The American Nation: A History Part 13

Although many of these laws are repet.i.tions, some others temporary or local, still others insignificant, yet, on the other hand, some of them opened up whole new fields of activity to the justices: as, for instance, those placing upon them, after 1563, the administration of the Act of Apprentice; and, after 1581, the responsibility for the search for and punishment of popish recusants. A whole code of law, procedure, and precedent grew up on these two subjects, besides others scarcely less extensive.

Quarter-sessions had nothing to do with civil suits, and cases of treason, murder, and certain other high crimes were excluded from their competence. Apart from this restriction and these offences, there was little difference between sessions and a.s.sizes, between the jurisdiction of the learned judges of the king in their half-yearly circuit and that of the county magistrates in their quarter-sessions.

Before them both grand and petty juries were empanelled, indictments drawn up, prisoners tried for a.s.sault, burglary, horse-stealing, witchcraft, pocket-picking, keeping up nuisances, cheating, failure to attend church, and almost all other offences of which seventeenth- century Englishmen were capable. If convicted they were placed in the stocks, whipped, or hanged. In Devons.h.i.+re, in the midwinter sessions of 1598, out of sixty-five culprits who were tried eight were hanged; at midsummer, out of forty-five eight were hanged, thirteen flogged, seven acquitted, and seven, on account of their claim of benefit of clergy, were branded and then released. [Footnote: Hamilton, Devons.h.i.+re Quarter-Sessions, 33.]

The justices in sessions or singly also performed much administrative work, such as the oversight and repair of bridges, the granting of licenses to ale-houses, the establishment of wages, the binding out of apprentices, and the relief of wounded soldiers. Many laws pa.s.sed under Elizabeth and James I. admitted of exceptions when approved by one or more justices of the peace, and there was thus constant occasion for granting to individual persons or at special times permission to export grain, to turn their barley into malt, to build cottages without land attached, to carry hand-guns, to buy and sell out of market-hours, to beg, and other dispensations from the rigorous application of the law.

[Footnote: Ibid., 27, 164, etc.]

The punis.h.i.+ng of recusants and the discipline of those who refused or neglected to go to church was, as already stated, an active occupation of the justices.

At certain times, such as the period just following the Gunpowder Plot, when the search was for Catholics, and somewhat later, when the search was for Puritans and Separatists, the Privy Council brought severe pressure upon the justices to fulfill these duties, and numerous prosecutions were brought by them. In Middles.e.x during the reign of James I. the indictments averaged eighty-five per year for religious offences, and sometimes at one session there were as many as one hundred and fifty persons indicted. [Footnote: Middles.e.x County Sessions Rolls, II., III.; Hamilton, Devons.h.i.+re Quarter-Sessions, 27, 74, etc.; Cal. of State Pap., Dom., 1633-1634, p. 531.]

The justices were constantly called upon to act in special emergencies or to give special relief. If a man's thatched cottage were burned, the nearest justice might authorize him to make an appeal to his neighbors for help to rebuild; if a whole village or town suffered from a more extensive fire, the justices in their sessions quartered the homeless people in various parishes, announced a subscription, and, calling constables and leading villagers before them, exhorted them to liberal voluntary gifts, and appointed a subcommittee to administer the funds for relief; if a pestilence appeared, a tax-rate for immediate a.s.sistance was levied, and the justices supported the sick and enforced the quarantine; if food became scarce and high-priced the justices forbade its export from the county or conversion into malt, and even announced a maximum market-price for it. When weavers or other artificers were out of work the justices set to work to induce masters to employ them or merchants to buy their goods, or, as a last resort, levied a rate for their support. If news came of the capture of a number of English sailors or merchants by Barbary pirates, collections were taken up by the justices of the maritime counties for their redemption. In all such exigencies it was the justices of the peace who were expected to tide over the special temporary difficulty or need.

Besides the ancient regulative duties of the justices, and besides those that were definitely given them by successive statutes, they were constantly subject to the commands and instructions of the Privy Council. In 1592, soon after the remodelling of the commission, a circular letter was sent by the Privy Council to certain commissioners in each county requiring them to call a special meeting of all justices of the peace, at which the oath of office and the oath of supremacy must be taken by each, or they must retire from the commission of the peace. [Footnote: Hamilton, Devons.h.i.+re Quarter-Sessions, 36, 48; Nichols, Hist. of the Poor Law, 252; Hist. MSS. Commission, Report XIV., App. IV., 42.] This seems to have been preparatory to a more strict discipline and oversight of their actions, for communications from the council now became more frequent and more drastic. In requiring them to fulfil their duties as magistrates the Privy Council spoke categorically in the name of the king in a constant series of letters, couched often in such harsh terms of reproof as to make it hard to realize that the justices were gentlemen of rank and dignity, fulfilling laborious services practically without compensation. In 1598 vigorous letters were sent to the various counties calling the attention of the justices to the recently enacted poor law, and requiring them to see it put into execution. [Footnote: Leonard, "the Poor Law," 143.] From this time forward to the outbreak of the civil war the pressure of the council on the justices became stronger and stronger. In January, 1631, a "Book of Orders" was issued by the Privy Council giving instructions in greater detail to the justices as to their duties, especially in regard to the poor law, and requiring them to make reports every three months to the sheriffs, who were to transmit these reports to the justices of a.s.size, who were in turn to send them to certain members of the Privy Council deputed for the purpose. The judges of a.s.size were also to report directly to the king if they learned of the negligence of any of the justices of the peace.

[Footnote: Ibid., 158, etc.] "The Book of Orders" was reissued from time to time and its requirements followed up.

An attempt was made by these means to introduce a system of "thorough"

in the affairs of local government during the period of the personal government of Charles I., a.n.a.logous to that attempted in the higher ranges of government by Wentworth, Laud, and their fellow-members of the Privy Council. The great instruments of this plan were the justices of the peace, acting within the limits of their respective counties, carrying out the manifold duties imposed upon them by law, under constant pressure from the Privy Council and the king. After even this partial enumeration of the services of the justices of the peace and of the supervision kept over them, one can readily appreciate the feeling of the justices of Nottingham who complained that they had "little rest at home or abroad." [Footnote: "Cal. of State Pap, Dom," 1631-1633, p.

18.]

The centre of gravity of local government in England was in the county.

The power which put its machinery in motion was that of the central government; but the actual administration was in the hands of the sheriff, the lord-lieutenant, the coroner, and the justices of the peace. The county bounded the sphere of activity of all these officials. The commission of any group of justices named the county in which they were to exercise their functions, and outside of its boundaries all their powers dropped from them. The coroner could not hold an inquest outside of his own county, and even the lord-lieutenant could exercise his military functions only within the s.h.i.+re or s.h.i.+res named in his commission. When, in 1603, James I. rode southward from Edinburgh on the news of the death of Elizabeth, and crossed the border at Berwick, he was met by the sheriff of Northumberland and escorted by him to the borders of Durham, where he was met by the sheriff of that county, and so from s.h.i.+re to s.h.i.+re through the whole length of England till he reached London.

The basis of representation in Parliament was the county: the counties formed the districts for all the circuit courts; national taxation was largely distributed by counties, and, as has been seen, local jurisdiction and administration were largely in the hands of county officials.

CHAPTER XVI

ENGLISH PARISH OR TOWNs.h.i.+P GOVERNMENT (1500-1650)

Next below the county as a political subdivision of England came the hundred, or wapentake, as it was called in the northern s.h.i.+res. One of the oldest political units of the country, perhaps the very oldest, it had become the least important of all. Its ancient significance as the primary organization of the community for judicial purposes disappeared long before the beginning of the seventeenth century, leaving only a desultory practice of holding a sheriff's semi-annual "tourn" through the hundreds of the s.h.i.+re; and some traditional payments of fees to the n.o.blemen who held the hundred court as a "liberty," or to the crown.

Apart from its existence as a unit of jurisdiction, the hundred was still put to some use as a subdivision of the county for purposes of taxation, for military organization and service, for the preservation of order, and as the sphere of activity of the high-constable.

[Footnote: Lambarde, Constables, S 25; Cal. of State Pap., Dom., 1637, pp. 39, 104.] The high-constables were, indeed, the only officers of the hundreds, one or more being chosen annually by the justices of the peace in quarter-sessions from the same cla.s.s of rural gentry as we have already seen furnis.h.i.+ng the county local officials. The hundred, for some reason, took but slight root in colonial soil, though it was established in a few of the colonies, and in such places many of its English functions reappeared. [Footnote: Howard, Local Const.i.tutional History of the U. 5., 272-286; Wilhelmi, Local Inst.i.tutions of Maryland, 60, n. 5.] An ancient Latin law writer says, "England is divided into counties, counties are divided into hundreds (which in some parts of England are called wapentakes), and hundreds are again subdivided into villas." [Footnote: Fortescue, De Laudibus Legum Angliae, chap. cxxiv.] By using the general word villas ("vills") he evaded one of the greatest difficulties in the description of English local government in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the confusing and conflicting use of terms for the smallest subdivision of civil government. Shall we use parish, town, towns.h.i.+p, manor, or t.i.thing when we speak of a neighborhood organized for the affairs of petty government? All these terms are used abundantly in the records of the time and to a great extent are used indiscriminately.

This lack of consistency is quite natural and explicable. In the first place, local organization as it existed at this time was the residuum of several successive systems of custom and law, and contained survivals from the nomenclature of each. "Towns.h.i.+p" or "town" was a term belonging to a far-distant Anglo-Saxon past, and had been long obscured by the later inst.i.tution of t.i.things and the still later manors. Secondly, the union of church and state, the mutual interpenetration of the ecclesiastical and civil systems, served to complicate the matter still further by confusing the word "parish" with terms which applied in a non-ecclesiastical sense to the same little group of people and the same tract of land.

Of all these terms, three--manor, town (or towns.h.i.+p), and parish--are the most usual. A manor was a group of inhabitants and the land they occupied (usually a single village), so far as these people were connected with and dependent upon a certain "lord of the manor," who had various rights over the people and their lands. Aside from his position as landlord, the most important of these rights was that of holding a court-baron and a court-leet and view of frank-pledge.

Various powers and activities had long gathered around these petty courts, but the whole group of manorial rights and duties of jurisdiction and administration was, in 1600, fast becoming an obsolete and insignificant inst.i.tution. Yet the terms connected with it had worked themselves inseparably into local life. Courts-baron were held in but few places, and almost solely for the purpose of making land transfers; courts-leet were held only infrequently and irregularly, many lords of manors who possessed the right exercising it but once a year or less frequently; the whole system of frank-pledges had long gone into desuetude. Grants of manorial powers, "court-leet, court- baron, and view of frank-pledge," were made in several of the colonial charters; but these inst.i.tutions showed little inclination to renew in America a vitality they had lost in England.

The English word town or towns.h.i.+p is the nearest equivalent to the Latin word villa or vill, which is a generic term used in the records, without very exact connotation, for one of those country villages in which the rural population of England was distributed, including the land connected with the village. Town and towns.h.i.+p meant the same thing, except when the former was applied to an urban community. Over and over again to the same locality first the term "town" and then "towns.h.i.+p" is applied; [Footnote: West Riding Sessions Rolls, pa.s.sim.]

and a careful search fails to find any distinction drawn between them.

In the north of England the term town or towns.h.i.+p seems to have been especially familiar and frequently used as a subdivision of some of the other local units; [Footnote: Fishwick, Hist of Preston, 2.] and it was in common use everywhere as a synonym for manor or parish.

While all these terms meet us frequently in the records of the seventeenth century, the term parish, notwithstanding its ecclesiastical connotation, was, in fact, superseding all others as the most usual appellation to give to the unit of local government. Terms strictly applicable to other phases of the local organization were apt to be applied to the parish. For instance, we hear of the "constable of a parish," [Footnote: Archaeological Review, IV, 344.] although that officer was an official of a towns.h.i.+p; proprietors of "free" and "copy- hold" lands of a parish are spoken of, though those terms properly applied only to a manor; the same is true of an order for a court to be held every three weeks in certain parishes, [Footnote: Saalkeld, Reports, III., 98.] the term "court" being properly manorial. These expressions show the tendency of the time to subst.i.tute the term "parish" for more exact terms applied to the local governing body in its different aspects. It was the "parish" that was usually sued, taxed, and fined, that received property by bequest, and that was ordered by the government to perform various duties.

Our colonial forefathers, according to the locality of their origin or the particular phase of local government that applied to their new conditions, used sometimes one term, sometimes another; but in this study of English conditions the parish and the officers whose sphere of action was the parish may be taken to include all that is necessary, with the understanding that our use of the term parish is broad, in conformity with seventeenth-century usage.

The knowledge of the boundaries of the parish was kept alive by the traditional ceremony of perambulation. From time to time, usually once a year, a procession was formed which went the rounds of the outer boundary, stopping from time to time at well-marked points for various commemorative ceremonies. In pre-Reformation times the ceremony was a religious one, the priest leading and the paris.h.i.+oners following with cross, banners, bells, lights, and sacred emblems, successive points being blessed and sprinkled with holy water. [Footnote: Burn, Ecclesiastical Law, II, 133,134.] When religious processions were forbidden at the Reformation, this ceremony came under the condemnation of the law; and Queen Elizabeth found it necessary, in order to perpetuate the useful civil element in it, to direct by proclamation a certain form of renewal of the processions. "The people should, once in the year, at the time appointed, with the curate and substantial men of the parish, walk about the parish, and at their return to the church make their common prayers. And the curate in the said perambulation was, at certain convenient places, to admonish the people to give thanks to G.o.d in the beholding of His benefits, and for the increase and abundance of his fruits upon the face of the earth, with the saying of the one hundred and third Psalm." [Footnote: Gibson, Codex, 213.]

The custom survived in this or other forms, [Footnote: s.h.i.+llingfleet, Ecclesiastical Cases, I., 244.] because there were no surveyed boundaries, and reliance had to be placed on marked stones and trees, hill-tops, watercourses, and such indications, interpreted and defined only by human tradition. In some remote districts it is still preserved. From the practice of performing the perambulation in rogation week it was often called "the rogation," and conversely rogation days were sometimes called "gang-days" [Footnote: Burn, Ecclesiastical Law, II., 133.] In the seventeenth century, as the men who afterwards practised it in New England and Virginia must have remembered, it was still a festivity. In the church-wardens' accounts for the parish of St. Clements, Ipswich, in 1638, is the item "ffor bread and beare given to the boyes when they wente the boundes of the parishe, 12s." [Footnote: East Anglian, IV., 2d series, 5.] Boys were taken as those whose life and memory would naturally be the longest, and the poorer boys were often especially included as a treat. In Chelsea, Middles.e.x, at a somewhat later time, a more official feast is suggested by the entry: "Spent at the perambulation dinner, 3 pounds 10s." [Footnote: Toulmin Smith, The Parish, 473.]

No material obstacle was allowed to interfere with the progress of the perambulators. They could, by law, enter all dwellings on the boundary and pa.s.s through and even break down all enclosures which lay across it. Private persons whose houses lay in the line of march of the perambulators sometimes provided food and drink for them, and this became so customary that efforts were made, though unsuccessfully, to enforce this custom by law. [Footnote: Burn, Ecclesiastical Law, II., 133.]

In describing the officers of the parish we pa.s.s from the cla.s.s of country gentry, from which the sheriffs, coroners, justices of the peace, and high-constables were drawn, to a group of lower social rank.

In the towns they may have been of somewhat higher or at least more varied status, but in the rural parishes the officers were of very humble position. In the invaluable description of England written by Harrison in the latter part of the reign of Elizabeth, from which we have had occasion to quote so frequently, the author says: "The fourth and last sort of people in England are day-labourers, poor husbandmen, and some retailers (which have no free land), copyholders, and all artificers, as tailors, shoemakers, carpenters, brickmakers, masons, etc. ... This fourth and last sort of people therefore have neither voice nor authority in the commonwealth, but are to be ruled and not to rule others: yet they are not altogether neglected, for ... in villages they are commonly made churchwardens, sidesmen, aleconners, now and then constables, and many times enjoy the name of head boroughs."

[Footnote: Harrison, Description of England (Camelot ed.), 13.]

The most active and conspicuous officer of the parish or towns.h.i.+p was the constable, or petty constable, as he is often called, to distinguish him from the high-constable of the hundred. He was appointed by the court-leet, where this was still held; in other cases by the steward of the lord of the manor, the vestry of the parish, or, as a part of their residuary duties, by the justices of the peace. The regular form of oath of the constable may be quoted in some fulness to show the nature of his duties. "You shall swear that you shall well and truly serve our sovereign lord, the king, in the office of a constable.

You shall see and cause his majesty's peace to be well and duly kept and preserved, according to your power. You shall arrest all such persons as in your sight and presence shall ride or go armed offensively, or shall commit or make any riot, affray, or other breach of his majesty's peace. You shall do your best endeavor to apprehend all felons, barrators, and rioters, or persons riotously a.s.sembled; and if any such offenders shall make resistance you shall levy hue and cry and shall pursue them until they be taken. You shall do your best endeavors that the watch in and about your town be duly kept for the apprehending of rogues, vagabonds, nightwalkers, eavesdroppers, and other suspected persons, and of such as go armed and the like. ... You shall well and duly execute all precepts and warrants to you directed from the justices of the peace of the county or higher officers. In time of hay or corn harvest you shall cause all meet persons to serve by the day for the mowing, reaping, and getting in of corn or hay. You shall, in Easter week, cause your paris.h.i.+oners to chuse surveyors for the mending of the highways in your parish. ... And you shall well and duly, according to your knowledge, power, and ability, do and execute all things belonging to the office of a constable so long as you shall continue in this office. So help you G.o.d." [Footnote: Dalton, The Country Justice, chap. clxxiv.]

The constable, among the other duties prescribed by his oath, had to "raise the hue and cry" when it was demanded--that is to say, if any one were a.s.saulted or robbed and appealed to the constable of the parish in which the injury occurred, the constable must summon out his neighbors, whether it were by day or by night, to seek the culprit. If not successful he must give notice to the constables of the adjacent parishes, who were similarly to raise the hue and cry in their neighborhoods. If the offender was not then discovered the person who suffered the loss might bring suit for its recovery from the whole hundred in which the attack occurred. [Footnote: Ibid., chap. lx.x.xiv,]

In practice hue and cry was a very ineffective method of capturing ill- doers. Harrison says: "I have known by my own experience felons being taken to have escaped out of the stocks, being rescued by others for want of watch and guard, that thieves have been let pa.s.s, because the covetous and greedy paris.h.i.+oners would neither take the pains nor be at the charge to carry them to prison, if it were far off; that when hue and cry have been made even to the faces of some constables, they have said: 'G.o.d restore your loss! I have other business at this time.'"

[Footnote: Harrison, Description of England (Camelot ed.), 247.] To prosecute petty offenders, to force laborers to serve during harvest- time, to sign their testimonials when they wished to leave the parish, and to see that innkeepers refused no travellers, gave the constable considerable duties of local supervision.

The constable must, with the advice of the minister and of one other inhabitant of the parish, whip any rogue, vagabond, or st.u.r.dy beggar who appeared in the parish, and then send him, with a testimonial to the fact of the whipping, back to his native parish. The word rogue was a comprehensive term as used in the laws of Elizabeth, including wandering sailors, fortune-tellers, collectors of money for charities, fencers, bearwards, minstrels, common players of interludes, jugglers, tinkers, peddlers, and many others, and adequate whipping of them and starting them in the direct route homeward must have been no sinecure.

[Footnote: Lambarde, Duties of Constables, S 45.]

A contemporary testimonial with which such a person was provided may not be without interest as an ill.u.s.tration of the manners of the time.

"A. B., a st.u.r.dy rogue of tall stature, red-haired and bearded, about the age of thirty years, and having a wart neere under his right eie, born (as he confesseth) at East Tilberie, in Ess.e.x, was taken begging at Shorne in this county of Kent, the tenth of March, 1598, and was then and there lawfully whipped therefor, and hee is appointed to goe to East Tilberie aforesaid, the direct way by Gravesend, over the river of Thamise; for which hee is allowed one whole day, and no more at his peril; subscribed and sealed the day and yeare aforesaid. By us"

(signed by the minister, the constable, and a paris.h.i.+oner). [Footnote: Lambarde, Duties of Constables, S 45.] It is no wonder that constables are advised "in every corner to have a readie hand and whip."

The constable was also the warden of such arms and armor as each parish kept, or was supposed to keep, in obedience to the militia requirements. A writer of Elizabeth's time says: "The said armour and munition likewise is kept in one several place of every town, appointed by the consent of the whole parish, where it is always ready to be had and worn within an hour's warning. ... Certes there is almost no village so poor ... that hath not sufficient furniture in a readiness to set forth three or four soldiers, as one archer, one gunner, one pike, and a billman." [Footnote: Harrison, Description of England (Camelot ed.), 224.]

An account of the armor kept in a parish in Middles.e.x is entered in the vestry accounts of the year 1583. "Note of the armour for the parish of Fulham: first, a corslet, with a pyke, sworde, and daiger, furnished in all points, a gyrdle only excepted. Item, two hargobushes, with flaskes and touch-boxes to the same; two morryons; two swords, and two daigers, which are all for Fulham side only. All which armore are, and do remayne in the possession and appointment of John Palton, of Northend, being constable of Fulhamsyde the yere above wrytten." [Footnote: Toulmin Smith, The Parish, 473.] One may easily imagine the nature and value of such accoutrements, and of the villagers who were occasionally pressed into the service to wear them. Mouldy and Bullcalf, Wart, Shadow, and Feeble, and Falstaff's whole company of "cankers of a calm world and a long peace" may readily enough have been drawn from the life.

These duties the constable must fulfil at his own initiation or upon the recurrence of the occasion for them. But the great part of his duties were those imposed upon him from above in special cases--that is to say, in carrying out the warrants and precepts of the justices of the peace, or occasionally of the coroner, sheriff, lord-lieutenant, or still higher officials. If the justice of the peace was the man-of-all- work, as has been said, of the government of the time, the constable was the tool and instrument with which he worked. The constable was required to arrest all persons who were to be bound over by the justices to keep the peace, and all felons and other ill-doers for whom a warrant had been issued, and to bring them before the justices into jail. And woe be to him if he allowed such a prisoner to escape. The justices might construe his inactivity as partic.i.p.ation in the crime of the prisoner, or he might be fined to the extent of all his property.

[Footnote: Lambarde, Duties of Constables, S 15]

The constable must carry out the lesser sentences of the justices, inflicting the punishment ordered and collecting the fines imposed. For instance, when a certain poor woman, Elizabeth Armistead, was convicted of petty larceny at the West Riding Sessions, in 1598, it was ordered by the justices that "she shall nowe be delivered to the constable of Keerbie, and he to cause her to be stripped naked from the middle upward and soundly whipped thorowe the said town of Keerbie, and by hym delivered to the constable of Kirkby and he to see like execution within his town, and the next markett att Weatherbie to delyver her to the constables of Weatherbie, and they to see like punishment of her executed thorow their towns." [Footnote: West Riding Sessions Rolls, 58] In a.s.sessing and collecting taxes and in obtaining information the constables were at the command of county and hundred authorities. They were used as the active or at least the most available intermediaries between the justices of the peace and the individuals whom it was desirable to reach. [Footnote: Hist. MSS. Commission, Report XIV., App, pt. iv, 28, 67.] They were by no means ideal instruments; many were extremely ignorant--as, for instance, the constable of Collingbourne Ducis, who in 1650 prays to be relieved from his office because he can neither read nor write, and is obliged to go to the minister and divers others to get his warrants read. [Footnote: Hist. MSS. Commission, Report I., 121] They were constantly being fined by the justices for neglect of their duties or for inefficiency. [Footnote: Middles.e.x County Records, II., 36, 41, 139.]

The most important remaining ancient parochial officers were the church-wardens. Their position and functions were not so purely ecclesiastical as the name would suggest. Their duties included, it is true, the care of the parish church and the provision of other material requirements for religious services. But they also included many things which were quite clearly temporal or civil in their nature. c.o.ke says of their position, "The office is mere temporal." [Footnote: Lambarde, Duties of Constables, SS 57-60.] That is to say, the church-wardens represented the paris.h.i.+oners, not the minister or the ecclesiastical authorities. They formed a quasi-corporation for the holding of the personal property that belonged to the parish, and could sue and be sued as trustees for the parish. [Footnote: Lambarde, Duties of Church- wardens, S 1.]

The almost invariable custom was for the body of the paris.h.i.+oners at a vestry meeting in Easter week to choose two church-wardens for the next year. But neither the number nor the mode of appointment was at this time quite fixed. During the first half of the seventeenth century clergymen were inclined to magnify their office, and the canons of 1603 and 1639 gave to the minister of the parish some control over the choice of the wardens; although whenever the rights of the paris.h.i.+oners were a.s.serted and an established custom shown, the courts upheld this custom against ecclesiastical encroachments. [Footnote: Toulmin Smith, The Parish, 78-87.]

The financial powers of the church-wardens were considerable, though exercised in most cases along with the constable, and in many only after the approval of the whole body of paris.h.i.+oners at a vestry meeting. They had, of course, the duty of providing for the repairs of the church and of taxing their neighbors for this purpose. Unless previously settled upon by the paris.h.i.+oners themselves, they levied and collected the local taxes already described as being imposed by the justices upon the parishes for various purposes. They had the power to seize and sell the property of such paris.h.i.+oners as refused or neglected to pay the amounts a.s.sessed upon them. Many of the parishes also received considerable sums by gift or bequest, which were invested, and the income expended for the poor or other parish objects.

[Footnote: Ibid., chap, v., App.]

Property in land and houses also belonged to some parishes, apart from the minister's glebe, and the renting and accounts fell within the church-warden's duties. Various means of combining the securing of funds with much neighborhood merriment, even in those days of militant Puritanism, were used by the parish authorities, such as "church-ales,"

"pigeon-holes," Hock-tide games, Easter games, processions, and festive gatherings, at all of which farthings, pence, and s.h.i.+llings were gathered. [Footnote: Various quotations in Toulmin Smith, The Parish, chap, vii., S 12.] Such accounts of these various funds and the record of the thousand and one petty expenditures for local purposes as were kept were usually the work of the church-wardens and made their office one of real local importance. In fact, a whole cycle of parish life pa.s.ses before us in these accounts. "Paid the carpenters 5s. for a barrow to carry the people that died of the sickness to church to bury them." "For a coat for the whipper, and making, 3s." "For too payre of glovys for Robin Hode and Mayde Maryan, 3d." "Received for the May- pole, 1 pound 4s." "Paid Robert Warden, the constable, which he disbursed for carrying away the witches, 11s." [Footnote: Ibid., 465- 472.]

The church-wardens, under a law of Queen Mary, [Footnote: 2 and 3 Philip and Mary, chap. viii.] with the constables and paris.h.i.+oners, selected the surveyors of highways; and under two statutes of Queen Elizabeth [Footnote: 8 Eliz., chap, xv., and 14 Eliz., chap. xi.] every year appointed two men who should be named "the distributers of the provision for the destruction of noisome fowle and vermine." A tax was levied upon the paris.h.i.+oners to provide these officers with funds, and it then became their duty to pay bounties for the heads and eggs of crows, rooks, starlings, and many other birds. A long list of four- footed beasts is also included in the definition of "vermine," and rates ranging from a s.h.i.+lling for a fox to a halfpenny for a mole were established. [Footnote: Lambarde, Office of Distributers, etc., 92.]

The mole-catcher was a regular employe of some parishes. [Footnote: Hist. MSS. Commission, Report III., App., 331; V., App., 597.]