Sub-keepers and Constables: the Role of Local Officials in Keeping the Peace in Fourteenth-Century England

English Historical Review

Volumn 117, Issue 470, 2002, Pages 1-24

  Musson, A J ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF EXETER   (United Kingdom)

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EID: 84946722320     PISSN: 00138266     EISSN: 14774534     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1093/ehr/117.470.1     Document Type: Editorial

References (149)

1. J. A. Sharpe, ‘The Law, Law Enforcement, State Formation and National Integration in Late Medieval and Early Modern England’, in X. Rousseau and R. Levy (eds), Le penal dans tous ces états: Justice, états et sociétés en Europe (XIIe–XXe siècles), Publication des Facultés universitaires Saint-Louis, 74 (Brussels, 1997), pp. 65–7, 79–80.
2. B. H. Putnam, ‘The Transformation of the Keepers of the Peace into the Justices of the Peace, 1327–80’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 4th series, 12 (1929), 24–41.
3. E. Powell, ‘The Administration of Criminal Justice in Late-Medieval England: Peace Sessions and Assizes’, in R. Eales and D. Sullivan (ed.), The Political Context of Law (London, 1987), pp. 49–59; A. J. Verduyn, ‘The Politics of Law and Order during the Early Years of Edward III’, ante, 108 (1993), 842–67; A. Musson, Public Order and Law Enforcement: The Local Administration of Criminal Justice in England, 1294–1350 (Woodbridge, 1996); R. C. Palmer, English Law in the Age of the Black Death: A Transformation of Governance and Law, 1348–1381 (Chapel Hill, NC, 1994); S. Walker, ‘Yorkshire Justices of the Peace, 1388–1413’, ante, 108 (1993), pp. 281–311.
4. A. Musson and W. M. Ormrod, The Evolution of English Justice: Law, Politics and Society in the Fourteenth Century (Basingstoke, 1998), pp. 72–4.
5. H. Cam, ‘Shire Officials: Coroners, Constables and Bailiffs’, in J. Willard, W. A. Morris, and W. H. Dunham (ed.), The English Government at Work, 1327–1336 (3 vols; Cambridge, Mass., 1945–50), vol. 3, pp. 165–7.
6. H. M. Jewell, English Local Administration in the Middle Ages (Newton Abbott, 1972), pp. 37, 173–4; A. Harding, ‘The Origins and Early History of the Keeper of the Peace’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 5th series, 10 (1960), 86, 88–90.
7. H. R. T. Summerson, ‘The Structure of Law Enforcement in Thirteenth Century England’, American Journal of Legal History, 23 (1979), 315–17.
8. H. Cam, The Hundred and the Hundred Rolls (London, 1930) and Liberties and Communities in Medieval England (London, 1963).
9. Robert Palmer, The County Courts of Medieval England, 1150–1350 (Princeton, NJ, 1982).
10. In the same way, there was an overlap in the terminology employed for the county keepers which could vary from the Latin ‘custos’ or ‘conservator’ to the French ‘guardein’.
11. Public Record Office, JUST 3/50/2 m6 (1337 – Norfolk). All subsequent ms references are also to documents in the Public Record Office.
12. Proceedings before the Justices of the Peace in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries: Edward III to Richard III, ed. B. H. Putnam, Ames Foundation (London, 1938), pp.xxxvii–xxxviii.
13. Cam, ‘Shire Officials’, pp. 166–7; Cam, Liberties and Communities, pp. 200–4; H. Summerson, ‘Maitland and the Criminal Law in the Age of Bracton’, Proceedings of the British Academy, 89 (1996), 136–7; P. King, ‘Decision Makers and Decision Making in the English Criminal Law, 1750–1800’, The Historical Journal, 27 (1984), 27, 55–6.
14. M. C. Powicke, Military Obligation in Medieval England (Oxford, 1962), pp. 64, 119–20; H. R. T. Summerson, ‘The Enforcement of the Statute of Winchester, 1285–1327’, Journal of Legal History, 13 (1992), 232.
15. Statutes of the Realm (hereafter SR), 1101–1713, ed. A. Luders et al. (11 vols; London, 1910–28), vol. 1, pp. 96–8; Powicke, Military Obligation, p. 120.
16. JUST 1/746 m5 (Chirbury Hundred), m6 (liberty of Shrewsbury).
17. For example: JUST 1/746 m4 (1306 – Shropshire).
18. JUST 1/746 m5, 5d.
19. Summerson, ‘Maitland and the Criminal Law’, 137.
20. SR, vol. 1, p. 258 (c. 3); Cam, Liberties and Communities, p. 152.
21. SR, vol. 1, p. 268 (c. 14); Cam, ‘Shire Officials’, pp. 169–70.
22. SR, vol. 1, pp. 307–9, 311–13; B. H. Putnam, The Enforcement of the Statute of Labourers during the First Decade after the Black Death, 1349–59 (New York, 1908).
23. L. R. Poos, ‘The Social Context of Statute of Labourers Enforcement’, Law and History Review, 1 (1983), 28–31, 34.
24. Harding, ‘Early History’, 99–100; Cam ‘Shire Officials’, pp. 167–9.
25. Parliamentary Writs and Writs of Military Summons, ed. F. Palgrave (2 vols in 2 parts; London, 1827), vol. 2, pt. 2 (appendix), pp. 11–12.
26. A phrase found in the Statute of Winchester and also used regularly in the preface to general commissions of the peace and of oyer and terminer: come plusours maufesours et destourbours de nostre pees . .
27. C 66/155 m7d.
28. C[alendar of] P[atent] R[olls] 1321–4, pp. 60–1.
29. CPR 1321–4, p. 382.
30. C 66/159 m12d.
31. South Lancashire in the Reign of Edward II, ed. G. H. Tupling, Chetham Society, 3rd series, 1 (1949), pp.xxii, lviii; S. Waugh, ‘The Profits of Violence: The Minor Gentry in the Rebellion of 1321–1322 in Gloucestershire and Herefordshire’, Speculum, 52 (1977), 843–69.
32. R. Horrox, Richard III: A Study of Service (Cambridge, 1989), pp. 11, 23.
33. CPR 1327–30, p. 481.
34. CPR 1327–30, p. 481 (25 December 1329).
35. C 66/172 m2d: ad felonias et transgressione . . . perpetractas ad sectam nostram vel aliorum versus eos inde prosequi volencium audiendas et terminandas sumpto ad hoc si necesse fuerit posse comitatu predicti.
36. Verduyn, ‘Politics of Law and Order’, 847.
37. The king’s bench rolls provide evidence of indictments heard before Richard Damory and his associates (county keepers of the peace) and before the mayor and bailiffs and keepers of the peace of the city of Oxford (KB 27/281 Rex mm 20d, 22).
38. CPR 1343–5, pp. 509–10.
39. K. Fowler, The King’s Lieutenant: Henry of Grosmont, First Duke of Lancaster, 1310–1361 (London, 1969), pp. 48–51.
40. R. Stewart Brown, ‘Two Medieval Liverpool Affrays’, Transactions of the Lancashire and Cheshire Historical Society, 85 (1933), 71–81.
41. C 66/213 m15d.
42. A fresh county peace commission was issued in 1346 and included an array clause (CPR 1345–8, pp. 231–2).
43. For one of the few early examples see A. J. Verduyn, ‘The revocation of urban peace commissions in 1381: the Lincoln petition’, Historical Research, 65 (1992), 108–111.
44. E. G. Kimball, ‘Commissions of the Peace for Urban Jurisdictions in England, 1327–1485’, Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, 121 (1977), 449–51.
45. CPR 1307–13, p. 415.
46. Ibid., p. 480.
47. For example: JUST 3/51/4 m8 (Northampton); Rolls of the Warwickshire and Coventry Sessions of the Peace, 1377–1397, ed. E. Kimball, Dugdale Society, 16 (1939), pp.xxiv–xxv.
48. CPR 1338–40, p. 140 (12 May).
49. CPR 1345–8, p. 176 (16 July).
50. Kimball, Warwickshire Rolls, pp.xxv–xxvi; W. M. Ormrod, ‘York and the Crown under the First Three Edwards’, in S. Rees Jones (ed.), The Government of Medieval York, Essays in commemoration of the 1396 Royal Charter, Borthwick Studies in History, 3 (1997), p. 32.
51. For example: CPR 1361–4, pp. 530 (Beverley), 531 (Knaresborough and Stancliff), 531 (addressed to the Chancellor of Oxford University and the Mayor of Oxford); Kimball, Warwickshire Rolls, p.xxiii.
52. Kimball, Warwickshire Rolls, p.xxiii.
53. S. Rees Jones, ‘York’s Civic Administration, 1354–1464’, in S. Rees Jones (ed.), Government in Medieval York, pp. 116–18.
54. W. A. Morris, ‘The Sheriff’, in Morris and Strayer (ed.), English Government at Work, vol. 2, pp. 57, 68–9; E. Powell, Kingship, Law and Society (Oxford, 1989), pp. 74–6.
55. JUST 1/353 m6.
56. B. H. Putnam, The Place in Legal History of Sir William Shareshull (Cambridge, 1950), p. 63.
57. For example: JUST 3/96 m15d (1296 – Warwickshire), 31/1 m1 (1307 – Leicestershire), 51/4 m8 (1324 – Northamptonshire), 32/1 m3, 3d (1329 – Lincolnshire).
58. For example: JUST 1/96 m59d (1299 – Cambridgeshire), JUST 3/48 m16 (1312 – Norfolk), 32/1 m7d (1331 – Lincolnshire).
59. JUST 3/95 m6 (1295).
60. For example: JUST 3/51/3 m14 (constables of the peace in Peterborough).
61. 1 Henry V c. 5; Powell, Kingship, p. 67.
62. SC 8/41/2034.
63. For example: JUST 3/166 m1.
64. JUST 3/119 m10d (Norfolk).
65. JUST 3/133 m1d (1341 – Lincolnshire).
66. Musson, Public Order and Law Enforcement, pp. 107–22.
67. JUST 3/96 m16d.
68. JUST 3/51/4 m3.
69. F. M. Pollock and F. W. Maitland, The History of English Law before the Time of Edward I (2nd edn; repr. Cambridge, 1968), vol. 2, pp. 578–80; R. B. Dobson and J. Taylor, Rymes of Robin Hood: An Introduction to the English Outlaw rev edn (Stroud, 1997), p. 29.
70. JUST 3/47/3 m1 (Norfolk).
71. JUST 3/125 m8d (1331 – Norfolk).
72. Select Cases in the Court of King’s Bench, ed. G. O. Sayles, Selden Society, 74 (London, 1957), vol. 4, pp. 88–91.
73. JUST 3/145 m8d (1360 – Yorkshire).
74. JUST 3/96 m42.
75. JUST 3/74/3 m1.
76. JUST 3/112 m12.
77. JUST 3/115B m4, 4d.
78. JUST 3/22/2 m2.
79. JUST 3/214/3 m16.
80. JUST 3/127 m15d.
81. JUST 3/134 m2.
82. Essex: JUST 3/18/5 m10; Hertfordshire: JUST 3/22/2 mm2, 3d, 4d, 5d. Unfortunately, no indictments before the Lancashire sub-keepers can be found on the surviving gaol delivery roll for 1324–6 (JUST 3/29/2).
83. JUST 3/18/5 m18d.
84. For example: JUST 1/333 (Hertfordshire), JUST 3/50/2 (Norfolk), 51/4 (Northamptonshire).
85. JUST 3/117 m14 (1326 – Norfolk).
86. JUST 3/51/4 m7 (1324 – Northamptonshire).
87. JUST 3/119 m10 (1328 – Norfolk).
88. JUST 3/51/4 m7.
89. JUST 3/48 m12.
90. JUST 3/125 m1 (Norfolk).
91. JUST 3/156 m3.
92. A statute of 1327 refers to ‘sheriffs and bailiffs of liberties and all others that do take indictments in their turns or elsewhere’ in the context of the correct procedure for making indictments and presenting them to the gaol delivery justice (SR, vol. 1, p. 257 (c. 17)), but does not indicate that certain officers were preferred for hearing them. Professor Cam considers the apparent vacillation to be the result of a clash between the Crown’s policy of ‘the more presentments the better’ and the desire among some judges that the hearing of indictments be restricted to certain authorized or accepted personnel (Cam, ‘Shire Officials’, pp. 168–9).
93. For example: JUST 3/31/2 mm5, 7 (Lincolnshire); 96 m47 (Warwickshire); 51/4 mm3, 6, 7 (Northamptonshire); 112 mm12–13d, 15, 16 (Surrey).
94. For example: an indictment for homicide taken before the bailiffs of the town of Derby and bailiffs of the Earl of Lancaster (JUST 3/55/3 m2d); the indictment of John Culverd for the death of Isolde, his wife, taken before the keepers of the peace of the town of Oxford (JUST 3/115B m1); and the indictment of William son of Matilda Maydenman for the death of Luke Marshal, heard before William Farnham, constable of the peace for the hundred of Bocking in Surrey (JUST 3/112 m23d).
95. JUST 3/134 m64d.
96. JUST 3/156 m2.
97. For such developments see Musson and Ormrod, Evolution, pp. 51, 61–2, 66–8.
98. Summerson, ‘Structure of Law Enforcement’, pp. 318–24.
99. JUST 3/49/1 m21.
100. JUST 3/48 m4.
101. JUST 3/49/1 m49.
102. JUST 1/467 m14d.
103. JUST 3/116 m5d.
104. JUST 3/48 m6.
105. JUST 1/746 mm1, 2d–4d, 5d.
106. JUST 1/333 m4.
107. KB 27/254 mm11, 12; Tupling, South Lancashire, pp. 37, 42.
108. JUST 1/428 mm2–3.
109. JUST 1/429 mm16, 16d, 18.
110. Kimball, Warwickshire Rolls, pp. li, liii: the writ to the sheriff in the 1395 commission specifically instructed him to summon the borough constables. Generally the borough constables presented three times as many offences as the ordinary presenting jurors, though a third of these were economic trespasses and only one sixth were felonies.
111. Ibid., p. liv.
112. Putnam, Proceedings, p.xcix.
113. A. Musson, ‘Twelve Good Men and True? The Character of Early Fourteenth-Century Juries’, Law and History Review, 15 (1997), 120–1.
114. Musson, ‘Twelve Good Men and True’, pp. 127–8.
115. P. C. Maddern, Violence and Social Order: East Anglia 1422–1442 (Oxford, 1992), p. 51.
116. Sessions of the Peace in the City of Lincoln, 1351–1354 and the Borough of Stamford, 1351, ed. E. G. Kimball, Lincoln Record Society, 65 (1971), p.xxix.
117. JUST 3/29/2 mm32, 33.
118. JUST 3/29/2 mm12, 32, 33, 39.
119. JUST 3/112 m29d.
120. JUST 3/125 m15.
121. CPR 1317–21, p. 17; 1321–4, p. 370.
122. JUST 3/5/2; CPR 1324–7, p. 286.
123. CPR 1321–4, p. 61; 1330–4, p. 293.
124. CPR 1321–4, p. 382; 1330–4, pp. 286, 295, 297.
125. CPR 1321–4, p. 382; 1338–40, p. 137.
126. CPR 1348–50, p. 533; 1361–4, p. 66.
127. This was certainly the case by the sixteenth century (K. Wrightson, ‘Two Concepts of Order: Justice, Constables, and Jurymen in Seventeenth-Century England’, in J. Brewer and J. Styles (ed.), An Ungovernable People: the English and their Law in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (London, 1980), p. 26).
128. Five of the 1345 Lancashire sub-keepers were styled as knights in the commission; at least two others were distrained to knighthood: Gilbert Skaresbrek (C 47/1/8 m13) and David Egerton (E 198/3/22 m3).
129. For the dispute between the Chastiloun and Nowers families that erupted in the mid-1330s and culminated in Ralph Chastiloun’s death and Roger Nowers’ disgrace, see Musson, Public Order and Law Enforcement, pp. 259–60, 274–6.
130. This area is explored more fully in Musson and Ormrod, Evolution, pp. 68–70.
131. M. K. McIntosh, Controlling Misbehaviour in England 1370–1600 (Cambridge, 1998), pp. 27–8, 40–1; King, ‘Decision Makers’, p. 26.
132. G. R. Owst, Literature and Pulpit in Medieval England, 2nd edn (Oxford, 1961), pp. 169–71.
133. ‘Piers Plowman’ by William Langland: an edition of the C-text, ed. D. A. Pearsall (London, 1978), CIII ll. 175, 177.
134. JUST 1/850 m5.
135. JUST 1/850 m1d, m4 (Suffolk), 596 m6d (Norfolk).
136. JUST 3/145 m3 (1360), m17 (1361 – Yorkshire).
137. For example: JUST 1/891 m6 (Surrey).
138. For example: JUST 1/746 mm4-5d (Shropshire).
139. JUST 1/20 mm4–5 (Bedfordshire), 70 mm2–3 (Buckinghamshire), 596 mm1–4 (Norfolk), 850 mm6–8d (Suffolk).
140. C 66/155 m7d.
141. CPMR 1323–64, p. 189.
142. Owst, Literature and Pulpit, p. 326.
143. A. P. Baldwin, The Theme of Government in Piers Plowman (Woodbridge, 1981), p. 28; Owst, Literature and Pulpit, pp. 162, 169–70, 328–9.
144. For example: JUST 1/1395 m1; Sessions of the Peace for Bedfordshire, 1355–59, 1363–4, ed. E. G. Kimball, Bedfordshire Historical Record Society, 48 (1969), pp. 34, 47–8, 73, 74, 75; Poos, ‘Social Context’, pp. 31–3; Wrightson, ‘Two Concepts of Order’, p. 31.
145. Maddern, Violence and Social Order, p. 72.
146. C. Dyer, Everyday Life in Medieval England (London, 1994), p. 231.
147. Summerson, ‘Structure of Law Enforcement’, 315–17, 325–7; Wrightson, ‘Two Concepts of Order’, pp. 23–6 (quotation at p. 25).
148. Dyer, Everyday Life, p. 231.
149. C. Dyer, ‘The Social and Economic Background to the Rural Revolt of 1381’, in R. H. Hilton and T. Aston (ed.), The English Rising of 1381 (Cambridge, 1981), pp. 17–19; A. J. Prescott, ‘Judicial Records of the Rising of 1381’, unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of London (1984), p. 100.