Cambridge, n.d.), esp. pp. 17-19, 141-43, 155–78Google Scholar. Yet another viewpoint is found in Harriet J. Kupferer's study of Cree chiefs and New Guinea headmen, “Impotency and Power: A Cross-Cultural Comparison of the Effects of Alien Rule,” in Swartz, Marc J., Turner, Victor, and Tuden, Arthur, eds., Political Anthropology (Chicago, 1966), pp. 61–71Google Scholar.

10 13 Ed. I (Statute of Winchester); 4 Ed. III, c. 10; 5 Ed. III, c. 14; 25 Ed. III, Stat. 2, c. 5. Also see Simpson, , “Office of Constable,” pp. 633, 638Google Scholar, and Trotter, , Seventeenth Century Life, pp. 83–84Google Scholar.

11 The statutes that extended the constable's powers are too numerous to list, but a discussion of most of them can be found in Lambard, , Dueties of Constables (1631 ed.)Google Scholar.

12 1 H. VII, c. 7; 27 H. VIII, c. 5; also see Simpson, , “Office of Constable,” p. 635Google Scholar; Holdsworth, , History of English Law, IV, pp. 123–25Google Scholar.

13 Atkinson, J.C., ed., Quarter Sessions Records (The North Riding Record Society, 1884), I, p. 183Google Scholar; Trotter, , Seventeenth Century Life, p. 85Google Scholar.

14 See the oaths printed in Bacon, , “Answers to Questions,” pp. 753–54Google Scholar, and Dalton, , Countrey Justice, pp. 363–64Google Scholar.

15 There are many references in Quarter Sessions records to the justices swearing constables. Such evidence is also found occasionally in constables' accounts, for example, Pattingham Constables' Accounts, 1625/6 (this volume lacks pagination and references will be given to the year in which an entry occurs); Norfolk and Norwich Record Office (hereafter N. & N.R.O.) PD 50/36H, no. 89; Staffs. R.O., D 705/PC/l/l, p/ 25; Leicestershire Record Office (hereafter Leics. R.O.) DE 720/30, ff. 9, 13, 18v.; Shelton Parish Book, 1621 (this volume lacks pagination and references will be given to the year in which an entry occurs). For constables sworn in the leet, see Leics. R.O., DE 720/30, ff. 11v., 45v., 47v.; and for orders by the justices that they be sworn in the leet, Atkinson, , Quarter Sessions Records, III, p. 150Google Scholar; Copnall, H. Hampton, ed., Notes and Extracts from the Nottinghamshire County Records of the Seventeenth Century (Nottingham, 1915), p. 20Google Scholar; Harbin, E.H. Bates, ed., Quarter Sessions Records for the County of Somerset (Somerset Record Society, XXIV, 1908), II, pp. 87–88Google Scholar (the hundred court, presumably enjoying leet jurisdiction); Staffs. R.O., QS/O, IV, ff. 226-226v.; V, ff. 31-32. For the judges opinions, see Barnes, T.G., ed., Somerset Assize Orders, 1629–1640, (Somerset Record Society, LXV, 1959), p. 69Google Scholar. Also see Simpson, , “Office of Constable,” p. 639Google Scholar; and for contemporary opinions about where the oath was to be taken, Bacon, , “Answers to Questions,” p. 750Google Scholar, and Dalton, , Countrey Justice, p. 47Google Scholar.

16 The material in this paragraph is based on evidence in constables' accounts and in the Quarter Sessions Records listed in the Appendix.

17 For a discussion of some of the differences in settlement patterns and social organization, as well as in economic structures, between “champion” and “pastoral” areas, see Thirsk, Joan, ed., The Agrarian History of England and Wales, IV (Cambridge, 1967), pp. 1-15, 109–112Google Scholar, and her “Seventeenth-Century Agriculture and Social Change,” in Seaver, Paul, ed., Seventeenth Century England (New York, 1976)Google Scholar. For a more specialized study of pastoral farming in one of the counties included in this paper see Thirsk, Joan, “Horn and Thorn in Staffordshire: The Economy of a Pastoral County,” North Staffordshire Journal of Field Studies, IX (1969), pp. 1–16Google Scholar.

18 The discussion above is based primarily on repeated entries in the constables' accounts of Branston and Waltham (Leics. R.O., DE 720/30 and DE 625/60), though similar entries occur in the accounts of Wimeswold, Leics. (B.L., Add. MS. 10457) and in the fragmentary accounts of Stathern, Leics. (Guilford, Everard L., “The Accounts of the Constables of the Village of Stathern, Leicestershire,” The Archaeological Journal, LXIX (1912), pp. 128–32Google Scholar), and some such entries are also found in the accounts of Stockton, Salop (Salop Record Office, 3067/3/1) and Millington, Yorks. (Borthwick Institute, PR MIL. 10). Also see Hoskins, , Midland Peasant, p. 208Google Scholar; Trotter, , Seventeenth Century Life, p. 89Google Scholar; Laslett, Peter, The World We Have Lost (2nd ed., New York, 1971), p. 77Google Scholar.

19 The Reports of Edward Bulstrode, Court of King's Bench, 1609-26 (London, 1657), p. 174Google Scholar.

20 This discussion of the selection of constables is based on information found in the Quarter Sessions records listed in the Appendix; in constables' papers for the villages under consideration; and in court rolls for the manor of Pattingham (Staffs. R.O., Transcripts of Pattingham Court Rolls, D 1807/ 159-293) and the manor of Bushey (Hertfordshire Record Office, [hereafter Herts. R.O.], Bushey Court Rolls, esp. no. 6403). The vestry seems to have played a prominent role in the selection of constables in Essex; see Quintrell, B.W., “The Government of the County of Essex, 1603-42,” (London, Ph.D. thesis, 1965), pp. 195, 198Google Scholar, and Emmison, F.G., Catalogue of Essex Parish Records (2nd ed., Chelmsford, 1966), p. 17Google Scholar. Evans, John T., Seventeenth Century Norwich, Politics, Religion and Government (Oxford, 1979), p. 58Google Scholar, indicates that constables in that city were officials of the ward; and further evidence to this effect is found in Norfolk Archaeology, I (1847), pp. 1-4, 28Google Scholar. For a discussion of the relative roles of the ward/precinct and the parish in the selection of London constables see Foster, Frank F., The Politics of Stability—A Portrait of the Rulers of Elizabethan London (The Royal Historical Society, London, 1977), pp. 29-32, 37–38Google Scholar. Gardiner, Compleat Constable, contains a separate chapter (XXIII on London constables which also indicates that they were nominated in the vestry though confirmed in the wardmote. Lynda Price is currently engaged in a study of the constableship in London and Middlesex during the Jacobean period and her work should provide more detailed information about city constables.

21 14 Car. I, c. 12, # XV.

22 For a summary of the debate on this question see Critchley, , History of Police, p. 17Google Scholar.

23 Barnes, Somerset Assize Orders, p. 69; P.R.O., SP 16/255/48, also reprinted in Ibid., p. 71; B.L., Add. MS. 12496, f. 287v. (The Book of Orders, 1631); Staffs. R.O., QS/O, V, f. 47. Also see Staffs. R.O., QS/O, V, ff. 11, 116; Copnall, , Notes and Extracts, p. 18Google Scholar; Barnes, , Somerset Assize Orders, pp. 35, 39, 40Google Scholar; and for a recent discussion of the origins of the Book of Orders, Quintrell, B. W., “The Making of Charles I's Book of Orders,” EHR, XCV (1980), pp. 553–72CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The handbooks on the office of constable record the judges' decisions of the 1630s, which accorded greater power to the justices of the peace in the selection of constables, but they also suggest the confusion and disagreement that existed as to the relative powers of the justices and local bodies such as the leet. See Sheppard, , Offices and Duties of Constables, pp. 14-15, 22–24Google Scholar; W., E., Exact Constable, pp. 7, 12-13, 96-99, 101–102Google Scholar; G[ardiner], , Compleat Constable, pp. 8–9Google Scholar.

24 Herts. R.O., Quarter Sessions Books, 2A, ff. 32v., 36-36v., 42v., 54v., 60, 67, 78, 108, 109, 120, 139, 150, 153v., 163, 182, 194, 211; 2B, ff. 8v., 9,14,28v. The special diligence of the Hertfordshire bench is analyzed in Calnan, Julie, “County Society and Local Government in the County of Hertford, c. 1580-c. 1630, with special reference to the Commission of the Peace,” (Cambridge, Ph.D. thesis, 1979)Google Scholar. There are also a few cases of justices appointing constables in the Warwickshire records, for example, Ratcliffe, S.C. and Johnson, H.C., eds., Quarter Sessions Order Books (Warwick County Records, 1935–1936), I, pp. 12, 17, 196, 231–32Google Scholar; II, pp. 7, 40-41.

25 Atkinson, , Quarter Sessions Records, I, p. 256Google Scholar.

26 This discussion is based on a study of the Quarter Sessions records listed in the Appendix. Also see Fletcher, , Sussex, p. 141Google Scholar; Trotter, , Seventeenth Century Life, pp. 106–11Google Scholar.

27 This is the argument of Smith, A. Hassell in “Justices at Work in Elizabethan Norfolk,” Norfolk Archaeology, XXXIV (1967), p. 105Google Scholar.

28 Hirst, Derek, The Representative of the People? Voters and Voting in England Under the Early Stuarts (Cambridge, 1975)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, esp. chs. 6, 7, and 9.

29 Despite the importance that historians have attached to interpersonal networks of relations, such as clientage, in the political system of Tudor-Stuart England, more evidence is needed before it can be assumed that such bonds were as significant in linking village and county officials as they were in cementing relations at higher levels of government. There is little evidence of such ties between constables and their superiors in the records consulted, though it is possible that such relationships escaped the records. For a recent discussion of interpersonal networks that suggests that they did provide the means of linking village and county hierarchies, but which gives no evidence to support this contention, see Christianson, Paul, “The Causes of the English Revolution: A Reappraisal,” Journal of British Studies, XV (1976), pp. 40–75CrossRefGoogle Scholar and esp. pp. 52-65. Some of Hexter's, J.H. criticisms in “Power Struggle, Parliament and Liberty in Early Stuart England,” J. of Mod. Hist., LV (1978), pp. 16–21Google Scholar, are applicable to Christianson's discussion of personal networks at the local level as well as to those involving peers and gentlemen.

30 For a further elaboration of the concepts of “multiplex relationships” and of “single-interest linkages,” see Gluckman, Max, The Judicial Process among the Barotse of Northern Rhodesia (Manchester, 1955), pp. 18–19Google Scholar.

31 Gluckman, , Order and Rebellion, p. 42Google Scholar.

32 Evidence about affrays is derived from the Pattingham Court Rolls, Staffs R.O., Transcripts D1807/159-293. For a discussion of the importance attached to social harmony, but also suggestions that witchcraft accusations reflected a breakdown in such harmony, see Thomas, Keith, Religion and the Decline of Magic (New York, 1971)Google Scholar, chs. 16 and 17, and Macfarlane, A.D.J., Witchcraft in Tudor and Stuart England (Harper Torchbook, New York, 1970)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, chs. 15 and 16. Also see Ingram, M.J., “Communities and Courts: Law and Disorder in Early Seventeenth-Century Wiltshire,” in Cockburn, , Crime in England, pp. 110–34Google Scholar for a discussion of “ideals of neighbourly harmony” reflected in arbitration mechanisms and in the apparent bias in favor of local residents reflected in legal proceedings. Ingram too suggests that such ideals were being subjected to strains during the early seventeenth century. Historians still have much to learn about the structure of village communities in the early modern period and about the nature of interrelationships among their inhabitants. The reconstruction of villages along the lines being pursued by Alan Macfarlane should provide further information of this kind; for the methodology and goals of this research, see Macfarlane, , “History, anthropology and the study of communities,” Social History, V (1977), pp. 631–52CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and his Reconstructing Historical Communities (Cambridge, 1977)Google Scholar.

33 These claims are based on complaints to the justices or cases before the courts, and it is not usually possible to discover whether the constable was in the wrong; but see, for example, Staffs. R.O., QS/O, III, f. 190; V, f. 83; Transcripts of Quarter Sessions Rolls, Charles I, Roll 32, #35; Harbin, Bates, Somerset Quarter Sessions, II, p. 249Google Scholar; P.R.O., Star Chamber Proceedings, James I (hereafter STAC 8), 218/23; Calendar of State Papers Domestic, Charles I, 1636–1637, p. 408Google Scholar.

34 Barnes, , Mitchell, , and Gluckman, , “Village headman,” p. 152Google Scholar.

35 The information about this case is derived from a petition by the two inhabitants to Star Chamber and the response to the petition by the constable and one other villager, P.R.O., STAC 8/104/ 20. Also see Davis, Natalie Zemon, “The Reasons of Misrule: Youth Groups and Charivaris in Sixteenth-Century France,” Past and Present, L (1971), pp. 41–75CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Thompson, E.P., “Rough Music: Le Charivari anglais,” Annales, XXVII (1972), pp. 285–312CrossRefGoogle Scholar. I am grateful to Natalie Davis for allowing me to read, before publication, a paper that she delivered to the Burg Wartenstein Symposium, “Charivari, Honor and Community in Seventeenth-Century Lyon and Geneva.”

36 Stone, Lawrence, The Family, Sex and Marriage in England, 1500-1800 (New York 1977), p. 145Google Scholar, argues that in the late Elizabethan period a constable could break into any house where he suspected fornication or adultery to be occurring and that if his suspicions were confirmed he could take the offenders to jail or before a justice. Stone cites as the authority for this statement the 1622 edition of Dalton's Countrey Justice. Lambarde, , Dueties of Constables, p. 18Google Scholar, also makes reference to such a situation, but the legal basis for the constable's action is not clear. Lambarde declares that “I like well of their opinion which do hold that if information be given to any such officer that a man and woman bee in adulterie or fornication together, then the officer may take companie with him, and that if he find them so, hee may carie them to prison.” None of these authorities suggest, however, that the constable had the power to punish such offenders.

37 For another case in which a constable apparently yielded to village pressures, arresting a man and placing him in the stocks without any warrant from higher authorities, and then allowed his neighbors to determine the additional punishment to be inflicted, see P.R.O., STAC 8/ 95/11. Also see the discussion of village arbitration mechanisms and of the community pressures brought to bear on local officials in Ingram, , “Communities and Courts,” pp. 116-18, 125–34Google Scholar; Curtis, T. C., “Quarter Sessions Appearances and Their Background: A Seventeenth Century Regional Study,” in Cockburn, , ed., Crime in England, pp. 135–54Google Scholar.

38 Gyffon, James, “The Song of a Constable,” (1626), in Judges, A.V., The Elizabethan Underworld (London, 1930), p. 489Google Scholar. These lines are also cited in Campbell, , English Yeoman, p. 322Google Scholar, while other portions of the ballad are quoted in Trotter, , Seventeenth Century Life, p. 105Google Scholar.

39 Smith, Hassell, County and Court, p. 113Google Scholar.

40 Hereford and Worcester Record Office (hereafter H. & W.R.O.), 850 SALWARPE, BA 1054/1, Bundle A, nos. 147, 169, 171, 180 (ship money); Ibid., Bundle A, nos. 21, 65, 97, 99, 114, 117, 133, 147, 174, 183; Bundle H, 20 March 1613-14 (other taxes and rates).

41 See Pattingham Constables' Accounts for the years cited.

42 For example, Staffs. R.O., QS/O, II, ff. 13v., 50v., 67; III, ff. 15, 98v., 155v., 185v.; IV, ff. 157, 231, 259; Atkinson, , Quarter Sessions Records, I, pp. 17, 24, 27, 33, 61, 69, 165-66, 191, 205, 207, 227, 238, 244, 250, 253Google Scholar; II, pp. 57, 112, 159, 166, 179-80, 194, 234; III, pp. III, 112, 126, 129, 164, 189, 191, 195, 235, 269, 354, 359, IV, pp. 28, 177, 205. References could be given to many other Quarter Sessions records from other counties.

43 For example, P.R.O, SP 16/306/55; 352/24; 381/71; 457/22; 387/46; 452/10.

44 For example, Staffs R.O., QS/O, V, f. 16; Leics. R.O., DE 720/30, f. 45v.; DE 625/60, ff. 42v., 49v., 50, 53, 56; H. & W.R.O., 850 SALWARPE, BA 1054/2, D8; Pattingham Constables' Accounts, 1619-20,1637-38,1640-41. There is evidence in Quarter Sessions records of constables being out of pocket in order to meet the collections for which they were responsible; for example, Bund, J. Willis, ed., Calendar of Quarter Sessions Papers, 1591-1643 (Worcestershire Historical Society, 1900), II, pp. 461–62Google Scholar; Staffs. R.O., QS/O, III, ff. 27-27v., 39, 155v., 158v.; IV, ff. 258v.-259; Staffs. R.O., Transcripts of Quarter Sessions Rolls, James I, Roll 66, nos., 26, 27; Roll 75, nos 34, 35, 70; Herts. R.O., Quarter Sessions Book, 2A, ff. 49-49v., 53v.-54, 87-87v., 91, 112; 2B, ff. 13, 26v.

45 For example, Staffs. R.O., QS/O, II, ff. 63, 81-2; III, ff. 19-19v., 36v., 56v., 85, 117-117v., 132; IV, ff. 24, 56, 100-100v., 143v., 196, 231, 234; V, ff. 97, 139; Atkinson, , Quarter Sessions Records, I, p. 244Google Scholar; III, p. 342; Leics. R.O. DG36/187, f. 1v.; DG 36/188, DD2; DG 36/189; DE 332/1, p. 12; DE 625/60, ff. 26v., 49v., 50v.; N. & N.R.O., PD 50/36H, no. 53; Shelton Parish Book, 1616, 1621, 1622. In addition to the difficulties of the Pattingham constable in collecting provision money, see their problems in levying their own “lewnes,” Pattingham Constables' Accounts, 1583/4, 1584/5, 1587/8, 1592/3, 1593/4, 1602/3, 1610/11, 1611/12; and in collecting ship money, Ibid., 1634/5, 1636/7, 1637/8.

46 The records often do not indicate which of his duties the constable was attempting to fullfill when he met with resistance and violence; but for instance when tax and rate collecting is specified, see Atkinson, , Quarter Sessions Records, I, pp. 213, 237, 244Google Scholar; III, p. 342; P.R.O., SP 16/351/20; 367/83 (I.); 380/35; 398/19. For a few other interesting instances of attacks on the constable, when the cause is not specified, see Atkinson, , Quarter Sessions Records, I, p. 210Google Scholar; Ratcliffe, S.C. and Johnson, H.C., eds., Quarter Sessions Indictment Book (Warwick County Records, 1941), VI, p. 48Google Scholar; Burne, S.A.H., ed., Staffordshire Quarter Sessions Rolls (Staffordshire Historical Collections, 1932), III, p. 102Google Scholar.

47 P.R.O., Sp 16/ 385/1; 452/10; 467/58; 313/11.

48 See Barnes, , Somerset, p. 241Google Scholar, who points out that the justices in that county dealt with twelve cases of men unwilling to be constables between 1635 and 1638, nine of them between Epiphany 1637-38 and Epiphany 1638-39, twice as many as during the previous ten years. Also see Hurstfield, , “Wiltshire,” p. 288Google Scholar; Pattingham Constables' Accounts, 1638-39, 1639-40, 1642-43; Herts. R.O., D/P71. 5/2.

49 P.R.O., SP 16/457/22.

50 See Thompson, E.P., “Patrician Society, Plebien Culture,” Journal of Social History (1974), pp. 382–405Google Scholar, to which this section is indebted; and also Christianson, , “English Revolution,” pp. 62–64Google Scholar. Christianson, however, assumes that such reciprocity was based on clientage.

51 See especially the evidence from Somerset presented in Barnes, , Somerset, pp. 209–41Google Scholar.

52 For example, P.R.O., SP 16/ 266/21; 346/108; 387/46; 418/51; 455/85; 456/21, 49; 457/22; 467/58. A somewhat similar caution and awareness of the limits of their power seems to have characterized the attitude of magistrates and gentlemen toward the application of the criminal law in the eighteenth century; see Hay, Douglas, “Property, Authority and the Criminal Law,” in Hay, et al, eds., Albion's Fatal Tree (New York, 1975), pp. 17–63Google Scholar. Also see Morrill, J.S., The Revolt of the Provinces (London, 1976), pp. 24–29Google Scholar.

53 Such burdens do seem to have been considered particularly onerous and to have occasioned considerable protest, partly because they offered ready opportunities for corrupt dealings; see, for example, P.R.O., SP 16/388/77; 395/9, 89; 399/51; 400/127 (postmasters) and SP 16/103/ 31; 192/ 89; 395/9 (salt petre men).

54 Leics. R.O., DE 720/30, ff. 15v., 16, 31, 46, 50, 54.

55 Leics. R.O., DE 625/60, ff. 23v., 45v., 48v., 61.

56 Leics. R.O., DE 332/44/

57 For example, Stone, Lawrence, The Causes of the English Revolution, 1529-1642 (London, 1972), pp. 63–64Google Scholar for a recent statement; but also see Koenigsberger's, H.G. comments in his review in J. Mod. Hist., XLVI, (1974), pp. 104–105Google Scholar.

58 See the county studies cited in n. 2, and in addition, Everitt, Alan, The Community of Kent and the Great Rebellion (paper ed., Leicester, 1973)Google Scholar; Morrill, J.S., Cheshire, 1630-60 (Oxford, 1974)Google Scholar; Clark, Peter, English Provincial Society from the Reformation to the Revolution (Hassocks, Sussex, 1977)Google Scholar.

59 Although the parish officers (the churchwardens, the overseers of the poor, and the surveyors of the highways) were increasingly important within certain spheres of activity, the constable remained the chief local officer even during the early seventeenth century. Holdsworth, , History of English Law, IV, pp. 123–25Google Scholar, recognizes the importance of the constable's position in interrelating local communities and the justices of the county, but both he and Cheyney, , History of England, II, pp. 403–404Google Scholar overestimate the extent to which the constable's function as representative of the village had declined by the end of the sixteenth century. The Webbs, , Local Government, pp. 18–19Google Scholar and n. 3, 30-21, 25-26 also overstate the importance of the parish officers, and especially the churchwardens, in relation to the constable.

60 Gluckman, , Custom and Conflict, p. 52Google Scholar.