Watch and Ward and Assise of 1252. minutely prescribed by Edward I.'s statute, De Officio Coronatoris, to which reference is still constantly made.' In 1233, the old police organisation, proving inadequate, was supplemented by a system of watch and ward in every township throughout the country. Twenty years later, further regulations were Watch and issued extending and enforcing the Watch and Ward, and combining it, for the preservation of internal peace, with the Assize of Arms. (1) Watch was to be kept from sunset to sunrise between Ascension Day and Michaelmas; in the cities by companies of six good and strong armed men stationed at every gate, in the boroughs by a company of twelve, and in the townships by six, or four at the least, according to the number of the inhabitants. Any stranger attempting to pass through was to be arrested till the morning, and then, if suspected of any crime, 'deliver to the Sheriff and kept in custody and liberated 'per legem terrae. Even a stranger who arrived by daylight was not to main in any village, except during harvest-time, unless his host would become surety for his conduct. A merchant on his road was entitled, after counting his money in the presence of the mayor and bailiffs of any city or borough, to demand of them a guard 'per malos passus et loca ambigua,' and if subsequently robbed, could claim restitution from the inhabitants. With the exception of those specially deputed to guard the King's peace, no persons were to be allowed to carry arms. (2) The Assize of Arms was renewed and the classification remodelled, all men, 'citizens, burgesses, free tenants, villeins, and others,' between the ages of fifteen and sixty, being ranked according to the value of their land or moveables, from fifteen pounds annual rent in land down to forty shillings in chattels.3 (3) All these were sworn to provide themselves with the arms proper to their class, and ordered to join the hue and cry whenever required. For this purpose they were placed under the command of the local civil authorities, the mayor and bailiffs in cities and boroughs, and the constable in each township, the supreme authority over all being vested in the chief constable of each hundred.* 1 4 Edw. I. stat. 2. [This was an ordinance regulating their procedure; cf. also Stat. Walliæ, 12 Edw. i. c. 5.—ED.] * Writ of Hen. III. to the Sheriff of Kent: De forma pacis conservanda. Rymer, i. 209. [Sel. Chart. 353.-C.] · The owner of land worth 15 a year, and the owner of chattels of the value of 60 marks (40) were classed together with respect to their armour, and served in what may be termed the ' Yeomanry Cavalry' of that period. Each had to provide himself with a coat of mail, an iron headpiece, sword, small knife, and a horse. The other classes served on foot. Writs of 36 & 37 Hen. III. (1252-3); Rymer, i. 281, 291; Select Chart. 362, 2 1285. Under our English Justinian, Edward I., whose 'legislation is so Statute of Winchester, full that the laws of the next three centuries are little more than a 13 Edward I. necessary expansion of it,'1 the celebrated Statute of Winchester,2 which though now to a great extent obsolete has been the foundation of modern laws, elaborated and completed the various regulations for Watch and Ward, reception of strangers, hue and cry, and the Assize of Arms. It was also specially provided that the whole Hundred where any robbery should be committed, should be answerable for the damage, unless the felons be brought to justice; and that highways leading from one market town to another should be widened, 'so that there be neither dyke, tree nor bush, whereby a man may lurk to do hurt,' within 200 feet of each side of the road. The provisions of the Statute of Winchester with respect to the arming of the men of each county were more immediately directed to the preservation of internal peace, by rendering more effective the power of summoning the posse comitatus, which the Sheriff, as chief conservator of the peace of the county, had always possessed. But these local forces still continued available for the purposes of National defence; and from the thirteenth down to the middle of the sixteenth century, it was customary, whenever invasion was apprehended from Scotland or France, to empower special 'Commissioners of Array' Commissions to muster and train all or a portion of the men of each county capable of bearing arms, and to hold them in readiness to defend the kingdom. of Array. keep arms Acts of The ancient obligation to keep sufficient arms according to each Obligation to man's estate was enforced by statutes of Philip and Mary, and the enforced by kind of weapons changed for those of more modern fashion ;3 but Philip and under James I. these provisions were abrogated. In 1638, Charles I. Mary. issued an unconstitutional Order in Council obliging every freeholder whose land was of the clear yearly value of £200 to furnish a horse 1 Stubbs, Select Chart., Introd. 35. 13 Edw. I. c. 6, 1285. 3 4 & 5 Phil. and Mary, c. 2, and c. 3. Penalties were imposed on persons absenting themselves when commanded to muster by the sovereign, or any lieutenant authorised for the same. This was a new officer, the Lord-Lieutenant, introduced in this reign as the chief military officer of the Crown in every county. For the military purposes of each county the lord lieutenancy may be regarded as a revival of the office of the old English earl. Thenceforward the Sheriff became practically a purely civil officer. By the Army Regulation Act, 1871 (34 & 35 Vict. 86, s. 6), the jurisdiction and command of the Lords-Lieutenant of Counties over the Militia and other auxiliary forces have been revested in the Crown, to be exercised through the Secretary of State for War, and officers appointed with his advice. I 1 Jac. I. c. 25, s. 46. soldier when called upon to do so by the Lord-Lieutenant of his The Militia. County. The command of the Militia, as the local forces were usually denominated, formed the final ground of rupture between Charles and his Parliament, the latter having passed ordinances (26 Feb. and 6 March, 1642) superseding the King's commissions of lieutenancy by the appointment of fifty-five Commissioners of Array, with power to suppress 'all insurrections, rebellions, and invasions.' This proceeding, however necessary it may have been at the time for the peace and safety of the kingdom, was clearly illegal. After the Restoration, an Act of Parliament declared that the sole supreme government of the Militia, and of all forces by sea and land, and of all forts and places of strength, was, and by the laws of England ever had been, the undoubted right of the Kings and Queens of England, and that neither House of Parliament could pretend to the same, nor lawfully levy war, offensive or defensive, against the King. By another Act, provision was made for calling together, arming, and arraying the The ancient Militia, by the King's lieutenants of counties, and for charging the cost upon the landholders in proportion to the value of their estates.2 But concurrently with the growth of a Standing Army,3 the local forces Army at end languished for a lengthened period, until revived and remodelled in 1757, in consequence of a panic caused by rumours of a French armament, as the national Militia. National force superseded by Standing of 17th cen. tury, until revived in 1757 as the Militia. 1 13 Car. II., st. 1, c. 6. 2 14 Car. II., c. 3. 1 [A standing army under the direct command of the Crown was, as a result of suppression of the great rebellion regarded as a menance to free rights of the people. Hence extraordinary powers annually renewable under strict conditions were granted to the Crown by the Mutiny Act (2 Will. and Mary, c. 5), q. v. The standing army has, however, now been made a national institution by the Army Administration Act.-ED.] ment. Hallam, Const. Hist. ii. 133 iii. [259]. Militiamen were to be chosen by ballot to serve for a limited number of years, but were not to be compelled to march out of their own country except in case of invasion or rebellion. In 1829, the practice was commenced and has ever since been continued, of passing an annual Act suspending the Militia ballot, the supply being furnished by voluntary enlistBut the same Act which temporarily suspends the law empowers the Queen in Council to at once order a ballot should necessity require it. [This is a convenient place for giving a brief summary of the history of the office of Lord High Admiral. This officer of high state rank was the president of a sovereign Court, and determined summarily matters relating to the sea. The laws of Oléron," or the judgments of the Maritime Court of that island in the Mediterranean, were probably well known to all seafaring nations at the time of the Crusades, and were introduced into England by one of the Crusading Kings (probably by Richard I.) as a form whereby purely maritime causes should be determined. (Cf. Cleirac, Les Us et Coustumes de la Mer, Bordeaux, 1647; Travers Twiss, Sea Laws, in Encyl. Brit., 9th ed. xxi., pp. 583-586; Reeves, Hist. of Engl. Law, iii. 389.) But the office of Lord High Admiral is first heard of in the reign of Edward I., and the first admiral known as " Admiral de la Mer du Roy d'Angleterre," was William de Leybourne in 1286; yet it is only from 34 Edw. II. that we find an uninterrupted succession of admirals. The laws of Oléron above mentioned were supposed to be a transcript of the Rhodian laws, and were a code of maritime usages, which in process of time became observable as customary laws by the majority of seafaring nations in the western world. The jurisdiction of this Court of Admiralty became so far-reaching and 'encroached so much upon the domain of the common law tribunals' (cf. Hannis Taylor, Origin of Engl. Const., p. 550), that we find in the reign of Rich. II. and Henry IV., statutes passed for restricting the scope of its powers. Yet the High Court of Admiralty continued throughout the Middle Ages as a Court taking cognizance of all causes relating to maritime matters, which were without the pale of the common law courts of the country, and thus its jurisdiction extended over all the high seas. Formerly exercising both criminal and civil jurisdiction, it was deprived of the former on a report of a Select Committee on the High Court of Admiralty in 1833. The common law courts now take cognizance of all criminal offences which could be tried before these tribunals, and the Judge of the High Court of Admiralty, the lineal successor of the Lord High Admiral, has, although he may sit with the other Commissioners of oyer and terminer, not a separate and independent criminal jurisdiction. On this, as on the kindred subject of the navy, cf. Stubbs, Const. Hist. i. 594; Hannis Taylor, iii. c. 2, p. 547, seq.; Encycl. Brit. (9th ed.), sub 'Admiral.'—ED.] C.H. M 162 The English Kingship elective, both before and after the Conquest. CHAPTER VI. THE SUCCESSION TO THE CROWN. THE elective character of the old English kingship, but with the choice exclusively limited, under all ordinary circumstances, to the members of one Royal house, has been already discussed in a previous chapter. The Norman Conquest introduced a new dynasty, and a more comprehensive idea of Royalty, combining both the national and feudal theories of sovereignty; but it effected no legal change in the nature of the succession to the Crown. Election by the National Assembly was still necessary to confer an inchoate right to become King-a right subsequently perfected by the ecclesiastical ceremony of inunction and coronation. So strongly marked was the elective character of the kingly office that, even after the choice of the Nation had been once made, the form of election was again gone through by the clergy and people assembled in the church at the coronation. The doctrine of the hereditary descent of the Crown the doctrine gradually grew up, as the territorial idea of kingship superseded the of hereditary right. personal idea,* during the two centuries after the Conquest. As the King of the English developed into the King of England, the Feudal lord of the land, the kingdom came to be regarded by kings and courtiers as the private possession of the Sovereign, to be enjoyed for his own personal profit; and by degrees the feudal lawyers, arguing Growth of 1 Supra, pp. 23, 27, 28. On the origin of coronation and unction, see Stubbs, Const. Hist. i. 144, 145. The ancient English kings were both crowned with a helmet and anointed. 'The ceremony was understood as bestowing the divine ratification on the election that had preceded it, and as typifying rather than conveying the spiritual gifts for which prayer was made. That it was regarded as conveying any spiritual character, or any special ecclesiastical prerogative, there is nothing to show: rather, from the facility with which crowned kings could be set aside and new ones put in their place, without any objection on the part of the bishops, the exact contrary may be inferred. That the powers that be are ordained of God, was a truth recognised as a motive to obedience, without any suspicion of the doctrine, so falsely imputed to churchmen of all ages, of the indefeasible sanctity of royalty. . . The statements of Allen (Prerogative, p. 22) on this point are very shallow and unfair. To attribute the ideas of the seventeenth century to the ages of S. Gregory, Anselm, and Becket, seems an excess of absurdity.'-Ibid. p. 146 [and n. 2]. 3 See Maskell, Monumenta Ritualia Ecclesiae Anglicanae, vol. iii.; Freeman, Norm. Conq. iii. 44, 623. Supra, p. 36. John was the first who called himself 'Rex Angliae, on his Great Seal; all his predecessors had been 'Kings of the English.' |