The wardmen of ancient times were a kind of rural police, whose duty of
ward-keeping was connected with their tenure. They were, probably,
maintained on the north side of London until the institution of a
general system of police in the time of Edward the First. By the statute
of Winton, it was ordered that a watch should be kept by six men at each
gate of a city, by twelve men in every borough, and by six men or four
men in each rural township, every night, from the Feast of the Ascension
of our Lord to the Feast of St. Nicholas. The watchmen could detain any
one unknown to them; any one who would not stand and declare himself,
was pursued with hue and cry--with horn and voice--
"Swarming at his back the country cried."
We suppose that St. Nicholas became the patron of highwaymen, because
the watch was intermitted on the day dedicated to St. Nicholas. The
wardmen were occasionally noticed in the Domesday of St. Paul's. The
survey of 1279 states, that at Sutton, in Middlesex, each tenant who had
cattle on the lord's lands to the value of thirty pence, paid a penny at
Martinmas, called _ward-penny_; but this tax was not due from the
watchmen of the ward, who waited at night in the King's highway, and
received the ward-staff:--
"They wared and they waked,
And the Ward so kept,
That the king was harmless,
And the country scatheless."
In Essex, the ward-keeper had a rope with a bell, or more than one bell,
attached to it: the rope may have been used to stop the way. The
ward-staff was a type of authority, cut and carried with peculiar
ceremony, and treated with great reverence.
The duties of the beadle (Saxon, _bydel_ or _bædel_), in ancient times,
lay more on the farm than in the law-court, the state procession, or in
the parochial duties of punishing petty offenders, as in the present
day.[58] In many places, the bedelry and the haywardship were held
together by one person. The beadle was the verger of the manorial court;
he likewise overlooked the reapers and carried his rod into the
harvest-field. At Darent, near Rochester, the beadle held five acres as
beadle, shepherd, and hayward; he had eighteen sheep and two cows in the
lord's pasture; against Christmas he had a _crone_--an old sheep--a lamb
with a fleece, and some other allowances. At Ickham, in the same county,
the beadle's office was hereditary: the beadle had five acres with a
cottage for his service, and made all the citations of the court, and,
if he went on horseback into the Weald of Kent, he was allowed
provender for his horse; he had pasture for five hogs, five head of
cattle, and a horse; he attended in the fields to regulate the labours
of the harvest. And such had been the tenure of his father, grandfather,
and great-grandfather.
Old English gentlemen were anciently very much afraid of theft and
peculation; they believed that "Treste lokes maketh trewe hewen,"--or,
to change their maxim into current English, they believed that "firm
locks made faithful servants." The barns were to be well closed after
August, and no servant was to open them until threshing-time, without
the special direction of the landlord or the steward. The strictest
accounts were kept. Every person, in any situation of the slightest
trust or responsibility, was required to render an account of every
penny and every article passing through his hands, to the receiver, or
bailiff, whose accounts were revised once a year by auditors, who went
round from manor to manor.