Law and Order

In the early years of the Blisworth Parish Council three people were nominated and voted on as Parish Constables each year. Their job, alongside their trade or profession, was to maintain law and order among the villagers and for this they were generally unpaid.

The practice stemmed from Norman times where suitable men would be sworn in at the Court Leet sessions and this was a function taken over in the late 18th century by the Church Vestry meetings. Such meetings in fact continued until 1896 when our Parish Council was first formed.

Issues regarding maintaining law and order were raised at the 'Court Leets' which were meetings called by the Lord of the Manor and those in Blisworth were probably held in the Royal Oak, attended by an agent for the Duke of Grafton. The general business at the Court Leets included the confirmation of three constables for the ensuing year and generating sometimes ad hoc rules for keeping the land fit for cultivation - the land being divided into three large fields, before inclosure, that were shared between all households. The banks, or baulks, between sections of the fields may have needed altering or building up and the stream might have needed clearing.

To illustrate the type of orders - extract from various Court Leet Bills (1725 - 1749) from Mona Clinch's book:

First of all. We doe order the jury to go out so often as the fore- man shall think fitt within one hour after the ringing of the bell under the penalty of one shilling each man for every default or offence.
Alsoe that no mare having a foale shall be flitt in any of the said corn and peasefield untill they be fully rid in such manner as other Horses are flitt under the penality of one shilling each man for each mare having a fole for each days offence flitting contrary to the meaning of this order.
Alsoe we agree and order that no man shall keep or flitt any sort of Horse kind upon any baulks or joint ways in the wheatfield nor peasefields untill they are fully rid except the ancient Hades which used to be flitt under the penality of one shilling each man for each horse kind for each days offence.
Alsoe we doe hereby order that every Hogg above two months old that shall be not ringed shall pay one penny when they shall be catcht in ye open ffields or enclosure and also all that shall be ringed shall pay one half-penny.
Alsoe we present Thomas Judge to one cottage or Tenement in Blisworth with the appurtonances to hold to him and his heirs for ever which he lately purchased of one Moses Inns and Dorothy his wife, alsoe we doe order that no man shall keep neither horses, cow nor sheep upon waste Greensward in the corn and pease fields under the penalty of five shillings each man for every days default or offence but we doe hereby agree that the said Greensward shall be disposed of at the discretion of the Jury.
Alsoe we doe hereby order that no sheep shall be kept in neither of the cornfields nor in the upper meadow from Nine Leys Hedge untill the said field be fully rid, under the penalty of five shillings each man for every day of default or offence.
Alsoe we do hereby order that no sheep shall be kept in the peasefield untill the fifteenth day of September under the penalty of five shillings each man for every day's default or offence.
Alsoe we present William Dunckley the Elder to be Howard (Hayward - see below) for the year ensueing and we doe allow him one shilling a week and to be paid him by the overseers of the poor.
Alsoe we do order that the mill brook shall be scoured up from the Mill to the ford and every one to do his own at or before the first day of May next.
Alsoe we present Samuel Sheppard to be Constable for the year ensueing. In witness whereof the Jury of the said Court have hereunto sett their hands.

If some matter was being raised for the first time then a new rule would be added to the rather long list. The NRO holds a few copies of Court Leet minutes from the early 18th century and an inspection of them shows only the new rules and that every rule carried a monetary penalty for those who might ignore it. With any change in 'welfare' of a particular piece of ground it might be decided to alter its position in the generally strictly-kept rules for crop rotation. Other tasks at the Court Leets is to review the list of those to receive poor relief and elect the minor parish officials. See the table below for the duties of these officers, who effectively impose an 'order' upon village society though in many cases not all of them would be necessary.

Constable	General law keeper - power of arrest. An officer of the King reporting to the County Sheriff (shire-reeve) and also answerable to County coroner and bailiff. His ancient duties were to 'Watch and Ward, Hue and Cry' - see Appendix
Thirdborough	Constable - extras, a variable number according to size of parish.
Surveyor	Repair of the highways within the parish, the first priority being the road towards the nearest market town.
Overseer of the Poor	Administer and record the distribution of poor relief.
Beadle	Assist the constable with power of arrest and duty to impound stray animals. He is likely to be the town-crier too.
Hogringer	Annual duty was to ensure all hogs were ringed to prevent turf destruction.
Wellmaster	Water supply to be maintained from charges imposed on parishers.
Aletaster	Checked that the community drank good beer and ate good bread.
Alnager	For a weaving community, checked the quality and gave it the town's 'seal'
Clerk of the Market	Controlled the operation of the market - if the town had one.
Swineherd	Hired to keep pigs etc. from straying off the common - power to impound.
Neatherd	Hired to keep cattle penned and off the highways - power to impound.
Scavenger	Hired to remove rubbish from streets and highways.
Hayward	Inspect and repair fences and hedges owned by the parish.

The records are signed by a customary twelve men - members of the Leet Jury, being the origin of our jury system. The inset below is copied from a 1740 Court Leet record - nearly all the names are familiar ones. In that year, Richard Gibbs was elected constable and Charles Brayfield and John Hedge were made thirdboroughs, showing that not being on the Leet jury had no affect on eligibility.

Of the various roles described in the table, the minutes of our early parish council mention the work of the constables, the poor overseer and the surveyor though it is evident that the latter two soon became the concern of the County Council based at Towcester - with some details in the next two paragraphs.

At first the highways surveyor's office at Towcester also included matters of sanitation. It is known that previously, the church vestry meetings must have dealt with this topic, for the parish council in 1896 'inherited' a scheme of 15 cesspits. In medieval times, there appears to have been no specific officer reporting to the Court Leet on matters of sanitation - the scavenger is closest!

The parish council continued for many years the distributions to the poor if originating from payments made by custom (eg. Duke of Grafton) or from a trust (eg. the Leeson Charity) and this was with the guidance of the Churchwardens of the parish. But in fact, for those Blisworth records in the NRO, it was land management that was the most important item in the agenda - far outweighing everything else.

Returning to law and order, the constables had a right of discretion and would punish offenders by locking them in stocks or possibly in a 'Little Ease' for a spell and report the matter at the next Court Leet. There might be a review of an individual in terms of some worse punishment to be metered out to him the next time. It seems Blisworth Parish had a Little Ease, for the erection of the Baptists' Chapel in 1825 was on a field with that name. Our earliest map, 1729, shows nothing of this. A Little Ease is a box or chamber, sometimes underground, into which an offender would be locked. The inside dimensions were neither high enough to stand nor wide enough to sit - the object being to torture the individual with as little ease (comfort) as possible. If the prisoner was unpopular and the box was underground, villagers would try to suffocate him by covering him. Of the village stocks little is known except to say that stocks are also known as 'Little Ease'. George Freeston has stated that stocks were placed at the turn in the Courteenhall Road (where the path joins the road) but nothing in writing has yet turned up. There are more details of the duties of the constable(s) in the Appendix below.

The swearing in of village constables seems to have faded out just before the second World War, by which time no-one could be found prepared to do the job. By that time uniformed professional police had been adopted across the country. This national force was supposed to have taken shape since about 1860. Hints of it are notable in 1905. In the transitional period the relationship between the two policing forces was somewhat strained where each accused the other of incompetence. Stories of policing in general are scarce but here is a delightful one:- it concerned a traditional parish constable, Mr. Gooch, who needed to take a man to Towcester prison. Off they went, handcuffed together, and as they walked down the hill by Showsley, the prisoner's hat blew off. He requested that he be released to recover his hat. 'No' said Gooch 'you will just run off. Stay here and I will get it instead'. Gooch innocently undid the cuffs to walk off and get the hat. Of course - the prisoner ran off.

During WWII Constable Fred Wooding received a distressed call from a woman who was on the railway embankment when a German aeroplane strafed her with bullets. 'Don't worry madam, I’m on my way immediately on my bicycle!" The strafing was almost certainly aimed not at her but at the railway station, which certainly accumulated some bullet holes during the war. Fred Wooding 'worked with' the youth at the time; one clever boy who put some small fish in a bucket of water, which had been filled at the pump and laboriously carried home, was followed into school and made to promise to get the guy his water for a whole week; there was an incident where apple scrumpers would be met at the orchard fence in Chapel Lane and made to empty their shirts into his bicycle-saddlebag - the boys were left to wonder whether there was a dark side to P.C. Wooding who then cycled straight past the orchard owner's house on his rounds which included Gayton. One day, a couple of lads stole his bike and hid it. They dared not return it and pretty soon the police force replaced it. Then, a few days later, knowing that Wooding was visiting a certain woman, because his new bike was lent against the telephone box, the lads returned his bike and lent it against his new one. They then vanished and so cannot report on any further events in that story.

There is another story which involved one of our village constables, 'Woody' Colin Wood. He was shocked to find after dark in Towcester a camel loping along the main street pavement and, once recovered sufficiently, he had the presence of mind to tether it to a lamp-post. The local newspaper joked that a 'ship of the desert had slipped its moorings and that the constable had got the hump . . .' but the matter was resolved when a circus manager turned up and reclaimed the animal before morning. It is hoped to include one or two more stories before too long.

We still think, wistfully, of a constable walking his beat, keeping a wary eye out for trouble and stepping in sometimes to make an authoritative and diplomatic point - and in a country area such as ours, able to forge a good relationship with many of the youth of the village. The "Dixon of Dock Green" image is never enacted these days - this village has been administered from Daventry Police Station (since about 1990) and before that from Towcester Police Station (since about 1975). Blisworth is one of 17 villages administered by one of the groups at Daventry.

The traditional parish Constables obviously lived in the village. Early in the 19th century, a professional Constable Heath lived in the High Street in a tied house now numbered No.14 having been transferred there from Yardley Gobion in about 1905. We know this because Heath's elderly daughter wrote to George Freeston in November 1981. One of his successors, name unknown now, was so tall the floor of that house had to be dug out to accommodate him. This was the house that was formerly the greengrocer shop of the Alexander family, until about 1945. In the 1940s Constable Fred Wooding, nicknamed 'Charcoal', lived in the centre house of the group of three at the lower end of Church Lane (no longer a semi-derelict house) which was duly referred to as the Police Station - presumable another tied house. In about 1953, the County police force provided a new tied house that was built in the High Street next to the newsagent's shop and at about this time P.C. Wooding retired and 'Honest' John Mitchell took over. That house then became known as the Blisworth Police Station. It did not possess a blue light over the door but there were "Northamptonshire County Constabulary" signs both over the door and alongside where there was a notice board. Constable Colin Wood, following Honest John from June 1966, was the last of the truly village bobbies - after 21 years he gave way to Constable Mick Knight, based at Towcester but maintaining a contact with the village. It was at some time in the 1970s that the house was placed on the open market and the administration was moved to Towcester.

With thanks to George Freeston (of course), Colin Wood, Sam Cherry and Fiona Mckenzie.

APPENDIX: MEDIEVAL DUTIES OF THE CONSTABLE
(Extract from Eleanor Trotter's "XVII Century Life in a Country Parish", 1919 -
a worthy reference that is still available on the secondhand internet market)

The work of the constable in the parish government has for its main characteristic that of a police officer, a conservator of the peace. His duties were wide ranging as can be seen from the following. However, a constable who either exceeded his authority, or neglected his duties, was liable to severe penalties from the sheriff or Justice of the Peace.

If a quarrel broke out in his presence he must not let it go too far: when words ran high he must warn the disputants before they came to blows. He must discriminate as to what exactly was the distinction between a lawful and an unlawful assembly of people, and in the latter case he must command it to disperse. He must listen to all complaints, and decide whether a suspected person were guilty enough to justify a warrant of arrest, and, having arrested a man, he must keep him in safe custody until the day of trial. It was also his duty to see that the various statutes passed for the good ordering of mankind were not violated in his township; there must be no cursing and swearing, no unlawful games, no sitting tippling in alehouses, no eating of flesh on fast days, no profaning of the Sabbath Day, either by absence from church or by unlawful work; but every man must provide himself with suitable arms; the fathers must teach their sons the use of the bow; parents must bind their children apprentice; masters and servants must be content to give and receive neither more nor less than the wage laid down by the Justices of the Peace. Rogues and vagabonds must be summarily sent to their native places; minstrels and wandering players of interludes must not be allowed to corrupt the King's liege people; wherever a market was held, the various trade regulations affecting corn, butter, malt, weights and measures, etc., must be enforced. In short, the constable must apprehend, take charge of and present for trial all persons who broke the laws, written or unwritten, against the King's peace or against the statutes of the realm, and, when judgment was delivered, in many cases he had to inflict the punishment or levy the fine.

All rogues and vagabonds found begging, hedge-breakers, robbers of orchards and gardens, cutters of corn and wood, apprentices who had misbehaved themselves, were to be summarily whipped by the constable at the bidding of a Justice of the Peace, and should this unfortunate amateur policeman refuse to execute this part of his work, he could be sent to prison. To avoid breaches of the peace, to prevent visitations of the plague through infected people, it was necessary that someone should always be on the look out to prevent suspicious characters from entering the township; thus an important daily or weekly duty of the constable was the appointing of suitable people for the watch since he was the man to blame if anything went wrong.

The constable had moreover to carry out sentences inflicted on offenders by the Justices of the Peace, acting separately, together, or in Quarter Sessions, or by the Leet in places where the Courts Leet were still held. He must also execute the commands of the Justices of Gaol Delivery, of Oyer and Terminer, and of the Coroners. If a fire broke out in the parish, the constable had to be present to prevent any goods being stolen. If any particular bit of work had to be done for the good of the whole village, the constable commanded the various householders to come and give their labour. In some cases he was the rate collector for the township, and was empowered to seize the goods of any person refusing to pay an assessment, sell them, and take the money for the rate, giving back to the owner the proceeds. He was associated with the churchwardens in the administration of the Poor Law, and of the Statute of Labourers and Apprentices. He was also the executive officer of the surveyor, in that he must order people to come to their common days' work on the roads and present them if they refused.

The constable had not only to prevent affrays in his township but also to ensure that no breaker of the peace was allowed to escape. If a felon, or even a person suspected of felony, fled out of, or came into, the township, the constable was expected to take the initiative in raising the alarm, for he alone had legal authority to enforce his orders, he alone could and did present at the Quarter Sessions anyone who disobeyed him. When the constable raised the hue and cry, all the inhabitants of the township had to take part in it on horseback and on foot. They turned out of their homes with knives, bows and arrows—those weapons which they were expected to keep ready for such emergencies—and crying, "Out, Out," blowing their horns with shouting and uproar streamed after the fugitive. As the noise travelled over into the next township, so its constable must make his people take up the pursuit: thus "the hue will be horned from vill to vill." If a murderer escaped, the township was fined for negligence, if a robbery was committed, and no township in the wapentake (shire-hundred) had captured the thief, the whole wapentake was held responsible and an assessment was levied on it to pay to the person robbed the value of the stolen goods: moreover every wapentake through which the thief fled had to take its share in making good the loss.

In days when there were no banks men travelled about with large sums of money and it was very necessary to enforce the local responsibility of maintaining security from robbery. But while the township or the wapentake had to make recompense as a penalty for negligence, if a constable let a man accused of felony escape while in his custody he himself became a felon and "the judges of his fault may set his fine equal with the value of all his goods if in their discretions his defaults do so require." Generally, therefore, an arrested person was placed for safety in the village stocks until he could be taken before the nearest Justice or conveyed to jail. If he escaped out of the township, then the constable must seize his goods.