Watch, Ward, and Constables
| Published date | 01 April 1930 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0032258X3000300213 |
| Date | 01 April 1930 |
| Subject Matter | Article |
Watch,
Ward,
and Constables
INpresent security past dangers are soon forgotten. Few
people in England to-day, as they go peaceably to and fro on
their lawful occasions, think of the days when life and property
were less secure and when the unwilling parish constable and
the inefficient watch were the chief guardians of the public
peace. Both alike are unremembered now,
but
the record of
their doings still survives and many a fascinating glimpse of
the policing of old England can be rediscovered in the writers
of the past.
When Elizabeth was Queen of England law and order were
well maintained; for though the chief responsibility for the
detection of crime rested with the unpaid, or deputy, parish
constable and the watch, yet the active supervision exercised
by the Privy Council over the justices of the peace ensured
that they in their
turn
would demand from their subordinates
the due performance of their legal duties.
Contemporary records show that the chief difficulty
which confronted the police authorities of the time was the
problem of dealing with the swarms of masterless men, the
product of new economic conditions, who, sometimes by
necessity and more often by choice, relieved their poverty by
all manner of rogueries. One section of Elizabethan literature
deals exclusively with these pests, who were divided into
Ruffiers, Uprightmen, Anglers, and Priggers of Prancers, to
name a few of the classes; the caveat for Commen Cursetors
published in 1567 gives fifteen divisions. Thomas Dekker in
The Bellman
of
London (1608) gives some racy descriptions of
these fellows. Writing of the Anglers he said: '
Their
apparell
in which they walke is commonly frieze Jerkins and gully
slops;
In
the day time they begge from house to house not so
much for reliefe, as to spie what lyes fitte for their nets, which
in the night following they fish for.
Th~
Rodde they angle
289 T
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