REPTON CHURCHWARDENS ACCOUNTS, 39 



Lincolnshire, to the number of two hundred, to go to Ireland, set 

 upon the townspeople, going to their prayers (being Sabbath Day), 

 and were resisted by the bailiff's, burgesses, and ringing of the 

 town's bell." 



XIII. Watch and Ward were the terms used, from the earliest 

 period of parochial law, to imply the general duties of the parish 

 constable or constables. The number of men who were bound to 

 keep night watch to arrest strangers, in each city, borough, and 

 town or parish, is specified in the Statute of Winchester (13 

 Edward I.). Every inhabitant was held responsible for the watch 

 and ward- -that is, for the due peace and safety of his neighbour- 

 hood — and inquests before sworn juries of freemen used to be 

 periodically held in every place to see that the local arrangements 

 were in working order. The present system of "Special Con- 

 stables," by which every householder is called upon to act as a 

 constable in certain emergencies, is a remnant of the old custom 

 of watch and ward that used to be binding on all. No precept 

 was requisite, in 1601, for the discharge of the ordinary constabu- 

 lary duties, but probably certain extraordinary steps had to be 

 taken in apprehension of some tumult, and this necessitated an 

 application to the Clerk of the Justices, as we conceive Mr. Coxe 

 to have been. It was the year of the conspiracy of the Earls of 

 Essex, Rutland, and Southampton. The complicity of the Earl of 

 Rutland in this conspiracy (see extracts from Youlgreave register, 

 Churches of Derbyshire, vol. iii.) may have caused tumults, or 

 apprehensions of tumults, in this county. The Earl of Essex, too, 

 had a seat at Chartley, Staffordshire, and certain manorial rights in 

 Derbyshire. Hence the general muster of the Derbyshire soldiery, 

 and the special precepts for watching and warding. 



XIV. This is by far the earliest mention of Gypsies in the 

 Midland Counties with which we are acquainted. They do not 

 seem to have come into England until about the year 1500. Mr. 

 Crofton, in a paper contributed to the Manchester Literary Club, 

 in 1877, on Gypsy Life in Lancashire and Cheshire, says that the 

 earliest record he can find of them in those parts occurs in 1649, 

 when some were arrested in Yorkshire, on their way to the north. 

 In 1530 their itinerancy was forbidden by Statute, and they were 



